The first woman to sign legislation 

in California's 171-year history

For the first time in California's 171-year history, a woman has signed a bill into state law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom normally signs the laws in California, but he left the state on Wednesday night for a family vacation in Central and South America in March 2022. State law requires Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis to act as governor until he returns.

On the final day of Women’s History Month 2022, Acting Governor Eleni Kounalakis signed legislation that extends eviction protections for Californians participating in rental assistance programs, making her the first woman in California’s history to sign a piece of legislation into law.

It ended up being a historic moment for the nation's most populous state, which despite its reputation as the country's progressive powerhouse has never elected a woman as governor.

“It was very humbling. And I did feel that sense of history,” said Kounalakis, who also signed a separate bill relating to elections. “For many years women have been writing legislation ... but no woman has ever signed a bill into law. And it felt like a moment in history that we should recognize as important.”

Courtesy: KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco

KTVU FOX 2 San Francisco

 

Eleni Kounalakis launches 

2026 California governor campaign

Eleni Kounalakis, California's lieutenant governor, announced on April 24, 2023 that she is officially launching her campaign for governor in 2026.

“My family & I owe everything to our state. I will fight fiercely to make sure EVERY Californian has the chance to walk the path of the CA dream just like I have,” she said on social media.

Kounalakis would become the first woman ever to govern the Golden State, if elected.

Courtesy : KCRA 3

KCRA 3

 What have I done? What will I do?

Eleni Kounalakis

This is an interview taken by CalMatters on Sep 22, 2022. Eleni Kounalakis, the then first term lieutenant governor of California, talked to CalMatters about what she'll do if she's reelected.

Kounalakis was re-elected as lieutenant governor in 2022.

On April 24, 2023, Kounalakis became the first to announce a bid for the office of Governor of California in the upcoming 2026 election.

Courtesy : CalMatters 

 Hillary Clinton backs Eleni Kounalakis 

for California Governor

Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State has endorsed Eleni Kounalakis who runs for California governor in 2026.

Hillary Clinton inspired Eleni Kounalakis to run for California lieutenant governor in 2018, a position that is now the basis for her recently launched campaign to become the state’s first female governor.

“Eleni has proven to be a fierce leader,” Hillary Clinton said in a statement lauding Kounalakis on education, the economy and abortion access. “That’s the California way, and in 2026, that will be the Eleni Kounalakis way.”

The connections between Kounalakis and Clinton go back decades. Kounalakis’ father, Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, was a major donor to President Clinton who attended a state dinner and stayed overnight at the White House in 1997.

Kounalakis helped raise money for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and then worked for her when Clinton was secretary of State and Kounalakis was ambassador to Hungary. In 2016, Kounalakis was a California co-chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign, helping raise money and advising on foreign policy.

“I could go all the way back to 1992 when Hillary Clinton first inspired me,” Kounalakis said. She recalled the flap that year when Clinton said she “could have stayed home and baked cookies” but instead pursued a legal career.

“Even though she had to apologize for the comment, for many years after, for a kid like me, I took it as permission to want to go out and do bigger things in the world,” Kounalakis said. The inspiration she drew from Clinton developed over the years and became transformative after she lost the presidential race to Donald Trump.

“That catastrophic election impacted me as it did so many women,” Kounalakis said. “When Hillary stood up and said, ‘Women of America, go run for office,’ I was one of thousands of women, record numbers of women across the country, who stood up and ran.”

In 2018, Kounalakis became the first woman elected lieutenant governor in California. It’s a low-profile position but she has used it, in part, to advance women’s issues. She played a big role in the campaign for Proposition 1 last year to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and wore suffragette white when she became the first woman in California history to sign a bill into law while Newsom was traveling out of state.

Endorsements from well-known Democrats such as Hillary Clinton will help her build credibility with the state’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

 Who is Eleni Kounalakis?

Eleni Kounalakis (born March 3, 1966) is an American politician, businesswoman, and former diplomat serving as the 50th lieutenant governor of California since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she is the first woman elected to the office.

Kounalakis previously served as the United States Ambassador to Hungary from 2010 to 2013. She was sworn into office on January 7, 2010, and presented her credentials to President László Sólyom on January 11, 2010. 

On April 24, 2017, Kounalakis announced her bid for the office of Lieutenant Governor of California in the 2018 election. She came in first place in the June 5, 2018 primary election and was elected on November 6, 2018. 

On April 24, 2023, Kounalakis became the first to announce a bid for the office of Governor of California in the upcoming 2026 election.

Kounalakis as U.S. ambassador

Before accepting President Barack Obama's nomination to an ambassadorship, Kounalakis was President of AKT Development Corporation, one of California's largest housing development firms, which was founded by her father. 

Kounalakis earned her undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and a Master of Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

Kounalakis and her husband, print and broadcast journalist Markos Kounalakis, founded two university chairs in Hellenic studies, the Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis chair at Georgetown University, held by the scholar of late Classical and early Hellenistic Greek literature, Alexander Sens, and the Tsakopoulos Kounalakis chair in honor of Constantine Mitsotakis at Stanford University, held by Josiah Ober. Both chairs focus on the understanding of the origins of Athenian democracy. 

They also established the Tsakopoulos Kounalakis lecture series at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to focus on democracy and international relations.

Kounalakis served for nearly ten years as a Trustee of the World Council of Religions for Peace. In recognition for her work with the WCRP, she was awarded the medal of St. Paul, the Greek Orthodox Church of America's highest honor. 

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed her to serve as a Trustee of the War Memorial and Performing Arts Center. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee appointed her to serve on the Port Commission Board.

Political career

Kounalakis served four times as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and as an at-large member of the California State Democratic Central Committee. She also served as a member of the First 5 California Commission, and the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism. 

She served as a Trustee of Robert Redford's Sundance Preserve and on the Conservation Fund's National Forum on Children and Nature. She is also a senior advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group.

On April 24, 2017, Kounalakis announced her bid for the office of Lieutenant Governor of California in the 2018 election. After her candidacy announcement, she visited all 58 counties in California during her campaign. Her grassroots campaign earned the recognition of Time magazine for engaging hundreds of volunteers to text over 1 million voters before Election Day. 

She came in first place on June 5, 2018, in the top-two statewide primary; Democratic State Senator Ed Hernandez placed second. On November 6, Kounalakis was elected by a 56.6% to 43.3% margin against her opponent, becoming the first female elected Lieutenant Governor of California in history; Mona Pasquil was appointed in an acting capacity in 2009 following the resignation of John Garamendi but was not elected to the post. 

Kounalakis and Governor-elect Gavin Newsom took office on January 7, 2019.

Kounalakis was re-elected lieutenant governor in 2022.

She announced her candidacy for governor in the 2026 election on April 24, 2023, exactly six years after launching her first lieutenant gubernatorial campaign.

Personal life

Eleni Tsakopoulos married Markos Kounalakis in 2000. They have two sons. She is the daughter of Angelo Tsakopoulos, a Sacramento developer. Kounalakis is of Greek descent and grew up a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. In 2011, she received an Honorary Doctor of Law from the American College of Greece.

Source : Wikipedia 

Commitment to climate action
between the  world’s  3rd  and 4th  largest economies

 

Last month I traveled to Tokyo and Osaka as part of the delegation for the California Clean Energy Trade Mission to Japan. The trip was led by California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis and Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development Director Dee Dee Myers and included several Cabinet Secretaries and roughly one hundred representatives from the business sector, including several SVLG member companies. 

The goal of the mission was to deepen ties with the Japanese on clean energy issues, as well as highlight how California’s leadership on climate and clean energy policy has been beneficial for economic growth.

On March 15, the delegation attended the World Smart Energy Week Exhibition and Conference in Tokyo, which is the largest clean energy trade show in the world with well over 10,000 attendees. 

At the Conference, I spoke onstage in a California Keynote Session in a panel moderated by Director Myers that also included California Air Resources Board Chair Liane Randolph and California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild.

The focus of the panel was to showcase the opportunities in California and Japan to transform our economies to run on clean energy. We talked about the work of the many Silicon Valley companies in this space, who are collectively moving us toward California’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045 and Japan’s recently announced goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. Silicon Valley companies will provide the technologies to get to those goals. Many of the sectors that need to decarbonize already have the technologies commercialized – we have electric cars and charging for them, we can run buildings on renewable energy combined with storage – the question is largely of getting those technologies to be adopted at scale. 

There are of course a few areas that still need the technologies invented to be fully zero-carbon, such as air travel. Even there, we can see progress, as SVLG members United and Alaska Airlines both spoke about their efforts to increase use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel.

We also spoke about distributed energy resources. These can take the form of micro grids, distributed solar, onsite storage, bidirectional electric vehicle charging, energy efficiency and traditional demand response. Integration of these customer-sited resources, which happens seamlessly in the current Japanese market for demand response (think of it as “demand response plus”), allows customers to reduce demand on the grid and provide additional grid stability. Surplus energy can be stored and discharged to the grid when needed. 

We’ll have to align incentives at the Public Utilities Commission to get the price signals to do this right in California, but doing so can complement our utility-scale solutions (such as large solar power plants) as we move to electrify the transportation sector and squeeze carbon emissions out of buildings.

There used to be the worry that growing the economy is bad for the environment. As this trade mission proved, there is a thriving clean energy sector in the world’s third largest economy (Japan) and fourth largest economy (which California would be if it were its own nation-state). Continuing progress on our climate goals will help this sector long-term, to the benefit of our economies and the environment.

By: Tim McRae, SVP, Sustainable Growth at SVLG

A proud daughter of California 

Eleni Kounalakis is a proud daughter of California and credits her and her family’s success to the opportunities California gave them. 

As a humble daughter of Greek immigrants and a native Californian, Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis has a deep-rooted love for her home state that began when her father immigrated to the United States from Greece.

Like many immigrants, her family had humble beginnings and understood the value and opportunity this country offers. Her father worked in the fields and later as a waiter in California’s Governor’s mansion. 

Little did young Eleni know that just one generation later, she would be serving as the first woman elected Lieutenant Governor at the same place her father began his American dream.

As governor, Eleni will work day in and day out to make sure every Californian has the opportunities her family had.

Her gratitude for her home state and passion for ensuring every family has the same shot at a brighter future are what led her to a career in public service. 

In 2010, she was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Hungary by President Barack Obama where she worked to promote democracy and America’s interests abroad for three and a half years. 

When she came home, she ran for public office becoming the first woman Lieutenant Governor of California. If elected Governor, she’ll make history once again as the first woman to lead California.

As Lieutenant Governor, Eleni has a record of getting things done. She has helped Californians by 

• making colleges more accessible to working families 
• building more affordable student housing 
• fighting tuition increases
• making it easier to transfer to a 4-year university from a community college. 

She has been a proud leader in California’s fight against climate change and has showcased California’s progress and leadership on a global level. 

Eleni is a champion for women and gender equality, fighting for laws to protect women from sexual assault and expanding access to reproductive choice in California.

A proud mother, daughter, advocate, and leader, Eleni knows the struggles Californians face and has the experience and grit to bring meaningful change to her home state. 

She is a fierce fighter and strives to build a future where everyone — regardless of race, class, or immigration status — has the same opportunity for a better future that she has had.

Eleni lives in San Francisco with her husband, veteran journalist Dr. Markos Kounalakis. They have two sons Neo and Eon.

 Elect Eleni Kounalakis as Governor of California 2026

California’s Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis has announced that she plans to run for governor in 2026. 

She has declared her mission in her own words : “I will fight fiercely to build a future where everyone — regardless of race, class, or immigration status — has the same opportunity that my family and I had.”

Kounalakis is a seasoned Democrat with roots in Sacramento. She is the first major candidate to announce an early bird bid for the state’s Governor race nearly four years away. If elected, she would create history to become the first woman elected governor in state history.

Kounalakis was sworn in as the 50th Lieutenant Governor of California by Governor Gavin Newsom on January 7th, 2019. She is the first woman elected Lt. Governor of California.

Earlier, she served as an ambassador (From 2010 to 2013) to Hungary under former President Barack Obama. She was the first Greek-American woman – and at age 43 one of America’s youngest – to serve as U.S. Ambassador.

Kounalakis is the daughter of Angelo Tsakopoulos, a Greek immigrant who moved to Sacramento in the 1950s and built California’s most respected housing development firm, AKT Development Corporation. Prior to her public service, Kounalakis was the president of AKT Development. She built master-planned communities and delivered quality housing to the Sacramento region’s working families. 

Kounalakis is so passionate about early childhood development, and she served as a member of California’s First 5 Commission and the California Blue Ribbon Commission on Autism.

After announcing that she plans to run for governor in 2026, Kounalakis declared in a Facebook post : “I will fight fiercely to build a future where everyone — regardless of race, class, or immigration status — has the same opportunity that my family and I had.”

Newsom has completed only four months in his second four-year term as governor. It's somewhat rare for major candidates to announce their candidacies so early for gubernatorial election. But her team argues that it does have some advantages.

By announcing her candidacy this early, it gives Kounalakis a head start on mobilising everything for the most effective campaign.

Kounalakis has declared through the media that she wants to focus on addressing state problems like homelessness and housing, mental health, the fentanyl crisis and the high cost to live in California.