Liz Ortega

Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro) represents Assembly District 20 in the southern East Bay, encompassing Hayward, San Leandro, Union City, and surrounding communities ^[1,2]. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1977 and raised in Oakland after her family immigrated when she was three, Ortega brings two decades of labor advocacy experience to the Legislature, where she chairs the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee and has focused on worker protections, combating the fentanyl crisis, and saving her district's only safety-net hospital ^[3,4,5]. With a 15% CFC Biblical Values Scorecard rating, Ortega's voting record has consistently diverged from the California Family Council's worldview framework on the sanctity of life (Chapter 6), parental authority in education (Chapter 8), and religious liberty (Chapter 9).

Elizabeth Ortega-Toro was born on August 26, 1977, in Guadalajara, Mexico. When she was three years old, her 21-year-old mother made the difficult decision to bring Liz and her six-month-old brother across the border to reunite the family with their father, who had already found work in Oakland. The family settled in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, where Ortega grew up attending public schools. From a young age, she served as a translator for Spanish-speaking family members and neighbors, helping them navigate medical appointments, immigration paperwork, and other official processes. She later earned a bachelor of science in criminal justice administration from the University of Phoenix in 2009 ^[1,3,6].

Ortega's career in organized labor began in 2001 when she started as a receptionist for SEIU. She rose through the ranks, eventually becoming an education trainer and then assistant director of Education and Nursing Homes. In 2011, she became political director for the Alameda Labor Council, an AFL-CIO-affiliated central labor council representing all labor unions in Alameda County. She later served as statewide political director for AFSCME Local 3299, the University of California's largest employee union, where she lobbied Sacramento for legislation protecting essential service jobs at UC campuses. In 2017, she returned to the Alameda Labor Council as its Executive Secretary-Treasurer, becoming the first Latina to hold that position. In that role, she represented more than 135,000 workers across more than 135 unions ^[1,3,6,7].

Her 18.2% Biblical Values Scorecard rating across 74 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.

Ortega's other significant legislative work includes AB 800, which established Workplace Readiness Week in public high schools to teach students about their labor rights, and AB 917, which made California's Low Cost Auto Insurance program permanent. She secured $2 million in funding for St. Rose Hospital in 2023 and pushed for a Cal/OSHA audit that revealed significant issues with workplace safety enforcement. Her legislative approach reflects her labor background, with a focus on worker protections, affordable housing, and healthcare access. While CFC will find itself opposed to many of her policy positions on social issues, her demonstrated commitment to protecting children from fentanyl, preserving maternal healthcare access, and her personal embodiment of strong family values through her own immigrant family story offer meaningful points of connection for faith-based advocacy engagement ^{[4,5,9,10,11]}.