Suzanne Bonamici is the Democratic and Working Families Party nominee for re-election to Oregon's 1st Congressional District, which she has represented since a 2012 special election. A consumer-protection attorney by training, she served in both chambers of the Oregon Legislature before Congress. Her official biography lists public education as a top priority and describes her as founder and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional STEAM Caucus.[1][2][3]
Suzanne Bonamici was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1954 according to Ballotpedia; her campaign says she grew up in a small town in Michigan, where her father worked for a local bank and her mother was a small business owner and piano teacher.[1][3] She moved to Oregon after high school and worked her way through college, first at Lane Community College, where she earned an associate degree, and then at the University of Oregon, earning a B.A. in 1980 and a J.D. in 1983.[1][2][3] During college and law school she worked at Lane County Legal Aid Service, and she then became a consumer protection attorney in the Federal Trade Commission's Credit Practices Division in Washington, D.C.[2][3]
Bonamici moved to Oregon in 1986 with her husband and settled in Washington County, and her official biography says she practiced law in Portland, representing individuals and small businesses.[2][3] According to her campaign website, she took a career break to raise two children and volunteered with education, arts and civic organizations, including the Classroom Law Project and the Beaverton Education Foundation.[3] She worked as a legislative assistant in the Oregon House of Representatives in 2001, then was elected in 2006 to House District 34 (Washington County) and served one term (2007-2008).[1][3] Bonamici was appointed to the Oregon State Senate in 2008, was elected to it, and was re-elected in 2010; she served until 2012, when she won the special election to the U.S. House. According to her congressional biography, she passed a bill in the Legislature to reduce duplicative testing in public schools.[1][2][3]
In Congress, Bonamici serves on the Committee on Education and Workforce, where she is Ranking Member of the Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee and a member of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee, and on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in its Subcommittees on Environment and on Investigations and Oversight.[4] Her official biography says she played a lead role in the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act, served on the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and is founder and co-chair of the Congressional STEAM Caucus and co-chair of the House Oceans Caucus and Congressional Estuary Caucus.[2] The same biography says she and her husband, Michael, have two grown children.[2]
Researched from the cited sources on 2026-10-21.
