Abel Maldonado

Abel O. Maldonado Jr. (born August 21, 1967) is an American politician who served as the 48th lieutenant governor of California from April 27, 2010 to January 10, 2011.

As of 2024, he is the very last Republican to serve as lieutenant governor of California to date.

Elected to the Santa Maria City Council in 1994, Maldonado then served as mayor of Santa Maria from 1996 to 1998, when he was elected to the California State Assembly.

After months of attempting to obtain a building permit from the city of Santa Maria to construct a cooling facility on the farm, Maldonado grew disillusioned with the city bureaucracy and decided to run for the Santa Maria City Council in 1994 at the age of 26.

In 1996, at the age of 28, Councilman Maldonado successfully ran for mayor, defeating the incumbent Mayor Robert Gordon Bunch and retiree George Hobbs 40%-39%-21%, a margin of 70 votes.

He served in that body from 1998 to 2004 and then in the California State Senate from 2004 to 2010, running unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for California State Controller in 2006.

In 1998, at the age of 31, Mayor Maldonado was elected to the California State Assembly with 60% of the vote in the 33rd District, representing San Luis Obispo County and western Santa Barbara County.

Maldonado was re-elected in 2000 with 65% of the vote and in 2002 with 63% of the vote.

During his Assembly tenure, Maldonado was named "Hero of the Taxpayer" by the Americans for Tax Reform.

He led issues such as seat belts in school buses and California Workers Compensation Reform.

He was on the Business and Professions committee.

In 2004, Maldonado was elected to the California State Senate by a margin of 53% to 43% over his Democratic opponent, San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Peg Pinard, in a district evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

In March 2005, a San Luis Obispo weekly newspaper revealed that Maldonado had received $30,987 in gifts from an organization representing California's power industry.

Those gifts included multiple trips to Australia, Africa and Europe.

The story suggested that the gifts might have motivated Maldonado to object to a seismic safety bill that could potentially have threatened Diablo Canyon Power Plant's license to operate.

According to the story, Maldonado snapped at the reporter, "“I have never, ever, ever connected monetary resources with a bill or a special company in my area. For somebody to even suggest that is disappointing."

Maldonado signed a "No New Taxes" pledge before his election which he later claimed to regret as he cast a vote for higher taxes.

In 2005, Maldonado declared his candidacy for the office of California State Controller after Controller Steve Westly decided to run for governor.

In December 2006, he was named Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

Maldonado was defeated in the June 6, 2006 Republican primary by Tony Strickland.

Following his loss, Maldonado publicly criticized Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for not supporting his campaign more forcefully, suggesting that Schwarzenegger did not care about Hispanics, when he told the Los Angeles Times that "[w]hen [Schwarzenegger] needs Latinos, Latinos are always there for him. When Latinos need him, the answer's been no."

Maldonado issued a public apology for the comment.

Maldonado was the first Republican in the State Senate to vote for the budget during the budget deadlock in 2007.

He represented a swing district in the Senate and is considered a moderate.

He also maintained that he would not run for any further political office after his state Senate service; he was re-elected to the Senate in 2008 with 63% of the vote.

On November 23, 2009, then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Maldonado as his nominee for lieutenant governor to fill the vacancy created by Democrat John Garamendi's election to the United States House of Representatives.

In February 2009, Maldonado was initially among the Republican senators rejecting a series of bills designed to close the $41 billion state budget deficit, but he later joined the Democrats in supporting the measures.

A committee indicated that it might pursue a recall campaign against Maldonado because of his vote on the budget.

The same threat was made against other Republicans in the "Sacramento Six", but none of the recall campaigns came to anything.

(Most of the recall energy was directed against Anthony Adams.)

In response to his critics, including Steve Poizner, Maldonado said, "Since the budget was passed, you have gone around the state criticizing it and the role six Republicans played in its passage. Your recent statements condemning Propositions 1A-1F are very frustrating. During the budget debate, which lasted over 100 days, I heard from thousands of Californians who took the time to give me their input on the state budget. But I never heard from you."

Maldonado was sworn into office on April 27, 2010 and was defeated in the 2010 lieutenant gubernatorial election by Democratic San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Maldonado ran for California's 24th congressional district in the 2012 elections, but was defeated by incumbent Democrat Lois Capps.

In May 2013, he announced that he was running for governor in the 2014 election, but dropped out in January 2014 after unsuccessful fundraising efforts and campaign missteps.

The 15th District included San Luis Obispo County, most of Monterey County, eastern Santa Cruz County, portions of northwestern Santa Barbara County, and portions of southwestern Santa Clara County.

In 2017, Maldonado was considered for the role of United States secretary of agriculture by Donald Trump, but was ultimately not nominated.

Maldonado was born in Santa Maria, California, the eldest son of immigrant Mexican farm workers.

His family eventually acquired a small family farm, where they grew strawberries.

After Maldonado graduated from Santa Maria High School, his family used their earnings from the farm to send him to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, where he studied crop science, but dropped out before completing his degree.

Maldonado then returned to his family's farm and helped his family grow the half-acre strawberry farm into a 6,000-acre (24 km²) farm, employing 250 people, with produce shipped around the world.