Biography
Senator
Tim Grayson
Tim Grayson was previously elected to serve in the California Assembly in November 2016 and to represent the 15th Assembly District, which encompassed portions of Contra Costa County. He is the son of a Teamster father and his mother was a public transit worker. He is the first in his family to earn a college degree. In 2010, Grayson was elected to serve on the Concord City Council, winning reelection in 2014 and serving on the Council until his election to the Assembly. He also served as Concord’s Mayor from 2014-2015.
As a co-founder of the Contra Costa Family Justice Center, Grayson has a long and proven history of advocating for victims of domestic violence, human trafficking, and child and elder abuse. Since his election to the Assembly, Grayson has secured $20 million in state funding for Family Justice Centers throughout California to expand services, reach new communities and streamline services for victims of interpersonal violence. In 2018, Governor Brown signed into law a Grayson bill (AB 998) to allow victim support specialists to work collaboratively to help victims of domestic violence and human trafficking.
Championing the beliefs that higher education should be both accessible and affordable, then-Assemblymember Grayson authored laws to ensure that our qualified California students are not denied admission at UC institutions in favor of less qualified out-of-state students (AB 1674) and to require greater transparency from the University of California Office of the President in UC cost reporting (AB 1655). Grayson also introduced legislation to bring $7 billion in funding for new higher education campus construction and repair of existing facilities.
In order to help protect the state against the boom and bust economic cycles of the past decades, Grayson was at the forefront of creating a new budget reserve to complement the constitutionally-capped Rainy Day Fund. Grayson fought to create the new Budget Deficit Savings Account, and helped secure an initial deposit of $1.75 billion, in the hope that we will be able to avoid devastating and debilitating cuts to education and social and government services should a recession strike again.
Since being elected to the Legislature...forty of the bills Grayson authored have been signed into law.
Grayson continues to serve as the Concord Police Department’s Critical Response Chaplain, a position he has held since 2007, providing emotional support and counseling to first responders, victims, and their families during and after traumatic events. Grayson also has maintained a license as a general building contractor since 1997.
A long time East Bay resident, Tim lives in Concord where he raised his two kids with his wife of more than 35 years, Tammy.