Jim Nielsen
Republican
| Date | Party | Office | Votes | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11-07-1978 | Republican | SD-04 | 108688 | Win |
| 11-02-1982 | Republican | SD-04 | 145640 | Win |
| 11-04-1986 | Republican | SD-04 | 150060 | Win |
| 11-06-1990 | Republican | SD-04 | 123066 | Loss |
| 11-04-2008 | Republican | AD-02 | 118149 | Win |
| 11-02-2010 | Republican | AD-02 | 118120 | Win |
| 01-08-2013 | Republican | SD-04 | 97849 | Win |
| 11-04-2014 | Republican | SD-04 | 139199 | Win |
| 11-06-2018 | Republican | SD-04 | 190441 | Win |
Candidate Biography:
James Wiley Nielsen
Born: July 31, 1944 in Fresno, CA
Married: Brenda Wahl, Marilyn (Interim Director, California Arts Council in 2011)
Children: Two daughters and three sons (including twins)
1970s: Chair, Yolo County Republican Central Committee
1983-1987: Minority Leader, California State Senate
1991-1992: Member, Agricultural Labor Relations Board
1992-1993: Member, Board of Prison Terms
1993-2000: Chair, Board of Prison Terms
2000-2008: Member, Youthful Offender Parole Board
2012: Early Primary Candidate for AD-03 (Withdrew)
2020: Opponent, Proposition 17 [Restoration of Vote After Prison Term] (Passed; 58.6%)
- When Nielsen was selected as Senate Republican Leader in 1983, he was 39 years old, making him the youngest known person to ever hold that office.
- Marilyn was a delegate to the 2020 Republican National Convention.
- THE LAST REPUBLICAN: During the final week of the 2019-20 session, as the COVID epidemic raged statewide, Nielsen was the sole Republican Senator permitted to attend the floor session after the rest of his caucus was quarantined following exposure to a Senator who had later tested positive.
- NONCONSECUTIVE SENATE TERMS: In 2013, Nielsen became the first person to return for a non-consecutive term in the State Senate in 43 years. The last had been John W. Holmdahl (who returned to the Senate in 1970). In 2015, Sharon Runner was elected to the Senate in a special election, becoming the second.
- LEGISLATION: Author of SJR 10 (2022) which would provide California's ratification for the the First to Twelfth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
- LEGISLATION: Author of SCR 43 (2017), which would have conferred the position of Legislative Historian for the first time since the death of Don A. Allen Sr., who held the title from 1967 to 1983. The bill was held in the Rules Committee.
- QUOTABLE: After his State Senate swearing-in ceremony in 2013, Nielsen noted "Taking that sacred oath again, where I'll now again have the opportunity to serve in this honorable body, I wanted to reflect on how special this honorable body is... I've had the pleasure, in my years, or representing 21 different California counties and three of the former state capitals; Vallejo, Benicia, and Sacramento and succeeding a fellow whose home I went up to quite often in Sonoma (he wasn't around at the time) General Mariano Vallejo, who served in this house, first elected in 1849. Those are the kind of people who have inhabited this Chamber, and the thing that is special about the Senate."
- NATURAL DISASTER (LARGEST WILDFIRES): The largest and third-largest wildfires in California history (the August Complex fire in 2020 and the Mendocino Complex fire in 2018) occured primarily within State Senate districts represented by Mike McGuire and Jim Nielsen and and Assembly Districts Jim Wood, James Gallagher, and Cecilia M. Aguiar-Curry.
- NATURAL DISASTER (DEADLIEST WILDFIRE): The fourth-deadliest wildfire in California history (the Tubbs Fire in October 2017) burned nearly 15,000 acres and killed 22. It occured primarily within State Senate districts represented by Mike McGuire and Jim Nielsen and Assembly Districts Jim Wood, Cecilia M. Aguiar-Curry, and Marc Levine.
- GEOGRAPHY: Nielsen is one of a VERY small number of elected officials in the modern era to hold elected offices in several different regions of the state. In 1978, Nielsen was elected to a State Senate seat that included much of the north Bay Area (Napa, Sacramento, Solano, Sonoma, and Yolo counties). In 2013, he was elected to the State Senate for a district including Butte, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Nevada, Placer, Shasta, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity and Yuba), and starting in 2014 held a new district that also included Sacramento County but no longer included Del Norte, Nevada, Shasta, Siskiyou, and Trinity.
Source: California Assembly Handbook (1979)