U.S. Government: Elected Officials

  • U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.)

    Maria Cantwell currently serves as a United States Senator for the State of Washington. As a respected leader – both in public service and in the private sector – Maria has always embraced the values she first learned growing up in a strong working-class family. With the help of Pell Grants, Maria was the first member of her family to graduate college. Later, a successful businesswoman in Washington’s hi-tech industry, she helped build a company that created hundreds of high-paying jobs from the ground up.

    Maria was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000, 2006, 2012, and again in 2018, pledging to honor the hard work, aspirations and faith of the people of Washington state. She is working to create affordable opportunities for consumers, businesses and families, to make our nation more secure today, to foster innovation for tomorrow, and to stand with parents as they educate and care for their children.

    Maria gets results. She cut taxes for the middle-class by ensuring that Washington taxpayers can deduct state and local taxes from their federal returns. She fought attempts by the Bush Administration to raise local electricity rates. When bankrupt Enron officials tried to charge Washington ratepayers for millions of dollars in undelivered electricity, Maria led the effort that successfully stopped them. Maria has protected countless jobs in Washington’s aerospace industry by cracking down on foreign companies’ unfair trade practices and has worked to create still more well-paying jobs through effective investments in new technology and valuable job training. Maria is leading efforts in the Senate to make America more energy independent. She has been a proud advocate for better educational opportunities for our children and less expensive, more accessible health care for our families. Maria continues to build new growth and strong partnerships, insisting on responsibility and making life more affordable for all of Washington ‘s families.

  • U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Seattle)

    Elected in 2016, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is now serving her fourth term in Congress representing Washington’s 7th District, which encompasses most of Seattle and its surrounding areas including Shoreline, Vashon Island, Lake Forest Park, and parts of Burien and Normandy Park. She is the first South Asian American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and one of only two dozen naturalized citizens currently serving in the United States Congress.

    Congresswoman Jayapal is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, where she serves as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. She also serves on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. She is the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which represents nearly 50% of the entire Democratic caucus; the Immigration Task Force for the Congressional Asian Pacific Asian Caucus; and a Vice Chair of the Congressional LGBTQ Equality Caucus where she is the co-chair of the Transgender Equality Task Force.

    In Congress, Representative Jayapal has been a leader on immigration, including fighting the Trump Administration’s inhumane policies of separating children from their parents and crafting legislation to create a fair and humane immigration system. She has also championed legislation to address income inequality, such as the $15 minimum wage and expanded collective bargaining rights for workers. She has worked extensively on health care issues as the lead sponsor of the Medicare for All bill in the House, and she is the author of the College for All Act, which would ensure every American has access to higher education. She has authored other landmark pieces of progressive legislation including the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Ad, Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, the Housing is a Human Right Act, and the National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. She has also helped to introduce the THRIVE Act and other legislation to transition our economy to 100% clean energy and address the crisis of climate justice.

    Prior to serving in elected office, Congresswoman Jayapal spent twenty years working internationally and domestically in global public health and development and as an award-winning national advocate for women’s, immigrant, civil, and human rights. She spent almost a decade working on global health and development for the international nonprofit organization, Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), and spent 12 years as the founder and Executive Director of OneAmerica, the largest immigrant advocacy organization in Washington State and one of the largest in the country.

    Representative Jayapal was born in India, grew up in India, Indonesia and Singapore, and came to the United States by herself at the age of 16 to attend college at Georgetown University. She later received her MBA from Northwestern University, worked in a number of industries in both the public and private sectors, and published her first book in 2000, Pilgrimage to India: A Woman Revisits Her Homeland. She has since published a second book, Use the Power You Have: A Brown Woman’s Guide to Politics and Political Change.

    She is married to Steve Williamson, a long-time labor leader and strategist, and is the proud mother of a transgender daughter named Kashika, step-son named Michael, and 65-pound labradoodle, Otis.