Democratic Senate leader Toni Atkins expected to announce 2026 California governor campaign

State Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, is expected to announced Friday that she will run for California governor in the 2026 election.

Atkins on Thursday filed paperwork to begin raising money for a gubernatorial bid, and her campaign released plans for a “major announcement” in San Diego on Friday.

Atkins will join Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis and State Superintendent of Instruction Tony Thurmond in the campaign to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is serving his second and final term. Attorney General Rob Bonta has also said he’s considering a gubernatorial bid.

Atkins was elected to the state Senate in 2016, and has served as Senate Pro Tem since 2018. She is the first openly gay person to serve as the head of the Senate, and the first woman. Before that, she was a member of the state Assembly and the first openly gay Assembly Speaker when she held the position from 2014-2016.

She served on the San Diego City Council from 2000 to 2008, after moving to San Diego in the 1980s. She is originally from southwestern Virginia.

If elected, Atkins would be California’s first LGBTQ governor — but she’s already made history for that role, even if only on a technicality.

In 2014, as Speaker of the Assembly, Atkins served as acting governor for 10 hours when then-Gov. Jerry Brown and then-Lt. Gov Newsom were both out of the state, as well as then-Senate Pro Tempore and current Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg. This made her the first LGBTQ person in the governor’s seat.

She made history again last summer when she signed three bills into law as acting governor — the first openly LGBTQ person to do so — while Newsom and Kounalakis were both outside state lines.

“I’m thrilled to step into the governor’s shoes,” Atkins said last July. “Though I have better shoes than him.”

She told the Associated Press in November that she was “interested in looking at that possibility” of a gubernatorial run. A few days later at the California Democratic Party fall convention, Atkins told The Sacramento Bee she has the necessary experience for such a role.

“Governors work with legislators to get things done,” she said.

“I’ve done the policy work, I’ve done the budget work. And it really is a unique experience to be able to work with those different parties — the speaker, the pro tem, the governor. I feel like I’ve got experience with each. And for me, experience matters.”