Biography
Debra Bowen is running for Congress to put her experience as a business owner, state lawmaker, and nationally recognized leader to work for the people of the 36th Congressional District.
Now in her second term as California’s 30th Secretary of State, Debra Bowen has worked tirelessly for absolute integrity in our elections and to break down barriers that can keep citizens from knowing what their government is doing.
After taking office in 2007, Debra kept her campaign promise to conduct a groundbreaking top-to-bottom review of California’s voting systems. She brought in teams of experts with extensive private sector experience in computer system security and expertise in voting systems, bringing a rigorous, science-based approach to festering questions about voting systems. When the review Bowen ordered, which included "red team" penetration testing, revealed significant flaws in every voting system examined, Debra shored up election security through unprecedented reforms that were soon modeled by states throughout the country.
For this trailblazing leadership in strengthening our democracy, Debra received the nationally acclaimed John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, one of the highest global honors for public servants who choose principles over partisanship.
Why does Debra want to represent the people of the 36th Congressional District in Washington, D.C.? To create good jobs locally and nationally, to make education a national priority, to continue her successful work that has made the activities of our government more transparent, to help Californians protect their privacy, and to preserve our coastline as an economic and natural resource.
As Secretary of State, Debra prioritized computer programming changes that are already letting more business filings be completed on line. This helps businesses create jobs more quickly, saves money, and allows SOS employees to help small businesses and non-profits instead of spending their days typing data from a paper form into a computer.
When she is elected to represent the people of the 36th Congressional District, Debra will continue to bring a pragmatic, results-oriented approach to creating jobs and making government more efficient.
Prior to being elected Secretary of State, Debra served six years in the State Assembly (1992-1998) and eight years in the State Senate (1998-2006). A longtime privacy rights and government transparency advocate, Debra authored the first-in-the-world law that put legislative information online in 1993, giving everyone immediate online access to information about state lawmakers’ bills, voting records, and more. In 1995, Debra was the first California legislator to voluntarily put her campaign finance reports online. She fought the practice of giving a copyright on state regulations to a private business, and worked on a bipartisan basis to prevent governments from making money reproducing public records that belong to all the people.
Debra was born in Rockford, Illinois, and graduated from Michigan State University. After earning her law degree at the University of Virginia, she practiced corporate, tax and employment law at Winston & Strawn in Chicago and in Washington, D.C.; at the Los Angeles office of Hughes, Hubbard & Reed; and as a sole practitioner in Los Angeles. After volunteering her legal services as a member of the Heal the Bay Legal Committee, Debra expanded her practice to environmental and land use issues.
Debra is married to Mark Nechodom, a Senior Advisor for Environmental Markets at the US Department of Agriculture.