Eleni Kounalakis

Background

Eleni Kounalakis is the daughter of Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos. She spent 18 years at his firm, AKT Development, rising from project manager to president, and her official biography says she built master-planned communities in the Sacramento region. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1989 and earned an MBA at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 1992. President Barack Obama appointed her U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, a post she held from 2010 to 2013, and her 2015 memoir, Madam Ambassador, covers those years. From 2014 to 2017 she was a virtual fellow at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. She and her husband, journalist Markos Kounalakis, have two sons.

In office

Kounalakis had never held elected office before 2018, when she won the race for Lieutenant Governor with 56.6 percent of the vote over State Senator Ed Hernandez, a fellow Democrat. She took office on January 7, 2019, and was re-elected in 2022. Her official biography says she is the first woman elected to the post. The office gives her seats on the UC Board of Regents, the CSU Board of Trustees and the State Lands Commission, which she has chaired, and she acts as governor when the governor is out of state. Governor Gavin Newsom also named her the state's representative for international affairs and trade.

On November 19, 2025, she was one of three regents who voted against renewing the UC Tuition Stability Plan, which passed 13 to 3. She said structural deficits should not be balanced “on the backs of our students.” On December 8, 2025, she chaired the first meeting of the board that designates Black-serving institutions, which approved 31 campuses. Her office's 2025 review credits her with a settlement to shut down Platform Esther, an offshore oil platform. She co-sponsored four bills signed in 2025: AB 1154 on junior accessory dwelling units, AB 260 on access to abortion medication, AB 379 on sex trafficking penalties and AB 727, which puts a suicide crisis line on student ID cards.

In December 2023 she wrote to Secretary of State Shirley Weber calling for Donald Trump's removal from the 2024 presidential primary ballot. On August 8, 2025, she ended her campaign for governor and entered the Treasurer race, saying she could make the greatest impact "by focusing on California's financial future." An Emerson College poll released that day placed her sixth, at 3 percent, CalMatters reported. Former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf then left the Treasurer race and backed her.

CalMatters reported in April 2025 that she is a partner in Meridian Plaza, an office building across from Capitol Park where at least two state agencies are tenants, and holds a minority interest, through a family partnership, in One Capitol Mall, where the University of California Regents, on whose board she sits, are a tenant. Her campaign said she is a minority owner not involved in daily operations and that, if elected governor, she would place any assets that could present a conflict in a blind trust.

On the ballot

Kounalakis is in her second and final term as Lieutenant Governor. She and Republican Jennifer Hawks advanced from the June 2 primary for State Treasurer and meet on November 3, 2026. Her ballot designation is Lieutenant Governor of California; Hawks's is Retired Business Executive. Kounalakis calls herself the only Democrat in the race and lists Newsom, Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi among her endorsers; LAist adds the California Labor Federation and Teamsters California. Hawks, endorsed by the California Republican Party and Reform California, says she is not a career politician and would expose waste and fraud. Hawks has called Kounalakis's Capitol-area property holdings a conflict of interest (San Francisco Examiner, June 23, 2026). The next election for Treasurer after this one is November 5, 2030.