Eleni Kounalakis became California's first woman Lieutenant Governor in 2018. Come 2026, she'll be seeking to become the state's first woman governor.
's lieutenant governor, succeeding the man she is seeking to succeed as governor. She was re-elected in November.
Born March 3, 1966, in Sacramento, Kounalakis worked for her family's Sacramento-based housing development firm, AKT Development, for 18 years, building master-planned communities. She was United States ambassador to Hungary from 2010-13 and a virtual fellow with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 2014-17, specializing in international trade and immigration.
Three women have been major party nominees for governor of California — Democrats Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and Kathleen Brown in 1994 and Republican Meg Whitman in 2010 — but all lost.
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