State Sen. Holly J. Mitchell hasn’t forgotten about the importance of higher education as she has ascended to chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee.
California State Senator Holly J. Mitchell has been working toward this moment for as long as she can remember.
“I’ve always been civically active, so I grimace when people confess that they aren’t,” she said from her office in Exposition Park, reflecting on a life dedicated to her community at large. “It’s our collective and individual responsibility.”
It wasn’t that Mitchell’s parents forced this mentality onto her, but both were social workers, and social consciousness and advocacy was just woven into the family persona. And sometimes that meant her mother needed to be out of the house at 5 a.m. to open a Riverside County clinic.
“Sometimes it’s circumstance. “My mother would say, ‘Come ride with me to Blythe on a Saturday morning.’” Mitchell playfully rolls her eyes recalling a 5 a.m. trip to a Riverside County methadone clinic. “It’s just what they did. And so it was an integral part of me.”
