Alex Padilla

He has been U.S. Senator from California since 2021 and is ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee. He was California Secretary of State from 2015 to 2021. He is named among the possible contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

Career

Padilla earned a mechanical engineering degree at MIT in 1994 and worked as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft. He served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1999 to 2006, as its president from 2001, then in the California State Senate from 2006 to 2014. He was California Secretary of State from 2015 to 2021 and has been a U.S. Senator since 2021. In June 2025 Secret Service agents removed him from a Department of Homeland Security press conference where he tried to question Secretary Kristi Noem about immigration enforcement.

Positions

Wikipedia describes Padilla as a business-friendly moderate with technocratic tendencies, though in 2021 he stated support for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. He calls abortion rights non-negotiable, champions expanding voting rights, supports a pathway to citizenship in immigration reform and opposes the filibuster. He received a 100 percent score from the League of Conservation Voters in 2021.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia

Photo: United States Senate Photographic Studio, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)