SACRAMENTO – Earlier today, Senator Christopher Cabaldon was sworn into the California State Senate during the first official day of the 2025-26 Regular Session.
Senate President pro Tempore Mike McGuire led the convening session that officially began the upcoming two-year legislative session. Senator Cabaldon was sworn into office by the Honorable Patricia Guerrero, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. Following the Oath of Office Program, Senator Cabaldon’s invitees, Pro Tem McGuire, current State Senators, other dignitaries, and constituents from the Senator’s district and across California congratulated the incoming State Senators on the Senate Floor and from the Senate Gallery.
Representing nearly one million Californians, Senator Cabaldon will be introducing legislation in the coming weeks important to Senate District 03 and the state of California.
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Christopher Cabaldon was elected to the California State Senate in 2024, representing the people of Wine Country, the Delta, the North Bay, and the Sacramento Valley who make their home in the 3,000 square miles of the Third Senate District.
Before his election to the Senate, he served two decades as Mayor of West Sacramento in Yolo County. The former state highway between Capitol Mall and Highway 50/Business 80 was renamed as the Christopher Cabaldon Parkway in honor of the comprehensive and profound community transformation he shepherded during his long tenure. West Sacramento won the national designation as America’s Most Livable Small City. It was the first city in the nation to implement universal preschool, college savings accounts for all kindergarteners, paid internships for high school students in college-and-career pathways, free community college and automatic college admission letters to every local graduating senior. One of the state’s first ProHousing cities and top producers of affordable housing, West Sacramento under Cabaldon’s leadership led the nation on innovations in personal mobility and next-gen transit, urban farms, flood protection, and urban revitalization.
An appointed education and environment official for five governors of both political parties, Senator Cabaldon represented California on the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education prior to his election to the Senate. He served previously as vice chancellor of the California Community Colleges and director of the higher education committee for the State Assembly. He was national president for Asian and Pacific Americans in Higher Education, and president of the Linked Learning Alliance. President Obama appointed him to the national board, led by then-Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden, to launch and advance America’s College Promise by making community college free in hundreds of cities and states, just as he had done in West Sacramento.
Cabaldon chaired the Jobs, Education & the Workforce Committee for America’s mayors, and represented the United States in the Global Parliament of Mayors. He led the work of the nation’s mayors on youth employment, college and career pathways, early learning, digital badging, and rebooting workforce development to meet the disruptive impact of trade and technology. He was also the inaugural chair of the national LGBTQ Mayors Alliance, and former chair of both the Asian/Pacific and LGBT caucuses of the League of California Cities.
As chair of the Sacramento region’s metropolitan planning organization and its transportation committee, his pioneering work on integrating transportation, land use, environmental justice, housing, air quality, and climate change won numerous national awards, and became the basis for some of California’s most sweeping transportation and climate reforms of the past two decades. He served on the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board and the state Delta Protection Commission.
Senator Cabaldon represented California on the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education prior to his election to the Senate.
Senator Cabaldon is the first Filipino American ever to serve in the California Senate, and the first LGBTQ Senator elected north of San Francisco and Stockton. As a child, he was a pioneering student at the first magnet school in California created to reverse racial segregation in the school district. As an adult, his coming out journey was the subject of an episode of the LOGO network’s internationally-syndicated Coming Out Stories series.
Christopher is a proud Cal Bear and Hornet. He graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in environmental economics after serving as student body vice president. He later earned a master’s degree from Sacramento State and was appointed in 2019 to a tenured faculty post in the same department as the Hazel Cramer Endowed Chair and Professor of Public Policy and Administration, teaching courses in design thinking and public sector prototyping, state and local government, and urban economics.
