Barbara Lee facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Barbara Lee
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California
Incumbent
Assumed office April 21, 1998
Preceded by	Ron Dellums
Constituency	9th district (1998–2013) 13th district (2013–2023) 12th district (2023–present)
Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus
In office January 3, 2009 – January 3, 2011
Preceded by	Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick
Succeeded by	Emanuel Cleaver
Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
In office January 3, 2005 – January 3, 2009 Serving with Lynn Woolsey
Preceded by	Peter DeFazio (as chair)
Succeeded by	Raúl Grijalva
Member of the California State Senate from the 9th district
In office December 2, 1996 – April 17, 1998
Preceded by	Nicholas Petris
Succeeded by	Don Perata
Member of the California State Assembly
In office December 3, 1990 – November 30, 1996
Preceded by	Elihu Harris
Succeeded by	Don Perata
Constituency	13th district (1990–1992) 16th district (1992–1996)
Personal details
Born	Barbara Jean Tutt (1946-07-16) July 16, 1946 (age 78) El Paso, Texas, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouses	Carl Lee ​ ​ (m. 1964; div. 1966)​ Clyde Oden ​ (m. 2019)​
Children	2
Education	Mills College (BA) University of California, Berkeley (MSW)
Website

Barbara Jean Lee (née Tutt; born July 16, 1946) is an American politician and social worker who has served as a U.S. representative from California since 1998. A member of the Democratic Party, Lee represents California's 12th congressional district (numbered as the 9th district from 1998 to 2013 and as the 13th district from 2013 to 2023), which is based in Oakland and covers most of the northern part of Alameda County. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, it is one of the nation's most Democratic districts, with a rating of D+40.

Born and raised in Texas, Lee holds degrees from Mills College and the University of California, Berkeley. She started her career by working on the presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, and she later was involved with the Black Panther Party. After working as chief of staff for U.S. Representative Ron Dellums, Lee served in the California State Assembly from 1990 to 1996 and in the California State Senate from 1996 to 1998.

Lee was elected to the House of Representatives in a 1998 special election to succeed Dellums. A noted progressive, she chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus from 2005 to 2009 and the Congressional Black Caucus from 2009 to 2011. ..... She has played a major role in the antiwar movement, notably in her vocal criticism of the Iraq War and for being the only member of Congress to vote against the authorization of use of force following the September 11 attacks.

Lee is a candidate for the United States Senate in the 2024 election to succeed late senator Dianne Feinstein.

Early life and education

Lee was born Barbara Jean Tutt in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of Mildred Adaire (née Parish) and Garvin Alexander Tutt, a lieutenant colonel. Lee is African-American, and according to a DNA analysis, she descends primarily from the people of Guinea-Bissau and Sierra Leone. She was raised Catholic.

Lee moved from Texas to California in 1960 with her military family parents, and attended San Fernando High School in the Pacoima neighborhood of Los Angeles. A divorcee before she turned 20, Lee was a young single mother of two receiving public assistance when she began attending Mills College. She received an MSW from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975.

Early political career

As president of the Mills College Black Student Union, Lee invited Representative Shirley Chisholm to speak on campus and went on to work on Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign, serving as her delegate at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. Also as a student, she was a volunteer at the Oakland chapter of the Black Panther Party's Community Learning Center and worked on Panther co-founder Bobby Seale's 1973 Oakland mayoral campaign.

California State Legislature

Lee was elected to the California State Assembly in 1990 to succeed Elihu Harris, who retired to successfully run for mayor of Oakland. She served three terms in the Assembly, and she was elected to the California State Senate in 1996. She resigned her seat in the State Senate after winning a special election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998.

Lee was the first African-American woman to represent Northern California in the California State Legislature. During her time in the Legislature, she authored 67 bills that were signed into law by then-Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican; among those bills were the California Schools Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the California Violence Against Women Act. Lee also worked to defeat California's three-strikes law and was an early champion of LGBTQ+ rights.

Lee was a member of the California Commission on the Status of Women and founded the California Commission on the Status of African American Males.

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

Lee speaking on the House floor on the December 19, 1999 debate that preceded the vote on impeaching President Bill Clinton

After Dellums resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, Lee successfully ran in the special election to succeed him, winning 66% of the vote. She was elected to a full term later that year, winning 83% of the vote. She has since been re-elected to the House of Representatives 12 more times.

In lieu of running for a 14th term, Lee is running to succeed Dianne Feinstein in the United States Senate in 2024.

Tenure

Lee originally represented California's 9th congressional district, from which she served until 2013. She later represented the 13th district from 2013 to 2023, and she has represented the 12th district since 2023. Her district is located in Alameda County and includes the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville, Alameda, Albany, Piedmont, San Leandro, and most of San Lorenzo. The Cook Partisan Voting Index gives her district a rating of D+40, making it one of the most Democratic districts in the nation.

Lee's voting record as a member of Congress was ranked by the National Journal in 2007, based on roll-call votes on economic, social and foreign policy issues in 2006. Lee scored an overall 84.3%, meaning that she voted with a more liberal stance than 84.3% of the House. National Journal scored Lee as voting 82% liberal on economic issues, 92% liberal on social issues, and 65% liberal on foreign policy. The 92% rating on social issues came from Lee being grouped with 35 other House legislators who all tied for the highest, most liberal ranking. Lee received a 97% progressive rating from "The Progressive Punch" and a 4% conservative rating from the American Conservative Union. In 2016, GovTrack's 2015 Report Card on members in Congress ranked Lee the 3rd most progressive member of the House.

Lee at John Lewis's funeral in Atlanta on July 30, 2020

Lee endorsed Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. In February 2019, she endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.

As of October 2021, Lee had voted in line with President Joe Biden's stated position 100% of the time.

AUMF opposition

Lee gained national attention in 2001 as the only member of Congress to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), stating that she voted no not because she opposed military action but because she believed the AUMF, as written, granted the president overly broad powers to wage war at a time when the facts regarding the situation were not yet clear. She "warned her colleagues to be 'careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target'". Her vote made national news and a large and extremely polarized response, with the volume of calls gridlocking the switchboard of her Capitol Hill office. Although it appears to have reflected the beliefs of the majority of her constituents, the majority of responses from elsewhere in the nation were angry and hostile, some calling her "communist" and a "traitor". Many of the responses included death threats against her or her family to the point that the Capitol Police provided round-the-clock plainclothes bodyguards. Lee was also criticized by politicians and in editorial pages of conservative-leaning newspapers, such as John Fund's column in The Wall Street Journal. In 2002, she received the Seán MacBride Peace Prize from the International Peace Bureau for her vote.

In her speech, she quoted Nathan D. Baxter, dean of the Washington National Cathedral: "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

On June 29, 2017, the House Appropriations Committee approved Lee's amendment to repeal the 2001 AUMF that was the foundation of the United States' post-September 11 military actions. The amendment, if passed, would have required that the AUMF be scrapped within 240 days. In June 2021, Lee sponsored a bipartisan bill in the House to repeal the AUMF, which passed 268–161. The bill was never put to a vote in the Senate.

Foreign policy

Although Lee is considered a progressive Democrat, she has occasionally split with members of her party throughout her career, especially on foreign policy. She voted to limit military operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, against authorizing air strikes, and for a Republican-backed plan to completely withdraw U.S. troops from the operation, all in 1999. Lee voted against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. She was one of only 46 Democrats to vote for the Online Freedom of Speech Act of 2005. Lee was one of only 13 Democrats to vote against an emergency supplemental appropriations bill in 2007 which, among other things, funded the Iraq War but required withdrawal of U.S. forces to begin by October 1, but in favor of overriding President Bush's veto of the measure on May 2. In November 2009, Lee was one of 36 representatives to vote against House Resolution 867, which condemned the UN's Goldstone Report. She voted to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. Lee also voted in favor of similar resolutions involving troop withdrawal from Pakistan and, most recently, Libya. She joined her Republican colleagues, one of 70 Democrats to do so, in voting against a resolution to authorize limited use of force in Libya. Lee was also one of only 36 Democrats to vote to limit funds appropriated for military operations in Libya.

In an August 2017 interview, Lee said of President Donald Trump's comments on North Korea, "His saber-rattling is putting the world at risk. The United States should be the grown-up in the room", and that his rhetoric reminded her of news about the Cuban Missile Crisis during her mid-teens, adding, "the words of war weren't as profound and dangerous and scary [then] as they are now."

In September 2018, Lee was one of 11 House Democrats to sign a statement announcing their intent "to introduce a new, privileged resolution in September invoking the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to withdraw U.S. Armed Forces from engaging in the Saudi-led coalition's conflict with the Houthis should additional escalations continue and progress fail to be made towards a peace agreement."

In April 2019, after the House passed the resolution withdrawing American support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, Lee was one of nine lawmakers to sign a letter to Trump requesting a meeting with him and urging him to sign "Senate Joint Resolution 7, which invokes the War Powers Act of 1973 to end unauthorized US military participation in the Saudi-led coalition's armed conflict against Yemen's Houthi forces, initiated in 2015 by the Obama administration." They asserted the "Saudi-led coalition's imposition of an air-land-and-sea blockade as part of its war against Yemen's Houthis has continued to prevent the unimpeded distribution of these vital commodities, contributing to the suffering and death of vast numbers of civilians throughout the country" and that Trump's approval of the resolution would send a "powerful signal to the Saudi-led coalition to bring the four-year-old war to a close".

In July 2019, Lee voted against a House resolution condemning the Global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel. The resolution passed 398–17.

In October 2020, Lee co-signed a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemning Azerbaijan's offensive operations against the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In April 2021, Lee supported President Joe Biden's plan to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

In 2023, Lee was among 56 Democrats to vote in favor of H.Con.Res. 21 which directed President Joe Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days.

Lee has supported U.S. involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and has supported all bills for aid to Ukraine with a rationale to "preserve democracy" and "make sure that the United States is on the right side of history and provides the resources, the economic resources, the humanitarian resources, so that Ukrainian people can live in peace and in security." On July 6, 2023, President Joe Biden authorized the provision of cluster munitions to Ukraine in support of a Ukrainian counter-offensive against Russian forces in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine. Lee opposed the Biden administration's decision to supply cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Gun control

Lee is a strong advocate for legislation restricting the availability of guns. She participated in the 2016 sit-in against gun violence in the House of Representatives. Democratic members of Congress adopted the slogan "No Bill, No Break" in an attempt to push the introduction of legislation increasing restrictions on guns.

Lee meets with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the STS-129 Space Shuttle crew in 2010

Environment

Lee introduced the Women and Climate Change Act in February 2018. The bill aims to create a Federal Interagency Working Group on Women and Climate Change. Lee said of the bill, "Climate change is already impacting communities around the world with a disproportionate effect on the world's poorest residents. Women make up the majority of the world's poor and are especially vulnerable to abrupt changes in the environment. As leaders in their families, women are called upon to find food and clean water, secure safe housing, and care for loved ones. As climate change worsens, provoking historic droughts, rising sea levels and violent storms, women and girls will bear the brunt of this global crisis".

Education

Lee is the author of the Shirley A. Chisholm United States−Caribbean Educational Exchange Act, which would enhance U.S. foreign relations with CARICOM nations. This act directs the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to develop a comprehensive program that extends and expands existing primary and secondary school initiatives in the Caribbean to provide teacher training methods and increased community involvement in school activities. The bill is named for Shirley Chisholm, who helped inspire Lee to become involved in politics when Chisholm ran for the Democratic nomination for president; Lee was the Chisholm campaign's Northern California chair.

Black Panthers

In 1968, Lee began volunteering at the Black Panther Party's Community Learning Center in Oakland. She also worked on Bobby Seale's 1973 campaign for mayor of Oakland.

Lee disagreed with the National Park Service removing funding for a Black Panther Legacy Project in 2017. She released a statement saying, "It is outrageous that the National Park Service has stripped resources from the Black Panther Party Research, Interpretation & Memory Project. The Black Panther Party was an integral part of the civil rights movement and the public has a right to know their history. I call upon the National Park Service and the Department of [the] Interior to provide a full explanation as to why these critical federal resources have been taken away".

Presidential election objections

In 2001, Lee and other House members objected to counting Florida's electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election after a contentious recount. Because no senator joined their objection, it was dismissed by Vice President Al Gore, who lost the election to George W. Bush.

In 2005, Lee was one of 31 House Democrats who voted not to accept Ohio's electoral votes in the 2004 presidential election. Bush won Ohio by 118,457 votes.

After the 2016 presidential election, Lee objected to Michigan's and West Virginia's electoral votes. Because no senator joined her objections, they were dismissed. Donald Trump won Michigan by slightly over 10,000 votes and West Virginia by over 300,000 votes.

Lee attends a bill signing ceremony in 2009

Defense budget

Lee called for a 10% cut to the military budget of the United States. She backed an amendment to reduce the size of the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, but a majority of Democrats and Republicans rejected it.

Housing

Lee has made affordable housing a top priority, particularly in the East Bay. She has supported and backed legislation meant to expand home ownership opportunities, improve public housing quality, and assist the homeless.

Health care

..... She supports Medicare for All.

Economy

On September 29, 2008, Lee was one of 95 Democrats to vote against the defeated Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. She voted for a modified version on October 3.

Lee was among the 46 Democrats who voted against final passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 in the House.

Death penalty

In 2002, Lee's opposition to the death penalty was recognized by Death Penalty Focus, which gave her the Mario Cuomo Act of Courage Award.

Louis Farrakhan

In March 2018, Lee said, "I unequivocally condemn Minister Farrakhan's anti-Semitic and hateful comments."

Committee assignments

For the 118th Congress:

• Committee on Appropriations
  • Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies
  • Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies
  • Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (Ranking Member)
• Committee on the Budget

Caucus memberships and leadership

• House Democratic Steering Committee (co-chair)
• Medicare for All Caucus
• Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity (chair)
• Congressional Caucus on HIV/AIDS (co-chair)
• Congressional Out of Poverty Caucus (co-chair)
• Congressional Progressive Caucus (former co-chair and former whip)
• Congressional Black Caucus (former chair, 2008–2010)
• Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus
  • Health Care Task Force
• Congressional Caucus on Global Road Safety
• United States Congressional International Conservation Caucus
• Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus (vice chair and founding member)
• Congressional Social Work Caucus (chair)
• Congressional Arts Caucus
• Congressional HIV/AIDS Caucus (co-founder and co-chair)
• Afterschool Caucuses

On March 15, 2013, Lee announced the official relaunch of the Congressional Social Work Caucus to the 113th Congress as its new chair.

Lee co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus with Lynn Woolsey from 2005 to 2009. She also chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 2009 to 2011.

On November 28, 2018, Lee lost an attempt to become chair of the House Democratic Caucus to Hakeem Jeffries.

On November 30, 2018, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi announced that she had recommended Lee to become one of three co-chairs of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee alongside Rosa DeLauro and Eric Swalwell. The change was approved on December 11, 2018.

United Nations assignments

Lee was the United States representative to the 68th, 70th, and 72nd sessions of the United Nations General Assembly.

2024 U.S. Senate campaign

In January 2023, it was reported that Lee planned to run in the 2024 election for the United States Senate seat held by Dianne Feinstein, after she revealed her intentions to members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The report came a day after Representative Katie Porter announced her own candidacy. A third Democrat, Adam Schiff, had also announced his candidacy. Lee formally launched her Senate campaign in Oakland on February 21, 2023. On September 29, 2023, Feinstein died while serving in office. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler to serve out the remainder of the term.

Personal life

Lee with Rev. Dr. Clyde Oden Jr. on their wedding day on December 31, 2019

Lee married Carl Lee after graduating high school in 1964. She described the marriage as abusive, and she divorced her husband when she was 20. The marriage produced two children, Tony and Craig, whom she raised as a single mother. Both of Lee's sons now work in the insurance industry: Tony Lee is the CEO of Dickerson Employee Benefits, an African-American owned insurance brokerage and consulting firm, and Craig Lee is a senior executive at State Farm.

Lee married Rev. Dr. Clyde Oden Jr., a retired pastor from Oxnard, on New Year's Eve in 2019. They live together in Oakland.

In 2002, the Peace Abbey in Boston gave Lee the Courage of Conscience Award for her vote against the call to war after the September 11 attacks. In her speech, she said, "let us not become the evil that we deplore."

In 2003, Lee was recognized as a Woman of Peace at the Global Exchange Human Rights Awards in San Francisco with Bianca Jagger, Arundhati Roy and Kathy Kelly. In 2010, Lee took the food stamp challenge and also appeared in the documentary film Food Stamped.

In 2014, Lee, Hill Harper, and Meagan Good contributed to Enitan Bereola II's bestselling book Gentlewoman: Etiquette for a Lady, from a Gentleman.

In 2015, Lee won the 43rd Thomas Merton Award.

Lee is an honorary member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.

Electoral history

California State Assembly

California State Senate

U.S. House of Representatives

California's 9th congressional district

California's 13th congressional district

California's 12th congressional district

See also

In Spanish: Barbara Lee para niños

• Abby Ginzberg, director and producer of the documentary Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me
• Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against American entry into World War II
• Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to be elected to Congress and run for the Democratic presidential nomination
• List of African-American United States representatives
• Women in the United States House of Representatives