Cara Brown McCormick
This is part of an IVN series profiling the 25 Latinas serving in the California Legislature.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Roughly 2,000 bills get introduced in the California Assembly during a two-year session, and every one passes through the same set of hands before landing in a policy committee, picking up an author's amendment, or dying without a hearing. Those hands belong to Assemblymember Blanca Pacheco, a Downey Democrat now in her second term, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Rules and, since February 2025, the Joint Committee on Rules for both houses.
Watch: Blanca Pacheco campaign ad
The Rules Committee doesn't produce flashy hearings or headline-grabbing floor fights. The Assembly's own committee list describes its jurisdiction as covering "proposed amendments to the rules and other matters relating to the business of the Legislature." It is language vague enough to obscure how much power the job actually carries.
It's the referrals, stupid
In California, a bill can't get a hearing in the Assembly until the Rules Committee refers it to a policy committee, a step handled by a bill referral consultant on staff. The general rule is that a bill goes to the committee with jurisdiction over its subject. But the judgment calls belong to Pacheco as the chair, and that's where bills get won or lost: sending a measure to one committee gives it one set of odds, sending it to two means it has to clear both in sequence against a legislative calendar full of hard deadlines.
A double referral isn't technically a rejection. It just tends to add up to the same thing.
Rules controls a second lever, too. Under Joint Rule 58, no bill may be amended to add an urgency clause without the Rules Committee's permission in the house where the amendment is offered. An urgency clause allows a law to take effect immediately rather than the following January, but it also raises the vote threshold to two-thirds. Lawmakers who want this special accommodation have to ask Rules, and the Assembly Daily Journal logs the answers under Pacheco's signature as chair.
Payroll, offices, and the recess
Rules also runs the Assembly as an institution. It appoints every Assembly employee not otherwise covered by statute and can discipline, suspend, or set employment terms for staff. It assigns member offices, signs off on other committees' expenditures, and its chair appoints the chief administrative officer of the Assembly.
The committee that doesn't go home
Under Joint Rule 61(b)(15), from August 17-31 the Assembly meets only in floor session, and no committee may meet for any purpose except conference committees and Rules. That makes Pacheco's committee one of just two still operating this week, as most lawmakers head back to their districts to campaign ahead of the August 31 deadline to pass bills.
It stays that way through the recess. The Legislature doesn't formally adjourn sine die until midnight on November 30, and the next session doesn't convene until noon December 7 — but the rules of each house keep the Rules Committees in existence, with the same powers they hold in session, straight through that gap.
The Joint Committee on Rules, which Pacheco has chaired since the Senate contingent selected her on February 5, 2025, with Sen. John Laird as vice chair, extends that same reach across both houses. Rules also carries the rights, duties, and powers given to investigating committees under the Joint Rules.
A first-termer got the gavel
Speaker Robert Rivas handed Pacheco the Rules gavel on November 21, 2023, part of his first full slate of committee chairs after replacing Anthony Rendon — even though she'd been in the Assembly less than a year.
Rivas said her record of local service made her the right fit despite being new to the chamber. Pacheco called herself "eager to lead a committee with a mission to keep the Assembly running effectively."
He reappointed her in his next round of chair assignments on December 27, 2024, a slate that put more women in charge of Assembly committees than at any point in state history.
She says she is living proof of the California dream
Pacheco, 52, grew up in the district she now represents, attending elementary school in Cudahy before graduating from Downey High School. Both of her parents were union members: her mother, Mariana, worked as a nurse at LAC/USC Medical Center and now serves as nursing director at Downey Adult School, and later won an elected seat on the Cerritos College Board of Trustees.
Her father, Gonzalo — known as "Gonzo" — drove a public-school bus, worked as a district locksmith, and ran a small landscaping business. As a teenager, Pacheco spent weekends helping him with landscaping, and after earning her black belt, she taught karate alongside him.
She earned a bachelor's degree in political science, with a specialization in Chicana/o studies, from UCLA in 1996, then a law degree from Loyola Law School, Loyola Marymount University, in 2002. At Loyola, she volunteered with the school's Center for Conflict Resolution, mediating disputes for Spanish-speaking residents and local businesses.
After law school, she substitute-taught across grade levels in the Downey Unified School District, including a stint as a Spanish teacher at the high school level, and taught part-time in the paralegal program at Downey Adult School.
She's practiced law since passing the bar in 2003, running her own law office from 2006 to 2020 with a focus on estate planning, probate and evictions, before joining Olivarez Madruga Lemieux O'Neill in El Monte, where she was most recently an associate.
Much of that work has gone to low-income, mostly Spanish-speaking clients pro bono, according to the Downey Patriot, and she's also volunteered through the Southeast District Bar Association and the Mexican American Bar Association.
She joined the Kiwanis Club of Downey in 2012 and became president of her local club two years later. That same year, she helped bring Teen Court, an alternative program for youth offenders, to the city. The work earned her the Downey Woman of the Year honor from then-Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia in 2016, and induction into Downey High School's Hall of Fame as an "Exemplary Civic Leader" in 2019.
She also worked for a time as a real estate broker at Realty Executives in Pico Rivera, a path she discussed on a Downey Patriot podcast.
First Latina Mayor of Downey
Pacheco won a seat on the Downey City Council in 2016 and was reelected in 2020 with 68.8 percent of the vote. She served as mayor in both 2020 and 2022, the first Latina to hold that office in Downey's history. It is the largest city in what's now AD-64.
She also served as president of the League of California Cities' Los Angeles division, the first Downey official to do so, chaired its housing, community and economic development policy committee, and sat on the League's state board as an at-large director.
As mayor during the pandemic, she pushed through a 2020 rent moratorium for commercial and residential tenants and worked with Los Angeles County to add COVID testing sites in Downey. Her council tenure also included modernizing every Downey fire station and city park, repaving local roads, installing solar panels and EV chargers at six civic buildings, and partnering with Tree People to plant hundreds of trees around the city.
Pacheco was sworn into the Assembly on December 5, 2022, succeeding Cristina Garcia in a seat running from Bell and Cudahy across southeast Los Angeles County into La Habra and Orange County. At her swearing-in, she said she understood the California Dream "because my family has lived it."
AD-64 covers the full cities of Santa Fe Springs, Bell Gardens, Downey, La Mirada, Bell, Norwalk, Cudahy and La Habra, straddling Los Angeles and Orange counties along the Interstate 5 corridor. Mapmakers split the counties there to satisfy obligations under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act while balancing population and keeping communities of interest together.
Downey and Whittier, for instance, share similar density, economies, transportation needs and public service agencies.
As of May 18, 2026, AD-64 had 293,389 registered voters: 48 percent Democratic, 23 percent Republican, and 22 percent no party preference, with smaller shares registered as American Independent, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, and Green. Democrats have a registration advantage of 25 points.
The district's citizen voting-age population is majority Latino, which is why AD-64 is drawn as a Voting Rights Act district. California Target Book data puts Latino CVAP at 65.2 percent, followed by white voters at 20.5 percent, Asian voters at 10.2 percent and Black voters at 3.1 percent, out of a total CVAP of 315,759.
The district's overall population runs far larger than its voter rolls. The Census Bureau's 2023 American Community Survey estimates AD-64's total population at 500,485, with Latino residents making up 72.8 percent, white residents 13.3 percent, Asian residents 9.2 percent, and Black residents 2.5 percent.
Nearly a third, 31.2 percent, are foreign-born, and 14.3 percent are non-citizens. Median household income is $87,414, with 11.7 percent of residents below the poverty line; homeownership runs slightly ahead of renting, 54.7 percent to 45.3 percent, with a median home value of $666,900 and median rent of $1,834.
She's got her own priorities
Pacheco introduced, and then reintroduced, AB 64, the Name Accuracy Act, allowing accents, tildes, umlauts and other diacritical marks on California vital records. Newsom signed it into law in October 2025, so Californians whose names carry those marks can now get birth, marriage, and death certificates that spell them correctly.
She also carried AB 953, the 2025 law barring foreign nationals from contributing to or spending on state and local ballot measure campaigns (also signed by the governor) and she's a coauthor of ACA24, the California Right to Vote Amendment.
Shawn Griffiths
Pacheco's 2025-2026 legislative package also included bills tightening oversight of utility cost mandates (AB 61, the Ratepayer Protection Act); protecting seniors from financial fraud (AB 83, a two-year bill); modernizing juror oath language (AB 223); extending privacy protections to retired judges and court officials (AB 343); making threats against judges an aggravating factor at sentencing (AB 352); setting statewide K9 program standards (AB 400); clarifying trial courts' statements of decision (AB 515); a one-year moratorium on executive-branch rulemaking pending legislative review (AB 582, the Regulatory Accountability Act); transparency on student debt owed to colleges (AB 850); reporting requirements on voter-approved bond spending (AB 905); and confidentiality protections for undercover officers (AB 1178).
A twelfth bill, AB 74, remains a two-year measure still awaiting direction. Watch this space!
IVN Editorial Board
Beyond Rules, Pacheco serves on the Assembly committees on Appropriations, Governmental Organization, Judiciary, and Local Government, and has sat on select committees covering California's mental health crisis, cybersecurity, domestic violence, ports and goods movement, and workforce development and diversity in the innovation economy.
Interest-group scorecards show where she lands on hot-button issues: the National Rifle Association rated her at 0 percent in 2024, while Planned Parenthood of California rated her at 100 percent in 2023.
She's got a very safe seat, by the numbers
AD-64 is totally safe Democratic territory. Pacheco beat Republican Raul Ortiz Jr., a branch manager for Terminix and Dewey Pest Control, 62.5 percent to 37.5 percent in November 2024 — the second time she'd faced him. She beat him 61 percent to 39 percent in 2022, when he ran unopposed in the GOP primary and raised or spent no money.
At the top of the ticket that same November, AD-64 voters backed Kamala Harris over Donald Trump 56.47 percent to 40.28 percent.
The district’s voters are tough on crime, as evidenced by their approval of Proposition 36's tougher sentencing for drug and theft crimes (73.54 percent to 26.46 percent), and socially tolerant. They approved Proposition 3's constitutional right to marriage 55.11 percent to 44.89 percent.
Ortiz has qualified for a third try in 2026, but the money gap tells its own story. As of June 30, 2026, Pacheco had raised $1,047,506 ($263,730 in her most recent period) and spent $513,074, leaving $1,216,409 on hand; Ortiz had raised $12,176 lifetime ($1,622 recently) and spent $9,713, leaving him $2,163.
In the June 2 primary, with all 106 precincts reporting and 88,594 votes cast (30.2 percent turnout), Pacheco outpolled Ortiz 58,939 to 29,655 — a margin California Target Book predicts will hold in November.
Her current term runs through December 7, 2026. She has filed for re-election, and term limits would allow her to remain in the Assembly until 2034.