California Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, candidate for State Senate in California’s 2nd Senate district, is a reform-minded Democrat working to put Californians back to work and make California government perform for Californians again.

A Bay Area native, daughter of a Marine Corps drill sergeant and product of California public schools and its state university system, Evans is committed to an economic development and education agenda to restore the California dream for working people and families. She is running for Senate because she believes that cherished values that made California a beacon and a great place to grow up and raise a family need experienced champions in Sacramento.

“I’ll make sure I do everything I can to protect and renew the quality of life that made California known as the Golden State,” Evans said.

As a state legislator since 2004, Evans has consistently fought for priorities most valued by Californians--education, health care, state parks, agriculture and open space, open and transparent government, support for foster children and for services that allow the disabled and elderly to live lives of dignity in their own homes.

Evans was raised in the Bay Area town of Livermore and spent her summers in Laytonville working in her grandparents’ grocery market, the A1 Food Store on Highway 101. At the end of the summer, she and her grandparents would do her back-to-school shopping at the J.C. Penney in Willits.

For Evans, summer vacations were camping trips to nearby Standish-Hickey State Park in Leggett where she and her family would hike, fish and swim on the south fork of the Eel River, a tradition she has continued with her own children.

Evans worked her way through college and law school, earning a bachelor’s degree from Cal State University Sacramento and a Juris Doctorate from McGeorge Law School at University of Pacific in Sacramento. Like many attorneys of today, she was inspired to the law by the film To Kill a Mockingbird and Atticus Finch’s defense of a wrongly accused black man in the Depression-era South.

After law school, she studied international law at the University of Austria in Salzburg.

In 1982, Evans moved to Santa Rosa where she started a family and practiced law as a litigation attorney representing plaintiffs and defendants in civil cases in state and federal courts. She has spent her entire career meeting the challenges faced by all working parents.

Her public policy and political career began with appointment to the Santa Rosa Planning Commission in 1993. In 1996, she was elected to the City Council and helped lead the charge for passage of one of the state’s first smart growth measures. Approved by Santa Rosa voters in 1996, Measure G encouraged housing and commercial development in urban areas while protecting open space, supporting development of parks and preserving agricultural land.

As a political leader, Evans works to make it possible again for all Californians to pursue their dreams, whatever the obstacles.

As chair of the Assembly Budget Committee last year, Evans was the legislative point person fighting to preserve basic human services, maintain state parks and prevent extremists from using the current economic crisis to reverse California’s environmental and workplace protections. She successfully fought against the recent attempt to re-introduce offshore drilling to California’s coastline. 

Evans was recently appointed Majority Whip of the State Assembly.  She also serves on the California Coastal Conservancy, the Commission on the Status of Women and the Select Committee on Foster Care. She chairs the Assembly Select Committee on California Wine.

Today, she and her dog Marley live in downtown Santa Rosa. Her son Joel and her daughter Rachel are students at Sonoma State University, and her daughter Erin is a student at McGeorge School of Law.

About Noreen Biography Why I'm Running