State Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) announced a run for California governor in 2026 on Friday morning, making the legislative leader the latest entrant in an increasingly crowded race to replace

proclaimed

Gov. Gavin Newsom

after being forced out of office due to term limits

.

Atkins is president pro tem of the Senate and former speaker of the Assembly. She

What

is the first

woman

feminine and

openly

first LGBTQ+ president pro tem in state history and

What

also the first legislator since 1871

to hold both leadership posts.

She was expected to run for governor.

Atkins’ experience leading the Assembly and Senate makes her “uniquely prepared” to lead the state, as does a personal story that took her from a childhood of poverty in rural Appalachia to the corridors of power in California has brought, she said.

“I don’t really fit the mold of previous governors or even some of the other candidates,” she explained. ‘It’s clear I’m not a man. I was not born into wealth or privilege. And I have not been appointed to my first major political position. My story is much more like the Californians I meet every day.”

Atkins’ time as Senate leader ends in February when Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) takes over the post.

Atkins began her political career in the San Diego City Council after serving as a women’s clinic administrator. As Assembly leader, she defended a $7.5 billion water bond approved by voters in 2014, fought back against planned tuition increases at the University of California and fought for a new state tax credit for the working poor.

She touted having “negotiated eight timely budgets with two different governors,” saying she was able to “support the programs and policies that matter most in people’s daily lives.”

Atkins was an advocate for affordable housing while serving in Sacramento. Her wife, Jennifer LeSar, also worked for two successful housing and economics companies during her tenure.

Atkins announced her candidacy in a bright pink suit before a crowd gathered at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, emphasizing her working-class roots and her feminist identity. She described growing up as a miner’s child in West Virginia in a house with no indoor plumbing, and said she first heard about California as a “magical place” her father had visited during his service in World War II. She eventually followed her sister to San Diego and began working at a feminist women’s clinic. Numerous union leaders gave speeches supporting Atkins’ candidacy, a powerful signal in a heavily Democratic state where the labor movement’s largesse is influential in statewide conflicts. “She taught us her toughness, her intelligence and her working-class upbringing,” said Frank Hawk, CEO of the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters. “And the reason she gets us is because she’s one of us.”

Atkins has nearly $2.3 million in a campaign committee for lieutenant governor she opened several years ago, according to records she filed with the California secretary of state, and will be able to use that money for her gubernatorial campaign. Major donors to the committee include construction industry unions, nurses’ and firefighters’ associations, and the California Real Estate PAC.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis got off to a flying start in the race for governor when she announced her candidacy last spring. Newsom, who is advised by the same political advisers as Kounalakis, followed a similar timeline before his 2018 bid for governor, announcing three years early.

California Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond launched his bid in September. Former state Comptroller Betty Yee has also said she plans to run, but she won’t formally launch her candidacy until after the March primary, she said Wednesday. Yee opened a campaign committee this week, she said, and sent out a fundraising email this week saying she was “officially laying the groundwork” for her campaign.

Kounalakis has raised $3.7 million on her campaign committee, and Thurmond has raised more than $665,000 since starting his campaign committee.

Attorney General

State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has said he is “seriously considering” but has not yet officially thrown his hat into the ring.

Several women, including former Hewlett-Packard chief Meg Whitman and the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, have filed for office

without success

in the past, but California has never had a female CEO before putting Atkins, Yee or Kounalakis in a position to break the glass ceiling of the governor’s mansion should any of the three emerge victorious.

“You’re talking about five candidates, who all have remarkable strengths, and who on the surface are very different from each other,” veteran Democratic strategist Darry Sragow said of the group. “But if you take a step back, this is an incredible tribute to what the political system, or at least the Democratic Party in California, has become.”

The fact that the makeup of the field, or, in Bonta’s case, potential contenders, includes three women, three people of color and a member of the LGBTQ+ community shows a leadership pool that is much more representative of the state’s population, Sragow said.

Staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.