María Elena Durazo

Maria Elena Durazo is a Democratic member of the California State Senate representing District 26, which encompasses Central Los Angeles, Northeast Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, and the City of Vernon, including neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights, Koreatown, Silver Lake, Echo Park, and Little Tokyo. ^[1,3] Born the seventh of eleven children to Mexican immigrant farmworker parents in Madera, California, Durazo grew up traveling the fields of California and Oregon picking crops alongside her family. ^[1,2] That firsthand experience with exploitative labor conditions propelled her into a decades-long career as one of the most powerful labor leaders in Los Angeles history, serving as president of UNITE HERE Local 11 from 1989 to 2006 and then as the first female Secretary-Treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. ^[1,2,4] Elected to the State Senate in 2018, ^[1] Durazo carries a 15% CFC Biblical Values Scorecard rating, reflecting a legislative record that consistently diverges from the California Family Council's core priorities on the sanctity of life, parental authority, and religious liberty. Her affiliations with Planned Parenthood and her advocacy for expansive government programs over family-centered, limited-government approaches represent a fundamentally different vision than CFC's worldview framework articulates. Her notable personal story of rising from the fields to political leadership, however, embodies the immigrant family aspiration that CFC's framework affirms as worthy of protection.

Durazo's path from the fields to the halls of the State Capitol is rooted in the formative hardships of her childhood. Her Mexican immigrant parents worked as migrant laborers, and the family endured poverty so severe that she lost a young brother due to her mother's lack of adequate medical care. ^[2,5] Inspired by United Farmworkers founder Cesar Chavez, she pursued higher education, graduating from St.

Durazo's labor career began with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union before she joined Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) Local 11 in 1983. ^[1,2] Finding that the union's leadership was unresponsive to its predominantly Latino immigrant membership, she mounted a reform campaign, lost in 1987, but won election as Local 11 president in May 1989 — becoming the first Latina to lead a major Los Angeles union.

Her 10.7% Biblical Values Scorecard rating across 103 scored floor votes reflects consistent divergence from CFC's worldview framework. Her voting record has supported abortion access expansion over the sanctity of human life, government-directed education over parental authority and school choice, and progressive social mandates over religious liberty protections.

On the issues central to CFC's worldview framework, Durazo's record reflects the progressive wing of the California Democratic caucus. Her affiliation with Planned Parenthood places her in alignment with an organization whose core mission CFC views as fundamentally opposed to the sanctity of human life from conception.