Lee, Barbara, 1946-

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1946-07-16

Birth 19460716

Gender:

Female

Nationality: Americans,

Language: English,

Biographical notes:

Barbara Jean Lee (née Tutt; born July 16, 1946) is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for California's 13th congressional district. Now in her 12th congressional term, Lee has served since 1998, and is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, numbered as the 9th district from 1998 to 2013, is based in Oakland and covers most of the northern part of Alameda County.

Lee was born Barbara Jean Tutt in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Mildred Adaire (née Parish) and Garvin Alexander Tutt, a lieutenant colonel. Lee is African-American, and according to a DNA analysis, she descends primarily from the people of Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone. She moved from Texas to California in 1960 with her military family parents, and attended San Fernando High School in the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles. Lee was a young single mother of two receiving public assistance when she began attending Mills College. She received an MSW from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975.

Lee was a staff member for U.S. Representative Ron Dellums as well as a member of the California State Assembly and the California State Senate before entering the U.S. House of Representatives. She was elected to Congress in a 1998 special election with 66% of the vote. She won the seat in her own right later that year with 82.8% of the vote, and has been reelected nine more times with no substantive opposition in what has long been one of the most Democratic districts in the nation. It presently has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of D+40, making it the most Democratic district in California and the fourth-most Democratic in the nation. The district and its predecessors have been in Democratic hands without interruption since 1959.