Tim Donnelly

Timothy Michael Donnelly (born May 9, 1966) is an American Republican politician who was a member of the California State Assembly, representing the 59th and 33rd districts.

Donnelly graduated from Southfield Christian School in 1984.

He attended the University of Michigan for a year and earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California, Irvine in 1989.

After college he worked in a family business.

Five years later, Donnelly started his own company.

Donnelly is married to Rowena Donnelly who is of Filipino descent.

They have five children.

During his political career, Donnelly was an "unabashed social conservative popular among the most conservative GOP stalwarts" and was a favored candidate of the Tea Party movement.

He was known as "the Legislature's most outspoken gun rights advocate and opponent of illegal immigration."

Olivia Nuzzi described Donnelly as far right.

His home region, the California High Desert, is "arguably the most conservative part of the state."

In 2005, Donnelly became involved with the Minuteman movement, and founded the Minuteman Party in California.

He stepped down from the Minutemen to return to private life in 2006.

In 2009, following the announcement that embattled 59th District Assemblyman Anthony Adams would not seek re-election, Donnelly announced his candidacy.

Before his election to the Assembly in November 2010, Donnelly was a small businessman.

He resides in Twin Peaks, California.

Appealing to Tea Party voters, he ran in the 2010 semi-closed primary election, and narrowly won the Republican nomination over Covina City Councilman Christopher Lancaster, son of former state Assemblyman William H. Lancaster.

He won the general election on November 2, 2010, with 57.3% of the vote, to the Democratic Party nominee's 36.8%.

In March 2011, Donnelly drove three hours from Sacramento to Fresno to appear before the California State University, Fresno student senate committee, in an attempt to oust the student body president Pedro Ramirez, a student in good standing at the university.

Ramirez was brought by his parents to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of three.

He had been injured after a car crash with a tree in January 2011, and was investigated by authorities for driving without a license, a minor infraction; illegal immigrants were not permitted to hold driver's licenses at the time.

Donnelly called for Ramirez's removal, saying that the "This issue is about breaking the law and driving without a license."

Donnelly was heckled by students at the hearing.

In September 2012, Donnelly spoke at an anti-vaccine movement "Medical Freedom Rally" with actor Rob Schneider, urging Governor Jerry Brown to veto AB 2109, legislation that required parents seeking an exemption for vaccination of their children "to first talk with a health care provider about the risks and benefits of vaccines."

The legislation aimed to encourage vaccination and improve vaccination rates in the state.

(The legislation retained the ability of parents to reject vaccination for their child on the basis of "personal belief.") Brown signed the bill into law, although he added a signing statement indication that parents "whose religious beliefs preclude vaccination" should not be unduly burdened.

On January 22, 2013, Donnelly announced his intention to seek the Republican nomination for Governor of California in the 2014 election.

In 2013, Donnelly authored AB 351, the "Liberty Preservation Act."

The law prevents "local entities from knowingly using state funds ... to engage in any activity that aids an agency of the Armed Forces of the United States in the detention of any person within California for purposes of implementing Sections 1021" of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.

The bill achieved overwhelming, bipartisan support in the California Legislature, and was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.

The Liberty Preservation Act prevents any state agency from indefinitely detaining American citizens.

Donnelly stated, "Indefinite detention, by its very definition, means we are throwing away the basic foundations of our Constitution."

He placed third in the open primary, behind incumbent governor Jerry Brown and investment banker Neel Kashkari, who contested the election in November 2014.

Donnelly was born in Atlanta, Georgia and raised in Berkley, Michigan, the third of 14 children.

In 2015, after outbreaks of whooping cough and measles the previous year, Governor Brown signed into law SB 277, a mandatory vaccination law that eliminated the "personal belief" exemption from school vaccination requirements, leaving a physician-granted medical exemption as the only exemption from vaccination requirements.

One day after Brown signed the bill into law, Donnelly—who by this point had left the state legislature and become a conservative talk radio host—filed paperwork to begin signature-gathering in an attempt to place a referendum on the November 2016 California ballot to reverse the legislation.

Donnelly characterized the issue as government intrusion on parental rights, and said that concerned over what he claimed was "the inherent risks of an ever increasing schedule of vaccinations," although scientific evidence shows that vaccines are safe and effective.

Donnelly's referendum failed to make the ballot, having collected well under the required number of signatures.

Donnelly called for an audit of California's Child Protective Services along with Assemblyman Mike Gatto, following the case of Sammy Nikolayev, who was removed from his parents' home after his parents wanted a second opinion regarding medical treatment.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted unanimously to audit CPS in three counties in the state of California on June 5.