March Fong Eu

Education

She earned a Bachelor of Science in dentistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1943 and a Master of Arts from Mills College. She earned a Ed.D. from the Stanford Graduate School of Education in 1954.

California Assembly

In 1966 Eu was elected to the California State Assembly from the 15th District, representing Oakland and Castro Valley. She served four terms. She is best known for her successful campaign to ban pay toilets, arguing that they discriminated against women since urinals were free.

California Secretary of State

Eu was elected Secretary of State of California in 1974, becoming the first Asian American woman ever elected to a state constitutional office in the United States. She remained the only woman to serve as California Secretary of State until 2006, when voters elected Debra Bowen. Eu was elected Secretary of State five times. In 1978 she won every county in the state, even heavily Republican Orange County, making her one of only five Democrats to win the county in a statewide race in the last half century. She resigned in 1994 when President Bill Clinton nominated her for an ambassadorship.

Innovations she introduced during her 20 years as Secretary of State included voter registration by mail; providing absentee ballots to anyone who requested them; posting results on the Internet; and including candidate statements in ballot pamphlets. In 1976, she became the first woman to serve as Governor of California, serving as acting governor while Governor Jerry Brown was out of the state.

Other political activities

In 1987 Eu was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, running against Leo McCarthy for the right to challenge the Republican incumbent, Pete Wilson. Amid poor fund-raising totals and her husband's unwillingness to release details of his business interests, Eu dropped out later that year.

President Bill Clinton appointed Eu as United States Ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia in 1994. She served in that post until 1996.

In 2002 Fong, then age 79, ran again for Secretary of State, saying she was doing so because "Florida made me mad", referring to the voting problems in Florida during the United States presidential election, 2000. She narrowly lost in the Democratic primary to Kevin Shelley, who went on to win the election. In 2003 she filed a statement of intention to run for governor of California in the gubernatorial recall election of Gray Davis, but later withdrew.

Family

Eu lives with her second husband Henry Eu, a multimillionaire industrialist, in both Sacramento and Singapore. Her adopted son, Matt Fong, was a Republican activist who served as California State Treasurer for a four-year term that began January 1995. She also has a daughter, Suyin. Her hobbies in retirement include Chinese brush painting and calligraphy.

Recognition

The National Notary Association gives an annual March Fong Eu Award to "the individual who or organization that, in the judgment of the Association’s Executive Committee, has done the most to improve the standards, image and quality of the office of Notary Public." Eu was the first recipient of the award in 1979, named after her "for her extraordinary leadership in spearheading enactment of progressive Notary reform legislation, despite opposition from powerful lobbies who preferred lower notarial standards."