The congresswoman from the 5th District is Doris Matsui, who won a special election in March 2005 to replace her late husband, Democrat Robert Matsui. She was born in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona and was a well-known political figure during her husband’s career in Congress. She grew up in Dinuba in Fresno County and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. In Sacramento, she chaired the board of the local public television station and participated in many civic organizations. After working on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, she joined his transition team and then served as deputy director of public liaison, where she worked on economic and budget issues. When she left the White House in 1998, she became a senior adviser at a Washington law firm. Robert Matsui died of complications from a rare blood disorder in January 2005, after serving 13 terms. He was a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and a confidant to then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Read More

The congresswoman from the 5th District is Doris Matsui, who won a special election in March 2005 to replace her late husband, Democrat Robert Matsui. She was born in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona and was a well-known political figure during her husband’s career in Congress. She grew up in Dinuba in Fresno County and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. In Sacramento, she chaired the board of the local public television station and participated in many civic organizations. After working on Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign, she joined his transition team and then served as deputy director of public liaison, where she worked on economic and budget issues. When she left the White House in 1998, she became a senior adviser at a Washington law firm. Robert Matsui died of complications from a rare blood disorder in January 2005, after serving 13 terms. He was a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and a confidant to then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

A few days after the Washington and Sacramento memorial services for her husband, Doris Matsui announced that she would run in the special election. With her strong support from Pelosi, other prominent Sacramento Democrats decided not to run. None of Matsui’s 10 opponents in the nonpartisan contest had significant political experience or name recognition. Matsui emphasized her support for local water projects and her opposition to President George W. Bush’s proposal for personal retirement accounts in Social Security. She also opposed the war in Iraq. Her investment in a partnership with a longtime friend who was a Sacramento land developer sparked a brief flurry of criticism, but she emphasized that her husband had nothing to do with the deal while he was in office, and that there was no conflict of interest. Some called the contest a “coronation,” but the lack of competition surely reflected the respect the Matsuis had won over the years. She won the all-party primary with 68% of the vote to 9% for the runner-up.

In the House, she has a reliably liberal voting record. From her seat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, she tended to the many highway and water-resource needs of her district. In 2009, she moved to the Energy and Commerce Committee, where she became involved in telecommunications and technology issues. She introduced legislation in 2010 to create a $15 million fund to bolster the U.S. clean-tech manufacturing industry, which lags behind countries such as China and Germany. The bill was included as part of House Democrats’ “Make It in America” campaign to showcase the party’s concern for lost manufacturing jobs. And she sponsored another bill to extend two Federal Communications Commission programs that subsidize telephone service to include broadband.

Matsui also previously served on the Rules Committee, where she helped carry out the leadership’s wishes in shaping legislation for floor debate when her party was in the majority. The leadership granted her a rare waiver to its policy of limiting members to service on only one major committee. She earned that goodwill by taking on leadership assignments and fighting for party priorities such as federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and reduced prescription drug prices. She cited her family’s experience in internment camps to warn of potential civil liberties abuses in the USA PATRIOT Act and with detainees at Guantanamo. Matsui has been re-elected easily. In 2008, she chaired the Asian-American voter outreach campaign for Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.