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Nora Campos is the Speaker pro Tempore of the California Assembly. In this capacity, she serves as the presiding officer for Assembly Floor Session and leads the debate on the nearly 5,000 legislative measures that come before the California Assembly.
She was re-elected in 2012 to her second Assembly term with 78 percent of the vote to represent the 27th Assembly District, which includes San Jose, the state’s third largest city and the nation’s tenth largest city. Her district includes East San Jose, downtown, the Monterey Corridor, Evergreen, parts of Willow Glen, and Central San Jose which also includes one of the last three remaining historical Japantowns in the nation.
Speaker pro Tempore Campos served San Jose for nearly a decade as a councilmember from 2001-10. One of her most notable accomplishments was turning a neglected, high-crime area in East San Jose into a bustling shopping center that increased the economically struggling community’s tax base by 105 percent. As a part of her efforts to create this robust public-private partnership, she was able to attract four financial institutions to serve this area, where there had been none for more than 30 years.
Growing up in a working class neighborhood of San Jose, Speaker pro Tempore Campos understands that California’s future is dependent on growing and diversifying the state’s tax base. As a result, her primary legislative priorities include job creation and economic growth. In her first term in the State Assembly, she worked to advance incentives to keep thousands of entertainment jobs in California. Her current legislative focus includes:
- bringing jobs to high-unemployment areas of the state,
- promoting public-private partnerships to invest in low-income neighborhoods,
- saving a proven job creation program that provides small business assistance to start-up companies, and
- improving K-12 public education to ensure that California is developing its next generation of a globally competitive workforce.
Inspired by her father’s work with the farmworker movement and Cesar E. Chavez and her mother’s work as an elementary school teacher, Speaker pro Tempore Campos began her work for economic, social, environmental, and political justice as a young person with her parents marching alongside farmworkers.
Campos serves on the following Assembly committees:
- Appropriations
- Budget
- Budget Subcommittee #3 on Resources and Transportation
- Business & Professions
- Education.
Assembly Speaker John Perez appointed her in February 2013 to be one of the Assembly’s representatives on the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls.
Speaker pro Tempore Campos is a founding member of the San Jose Latino Leadership Alliance and the former co-chair of the City of San Jose’s Family/Domestic Advisory Board. She serves on the Santa Clara Family Health Foundation Board promoting access to health care, and the Santa Clara County Construction Careers Association promoting job opportunities in the construction field.
Many groups have honored Speaker pro Tempore Campos for her dedication to public service, including Tech America as 2011 “California Tech Champion,” La Cooperativa Compesina de California, the Little Saigon-San Jose Foundation, the League of California Cities’ Latino Caucus, and the American GI Forum Women of California.
Campos lives with her husband and son in San Jose. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Francisco State University.
