After her friend and former boss lost the 2016 presidential race, Democrat Eleni Kounakis recalls Hillary Clinton urging women to run for public office.

It was a pivotal moment that inspired Kounakis to run for lieutenant governor of California in 2018, a position that now forms the basis of her recently launched campaign to become the state’s first female governor.

That commitment gets a boost

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when Kounalakis is expected to announce an endorsement from Clinton, who says she wants to help her friend break California’s glass ceiling.

Eleni has proven to be a fierce leader, Clinton said in a statement praising Kounalakis for education, economics and access to abortion. That’s the California way, and in 2026 that will be the Eleni Kounalakis way.

With Governor Gavin Newsom taking office after 2026, it is expected to attract a large field in hopes of leading the nation’s largest state. Democrat Betty Yee, the former state comptroller, has said she intends to run. Democratic Att. General Rob Bonta has said he is thinking about it.

But Kounalakis was the first to formally launch a gubernatorial campaign when she announced it last month. Now she’s following up on high-profile recommendations, which also include the support of former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California, another barrier-breaker. Boxer and Senator Dianne Feinstein became the first women elected to represent California in the Senate in 1992.

Such messages of support show she has the traditional party stars, who are women, on her side, said Kim Nalder, a political science professor at California State University, Sacramento. Those are important endorsements.

While Kounalakis is unknown to many voters, Nalder said, endorsements from well-known Democrats like Clinton and Boxer will help her build credibility with the state’s mostly Democratic electorate.

The fact that this is happening relatively early shows that she is likely taking steps to exclude other potential candidates, Nalder said.

The connections between Kounalakis and Clinton go back decades. Kounalaki’s father, Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos, was a major donor to President Clinton who attended a state dinner and overnight stay 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 served as a California co-chair of the Clinton presidential campaign, raising money and advising on foreign policy.

“I could go all the way back to 1992, when Hillary Clinton first inspired me,” Kounalakis said in an interview with The Times on Wednesday.

She remembered the flap

about Clinton’s comment that year when she said 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 years, for a kid like me, I took it as permission to go out and do bigger things in the world,” Kounalakis said.

The inspiration she drew from Clinton evolved over the years and became transformative after she lost the presidential race to Donald Trump.

“That catastrophic election affected me as much as 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, a record number of women across the country, who stood up and ran.”

In 2018, Kounalakis became the first woman to be elected Lieutenant Governor in California. It is as lieutenant governor that Kounalakis has had for the past five years

an inconspicuous position

she

has used it in part to advance women’s issues. She played a major role in last year’s campaign for Proposition 1 to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution and donned white suffragette as she became the first woman in California history to sign a bill while Newsom was traveling out of state.