“That’s why it’s with such a heavy heart that I’m stepping aside today as a candidate for governor,” she added.
Atkins launched her campaign in early 2024, hoping her prolific legislative career and humble roots would appeal to Democrats searching for fixes to the state’s most intractable problems, such as housing affordability. But she struggled to gain traction in a governor’s race consumed by a focus on national politics.
Born in rural Virginia to a seamstress and a coal miner, Atkins told KQED’s Political Breakdown in 2018 that her early childhood home had no bathroom — just an outhouse.
“We had no running water,” she recalled. “My mom cooked on a wood stove.”
Atkins moved to California in the 1980s and was elected to two terms on the San Diego City Council. After two years as Assembly speaker, she became the first woman and first LGBTQ person to serve as Senate president pro tem when she ascended to the post in 2018.
During her six years as leader of the Senate, Atkins wrote bills to ease housing construction, ban state travel to states with anti-LGBT policies and enshrine abortion protections in the constitution — a measure that won wide approval from California voters.
In her campaign for governor, Atkins built up a hefty financial warchest of over $4 million. Her support of pro-housing bills in the Legislature won her the early support of the state’s carpenters union and San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener.
