Profile
Senator Ben Allen represents the 24th District, covering the Westside, Hollywood, South Bay, and Santa Monica Mountains communities of LA County. An attorney and former Santa Monica Malibu USD board member, Senator Allen has authored more than 60 laws in the areas of economic development, educational equity, health, environmental protection, climate change, green transit, government transparency, and electoral reform. He authored SB 54, groundbreaking legislation to address plastic pollution, which Governor Newsom signed into law to international acclaim.
As Chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, Senator Allen worked with his colleagues to pass a powerful climate package requiring the state to become carbon-neutral by 2045 and produce 90% of its electricity from clean sources by 2035, among other measures. A member of the Ocean Protection Council and Coastal Conservancy, he has led a successful effort to phase out a dangerous carcinogen in firefighting foam, crafted a compromise to phase out destructive trawling gear, and brokered a major compromise that lessened the environmental impact of off-highway vehicle use at state facilities. Among his efforts to reform California campaign finance and elections laws, Senator Allen authored the landmark Voter's Choice Act of 2016 to implement more flexibility in how and where to vote, creating the vote center model used in the 2020 elections, which resulted in significantly increased voter turnout. He has also been a leader in campaign transparency, passing the Disclose Act and Petition Disclose Act, and other transparency measures that have dramatically improved the disclosure of donors to political causes for the public. He is a son of teachers and holds degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and UC Berkeley. He and his wife Melanie have one young son and a daughter on the way.
Sessions