Molina, Gloria

Gloria Molina, b. 1948, became the first Latina member of the California State Assembly in which she served from from 1982-1987, after which she was elected to the Los Angeles City Council, the first Latina member to be elected. In January 1991 she was elected to a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Biography

Assembly Member Gloria Molina, Democrat was elected from the 56th District in 1982. At the time of her election, her district included East Los Angeles, Maywood, Chinatown, and downtown Los Angeles. The district had the highest concentration of Mexican Americans in the state, though many of them were not registered as voters.

Assembly Member Molina was born in Montebello on May 31, 1948. Her full name is Jesus Gloria Molina. She attended public schools in her hometown. She attended Rio Hondo Junior College, East Los Angeles City College and California State University, Los Angeles. While attending college, she worked full time as a legal secretary. Then she became certified as an adult education instructor and taught clerical skills at the East Los Angeles Skills Center.

She joined the Mexican-American Students Association (MASA) while attending East L.A. College. She was a member of the Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacional de Los Angeles. As a feminist, she helped found the Chicana Action Service Center to advocate for the rights of Mexican American women.

She volunteered on several electoral campaigns. Beginning in 1974 she served as an administrative assistant for Assembly Member Art Torres's District Office. She then served as the Hispanic deputy for the California Carter Campaign in 1975. After President Jimmy Carter began his term, she worked in Washington, D.C., as a staffing specialist in the Office of Presidential Personnel. In 1979, she returned to California to serve as the director of Intergovernmental and Congressional Affairs for the Region IX office of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. In 1981, she moved to Los Angeles and began work as the southern California chief deputy for California State Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown. She focused on outreach to the southern California Latino Community. During that period, she also joined the Californios for Fair Representation, a group that sought recognition of Chicanos in the reapportionment process.

This background convinced her to run for the Assembly when Assembly Member Torres decided to run for the State Senate. In a close contest against Richard Polanco in the Democratic primary, Molina was victorious and then won the general election easily. She was the first Mexican American woman elected to the state legislature. She came to Sacramento with 23 other newly-elected Assembly Members.

Over the course of her career, she served as the President of the Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacional and as a board member for the American Red Cross. She was a member of the East/Northeast Little Sisters Program, Business and Professional Women, the Democratic National Committee on Platform Accountability, the National Women's Political Caucus, the National Organization of Women, the Hispanic Democratic Club, and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. She was honored as the Caminos Hispanic of the year, and the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation Woman of the year.

According to the California Legislature at Sacramento (Handbooks), she served on the following committees:

Standing Committees

Consumer Protection, 1985-1986

Health, 1985-1986

Human Services, 1985-1986

Labor and Employment, 1983-1984

Public Employees and Retirement, 1983-1984

Vice Chair

Revenue and Taxation, 1983-1986

Subcommittees

Subcommittee of Health on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, 1985-1986

Chair, 1985-1986

Select Committees

Small Business, 1983-1984

Special Committee

Community Colleges, 1984

As a member of the legislature, she served on the Commission of the Californias, 1983-1984 and the Commission on the Status of Women, 1985-1986.

In 1986, she decided not to seek re-election. In part, this decision was influenced by her marriage to Ron Martinez with whom she has a daughter, Valentina. In addition, she was frustrated by the limits of what she could accomplish in the state legislature. She decided to return to local politics and ran a successful campaign in 1987 to be a member of the Los Angeles City Council from the first district. In 1991, she was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors;she was still in office in 2002.