Mike McGuire named California Senate majority leader

State Sen. Mike McGuire, who began his two decades in public office as a teenage school trustee in Healdsburg before serving on the city council and the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, was named Senate majority leader Wednesday, taking over the No. 2 job in California’s 40-member upper house.

McGuire, a Democrat who still calls Healdsburg home while representing a sprawling North Coast district, was appointed to the post by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins of San Diego.

In his new post, McGuire, 42, said he will work with Atkins on setting the “legislative and budget priorities for the year” and manage the movement of bills through the Senate, where Democrats, with 31 seats, hold a veto-proof supermajority.

“It's an important development as this is typically a stepping stone to wider influence and movement within the chamber,” said David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist.

McGuire is replacing Sen. Bob Hertzberg of Van Nuys, a former Assembly speaker who is termed out of the Legislature this year. Sen. Susan Eggman of Stockton is taking over McGuire’s former spot as assistant majority leader.

“We have some big work in front of us this year,” McGuire said, including the coronavirus pandemic, wildfire resilience, homelessness, affordable housing and climate change.

The Senate “will be advancing one of America’s strongest climate action bills,” he said.

McGuire, who grew up in a farming family, was the youngest person ever elected to the Healdsburg school board at age 19 in 1998.

He subsequently won two terms on the Healdsburg City Council and served one term as a Sonoma County supervisor before hopping into the 2014 race to fill the seat of outgoing Sen. Noreen Evans of Santa Rosa.

He won then and in 2018 with more than two-thirds of the vote.

Since 2019, he has served as the assistant majority leader for Democrats in the Senate, while also being vice chairman of the Democratic caucus and chairman of the state Senate’s governance and finance committee.

His legislative work has focused on housing and homeless services, land use and wildfire prevention and response — issues key to his North Coast district, which stretches from Marin County to the Oregon border, including most of Sonoma County.

“I love what I do,” McGuire said. “Being a member of the Senate has been the honor of a lifetime.”

Working full time since he was 16, McGuire helped put himself through college, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science at Sonoma State University in 2002.

McGuire said his grandmother taught him to “work hard, surround yourself with smart people and never take no for an answer.”

When President Donald Trump threatened to withhold funding for wildfires due to California’s poor forest management in 2019, McGuire posted on Twitter: “It bears repeating: Approx 58% of all forest land in California is owned and managed by the Federal Government.”

He has been especially active on the need to upgrade communication networks for disasters, standardize emergency alert systems and bolster firefighting resources for the kinds of calamitous blazes that have swept over large swaths of his district since 2015, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of homes.

Amid Trump’s presidency, McGuire sought to make it a requirement for presidential candidates running in the California primary to disclose their tax records, a step that Trump infamously would not take. The California Supreme Court struck down the law in 2019.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a McGuire bill that protects journalists from interference by police while covering civil protests.

McGuire said the new law would provide “critical protections for the press as they attend and report on First Amendment events like protests, marches, rallies and demonstrations.”

He has spearheaded legislation to establish a 320-mile recreational trail partly along segments of abandoned North Coast rail lines that would link Humboldt Bay with San Francisco Bay.

He also has signaled interest this year in seeking tax relief for marijuana producers who say the combination of state and local taxes and regulations is driving them out of business.

McGuire and his wife, Erika, principal at Healdsburg’s Fitch Mountain Elementary School, are parents of a 10-month-old son, Connor.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.