# Alex Padilla **Alex Padilla** (b. March 22, 1973, Los Angeles) is the senior Democratic senator from California and the Senate Democrats' lead on federal election administration. He was California's **Secretary of State**, its chief election officer, from 2015 to 2021. Since January 2025 he has been **ranking member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration**, which has jurisdiction over federal elections. That pairing of a former state election chief and the minority's election-administration post puts him in both of the vault's 2026 files: election machinery and immigration enforcement. ## Career - **Background.** The son of Mexican immigrants, he earned an MIT mechanical engineering degree in 1994. - **Local office.** Los Angeles City Council (1999–2006), including five years as council president. - **State office.** California State Senate (2006–2014), then Secretary of State (January 2015 to January 2021), running elections in the country's largest state through 2020. - **The Senate.** Governor [[Gavin Newsom]] appointed him in January 2021 to the seat [[Kamala Harris]] left to become vice president. He was **California's first Latino senator**. He won both the special and the full-term elections in 2022, and his term runs to **January 2029**. - **Governor.** On **Nov 4, 2025**, he announced he would **not** run for governor in 2026. ## The handcuffing On **June 12, 2025**, during the Los Angeles immigration-raid protests and the Guard federalization (see [[Newsom v. Trump]]), Padilla tried to ask a question at a press conference held by Homeland Security Secretary [[Kristi Noem]] at the Wilshire Federal Building. Security agents forced him out of the room, pushed him to the ground and **handcuffed** him. A sitting U.S. senator was restrained by federal agents for asking a cabinet secretary a question. The scene became one of the defining images of the second-term enforcement campaign. ## The 2026 election-machinery file - **Election security money (Sept 2, 2026).** With House Administration ranking member [[Joseph Morelle]], he wrote to DHS Secretary [[Markwayne Mullin]] and CISA. They demanded the release of more than **$39.6 million** for the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) that Congress had directed in the FY2026 DHS appropriations report, with a reply due by Sept 9. See [[State Election Administration Tree]]. - **The Unlawful Voter Initiative (Sept 13–14, 2026).** With [[Chuck Schumer]], he sent Mullin and USCIS director [[Joseph Edlow]] a DHS whistleblower's account, and made it public on Sept 14. It describes USCIS staff posing as voters on state registration-lookup sites under a quota of 40 people a day, and the senators demanded the program be halted. See [[Unlawful Voter Initiative]]. - **The citizenship-verification fights.** As Rules ranking member he leads the minority against the [[SAVE Act]] and its successors, and against the executive orders on elections ([[Executive Order 14399]]). ## See Also - [[Unlawful Voter Initiative]]: the 2026 disclosure he and Schumer made public - [[Chuck Schumer]] · [[Markwayne Mullin]] · [[Joseph Edlow]] · [[Kristi Noem]] · [[Joseph Morelle]] - [[Mail-in Voting]] · [[Voter Suppression]] · [[SAVE Act]] · [[Executive Order 14399]] - [[State Election Administration Tree]]: the structure his committee oversees