United States California Members of the United States House of Representatives Congressperson Mark DeSaulnier

Redistricting following the 2020 United States census created new lines for California’s 10th Congressional District and a new representative: Mark DeSaulnier, a 71-year-old Democrat who’d first been elected to Congress in November 2014 and had previously represented the old 9th District.

Background

Prior to being elected to Congress, DeSaulnier had a more than 25-year path of lower public service. He started by joining the Concord Planning Commission around 1989, later serving on Concord City Council, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, and in the California legislature with both the Assembly and Senate.

DeSaulnier, who is originally from Lowell, Mass., has an intense and tragic family story, which he opened up about with the Sacramento Bee in 2014.

His father, Edward DeSaulnier Jr., was a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge. He resigned his judgeship in January 1972, three days after being disbarred. DeSaulnier’s 1989 obituary, after he died by suicide at 68, noted that his disbarrment was tied to accusations he’d accepted a $60,000 bribe in exchange for reducing a swindler’s sentence, borrowed a bail bondsman’s money, and made $200 in personal calls from a courthouse telephone.

“My dad was an alcoholic,” Mark DeSaulnier told the Bee. “He had gambling problems. He gambled on everything. When we were kids, he’d get on the phone and the joke was ‘beans.’ He’d put a bean and a half on the Celtics.”

Mark DeSaulnier came to California around the time of his father’s disbarrment. He told the Bee that he wanted to be able to tell his sons and his grandchildren that whatever his mistakes, “no one questions my integrity.”

Select Legislation

Three pieces of legislation that DeSaulnier has sponsored have become law during his time in Congress. They are:

• H.R. 606: This bill, which became law in 2018, came about as part of DeSaulnier’s efforts with Richmond Mayor Tom Butt to save a historic United States Postal Service branch in that city. This particular bill renamed the branch in honor of the late Harold D. McCraw Sr., who served as postmaster of Richmond for 24 years.


• H.R. 1719: Another bill that DeSaulnier sponsored and was signed into law expanded the site of the John Muir Historic Site, when the United States Department of the Interior was looking to acquire 44 acres of donated land.


• H.R. 785: This bill extended immigration protections to three people.