Jacqui Irwin

Jacqui Irwin’s public career began in Thousand Oaks: an appointment to the Planning Commission in 2003, election to the City Council in 2004 and the mayor’s office in 2008. She came to city government after working as a systems engineer, first at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and then at Teledyne. Elected to the Assembly in 2014, she represented the 44th District before redistricting placed her in the 42nd in 2022. Her Assembly work has ranged from Oxnard infrastructure and the response to the Borderline shooting to cybersecurity rules, community-college education and consumer protection. She now chairs three panels: Revenue and Taxation, Cybersecurity, and Gasoline Supply and Pricing.

THE PATH TO OFFICE

Born Jacqueline Van Egmond in Tarzana in 1962, Irwin grew up in Woodland Hills. Her parents, John and Barbara Van Egmond, were Dutch immigrants. At UC San Diego, she earned a degree in systems engineering and was an Academic All American swimmer.

After graduation, Irwin spent three years as an engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and five years at Teledyne. Her move into government came through the Thousand Oaks Planning Commission, followed a year later by election to the City Council. She became mayor in 2008.

In 2014, Irwin ran for the Assembly as a Democrat and defeated Republican Rob McCoy. Voters returned her in 2016, 2018 and 2020, then elected her in the redrawn 42nd District in 2022. She served as chair of the Assembly Committee on Military and Veterans Affairs from 2014 through 2021 and was appointed to the Governor’s Military Council.

THE DISTRICT WORK

Irwin’s early Assembly record combined statewide rules with specific appropriations. In the 2017–2018 session, she helped secure $68.6 million for the Rice Avenue grade separation project in Oxnard and $9.5 million for emergency repairs to the city’s wastewater treatment facility. She also made significant changes to remedial education in California Community Colleges.

After the Borderline shooting, Irwin concentrated in 2019 on gun-violence prevention. She extended Gun Violence Restraining Orders for up to five years, required law-enforcement agencies to adopt policies governing their use and secured $3 million for local efforts to recover firearms from prohibited possessors. She also wrote ACR-17, renaming a portion of U.S. Route 101 for Sgt. Ron Helus. In October 2019, she withdrew from a fundraising event for the family of an officer killed in the shooting.

In 2020, her district work centered on the COVID-19 response. Irwin organized collections of personal protective equipment for frontline health care workers and blood drives during a local shortage. She also helped conduct a Ventura County antibody-testing study intended to measure the prevalence of COVID-19 in the county.

THE POLICY SIGNATURE

Cybersecurity is the clearest recurring subject in Irwin’s legislative record. In her first term, she mandated independent security assessments for state agencies and worked with Attorney General Kamala Harris to create the OpenJustice Web portal. In the 2017–2018 session, she enacted the first security requirements for Internet of Things devices. She chairs the Assembly Select Committee on Cybersecurity, served as co-chair of the National Conference of State Legislatures’ Task Force on Cybersecurity and has pushed to require artificial-intelligence companies to disclose their training data.

The rest of the record follows people dealing with institutions and regulated systems. With support from Attorney General Rob Bonta, Irwin created new online charitable-giving rules. She also wrote legislation protecting elderly people from hospice fraud and a measure allowing vital records to be requested online. She authored a requirement that plastic beverage containers contain at least 50% post-consumer recycled plastic by 2030.

Her committee assignments cover Agriculture, Business & Professions, Higher Education, and Privacy and Consumer Protection. Taken together with the cybersecurity posts, they place her work where government sets operating rules: for agencies, technology companies, charitable-giving systems, colleges and consumer markets.