Hilda Solis
Hilda Lucia Solis is an American politician and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 1st district and is the Chair of Los Angeles County. Solis previously served as the 25th United States Secretary of Labor from 2009 to 2013, as part of the administration of President Barack Obama. She is a member of the Democratic Party and served in the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2009, representing the 31st and 32nd congressional districts of California that include East Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley.
Solis was raised in La Puente, California, by immigrant farmers from Nicaragua and Mexico. She earned degrees from the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and the University of Southern California and worked for two federal agencies in Washington, D.C. Returning to her native state, she was elected to the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees in 1985, the California State Assembly in 1992, and the California State Senate in 1994. She was the first Hispanic woman to serve in the State Senate, and was reelected there in 1998. Solis sought to pass environmental justice legislation. She was the first female recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2000.
Solis defeated a long-time Democratic incumbent as part of getting elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, where she focused mainly on labor causes and environmental work. She was reelected easily to four subsequent terms. In December 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Solis as the next Secretary of Labor. She took office after being confirmed by the United States Senate in February 2009, becoming the first Latina to lead one of the United States federal executive departments. There she focused on workplace safety issues and on strengthening compliance with wage and hour laws. In January 2013, Solis stepped down from her post as Labor Secretary.
Returning to the area of her upbringing, in April 2014, Solis formally announced a campaign for a seat on the non-partisan Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Solis won the seat outright in a June 3 election and was sworn in on December 1. As Supervisor, Solis successfully lobbied the state to allocate funds for the Exide battery plant cleanup. One of her areas of responsibility was Downtown Los Angeles, where her main priority was dealing with gentrification and the lack of affordable housing. She was unopposed for re-election as Supervisor, which took place in June 2018. She served one-year terms as county chair from 2015 to 2016 and again from 2020 to 2021.
Early life and education
Solis was born in Los Angeles, California, as the daughter of immigrant parents who had met in citizenship class and married in 1953: Juana Sequeira and Raúl Solís. Her father was a Teamsters shop steward in Mexico and, after coming to the United States, worked at the Quemetco battery recycling plant in the City of Industry in the San Gabriel Valley. There he again organized for the Teamsters, to gain better health care benefits for workers, but also contracted lead poisoning. Her mother worked for over 20 years on the assembly line of Mattel once her children were all of school age, belonged to the United Rubber Workers, and was outspoken about working conditions. She stressed the importance of education and was a devout Roman Catholic. Her Catholic faith, she said, "is a part of my life. My faith is what motivates me."Hilda Solis is the third oldest of seven siblings and grew up in a tract home in La Puente, California. She had to help raise her youngest siblings, and later said of her childhood: "It wasn't what you would call the all-American life for a young girl growing up. We had to mature very quickly." She graduated from La Puente High School, where she saw a lack of support for those wishing to continue their education, including a guidance counselor who told her mother that "Your daughter is not college material. Maybe she should follow the career of her older sister and become a secretary." However, another counselor did encourage her to attend college, and even went to her house to help her fill out an application. She took her younger sisters to the library to get them to follow her lead.
She was the first of her family to go to college, being accepted into the Educational Opportunity Program at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and paying for it with the help of government grants and part-time jobs. She graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. She then earned a Master of Public Administration degree at the University of Southern California in 1981.
Early career
Solis served near the end of the Carter Administration in the White House Office of Hispanic Affairs, where she was editor-in-chief of a newsletter during a 1980–1981 Washington semester internship as part of her master's program. At the start of the Reagan Administration in 1981, she became a management analyst at the civil rights division of the Office of Management and Budget, but her dislike for Ronald Reagan's policies motivated her to leave later that year.In Washington, she met Sam H. Sayyad, whom she subsequently married. He owns an automobile repair center in Irwindale, California. The couple lives in a modest house in El Monte, California, not far from where she grew up.
Returning to California, Solis became director of the California Student Opportunity and Access Program in 1982, to help disadvantaged youth gain necessary preparation for college. In particular, she worked with the Whittier Union High School District. Friends urged her to try for elective office, and so in 1985, she ran for the board of trustees of the Rio Hondo Community College District. She campaigned hard and overtook an incumbent and one other better established candidate to become the top placer. She was reelected in 1989. During her time on the board, she worked towards improved vocational job training at the college and sought to increase the number of tenured faculty positions held by minorities and women. She joined several California chambers of commerce, women's organizations, and Latino organizations. She gained added political visibility in 1991 when she was named to the Los Angeles County Commission on Insurance by Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, a political mentor. Solis also served as chief of staff for State Senator Art Torres.
California State Legislature
Solis had the opportunity to run for the California State Assembly when, after California's 1991 redistricting, the incumbent Dave Elder in Solis's 57th State Assembly district was shifted into another district, while her new representative retired. In the June 1992 Democratic primary to fill the open seat, Solis's opponents had the endorsement of powerful State Assemblyman Richard Polanco and the former incumbent. Solis had the support of Molina and U.S. Representative Barbara Boxer, in an effort that focused on door-to-door campaigning and featured Solis's mother making burritos for campaign volunteers. Solis came out on top of a three-way Democratic race, receiving 49 percent of the vote and besting her nearest competitor, future Assemblyman Ed Chavez, who received 31 percent. In the general election, Solis garnered 61 percent of the vote against Republican Gary Woods's 34 percent, and gained election to the Assembly. She was one of seven Latinos who won election to the Assembly in the wake of the redistricting and became collectively known as Los Siete. Solis was among the most liberal of this ideologically diverse group.In her one term in the State Assembly, Solis was prominent in the debate on illegal immigration to the United States, backing a bill to allow immigrants in the United States illegally to attend California colleges as long as they were residing in the state. She backed labor unions and opposed the tobacco industry in supporting a bill that banned smoking in all workplaces. She served on committees dealing with education, labor, and environmental issues, including a new committee that dealt with groundwater contamination and landfill leakage. She was not known as a strong orator.
The Democratic incumbent in Solis's 24th State Senate district, Art Torres, gave up his office when he received the 1994 Democratic nomination for the statewide office of California Insurance Commissioner. Solis ran for the seat, won the Democratic primary with 63 percent of the vote against two opponents, and then won the 1994 general election with 63 percent of the vote against Republican Dave Boyer's 33 percent. She became the first Hispanic woman to ever serve in the State Senate and the first woman ever to represent the San Gabriel Valley; she was also the Senate's youngest member at that time. She was reelected in 1998 with 74 percent of the vote.
In the State Senate, Solis authored 17 bills to prevent domestic violence and championed labor, education, and health care issues. She described herself as "a big believer that government, if done right, can do a lot to improve the quality of people's lives". In 1995 she sponsored a bill to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.75; it was strongly opposed by business organizations and the restaurant industry. When Governor Pete Wilson vetoed it, she organized a successful drive to make the issue into a ballot initiative the next year, using $50,000 of her own campaign funds and rallying union support. The initiative's passing garnered her a statewide reputation and other states followed with similar initiatives. She chaired the labor committee and established herself as loyal to labor interests, but made a point of establishing working relationships with Republicans on the committee. Solis held high-profile hearings on labor law enforcement following a summer 1995 sweatshop raid in El Monte that discovered more than 70 Thai workers existing in slave-like conditions. She called garment manufacturers to explain themselves and pushed for tougher enforcement of anti-sweatshop laws. Republican state senator Ray Haynes later said that Solis was "a committed liberal in the pockets of labor", but Republican State Senate Leader Rob Hurtt said of her, "We obviously didn't see eye to eye. But she was respectful. I'll give her credit; she was a very hard worker and she knew her stuff."
Solis was an environmental activist in the State Senate, due to concerns that stemmed from a childhood spent within smelling distance of the Puente Hills Landfill and making frequent visits to the San Gabriel Mountains. In 1997, she worked to pass environmental justice legislation with a law to protect low-income and minority communities from newly located landfills, pollution sources, and other environmental hazards in neighborhoods that already had such sites. She got the bill, SB 1113, approved over the strong opposition of various business interests, water contractors, and some state government agencies, but Wilson vetoed it. She returned in 1999 with a compromise measure, which was signed by Governor Gray Davis. Calling for "the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws", it represented the first legislation of its kind in the nation and is considered a landmark.
Solis faced controversy with her 1999 legislation, SB 63, that lowered the carpool restrictions on the El Monte Busway from three or more occupants to two or more. When this took effect in January 2000, it quickly resulted in greatly increased volume on the busway and protests from bus riders and prior carpoolers. Solis at first defended the change, but it continued to have a detrimental effect on the busway and did not improve flow in the regular traffic lanes. By May, she was co-sponsoring legislation to rescind the change and restore the higher occupancy requirement, which passed and took effect in July 2000.
Due to her work in overcoming obstacles for environmental justice, in 2000 Solis was given the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and was praised as "a politician who hasn't shied away from challenging the old boy network both within and without the Latino community". She was the first woman to win the award, and gained appearances in George and People magazines and on the Today show. Art Torres, who had become California Democratic Party chair, said of Solis, "She's going to be a national star".