Joseph Nation

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Assemblyman Joe Nation

Joe Nation represents Marin and southern Sonoma counties in the California State Assembly as a Democrat. His immediate predecessors were Kerry Mazzoni, who was term limited in 2000, and Vivian Bronshvag whom Mazzoni had defeated in the 1994 primary.

When Nation was elected in 2000, his primary opponents were university official Carole Hayashino, future gubernatorial recall candidate Paul Nave, and future Marin County Supervisor Susan Adams. He defeated the Republican candidate, Edward Sullivan, easily in the general election.

Nation ran to unseat Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Sonoma) in the 2006 election primary, but was unsuccessful. Nation had previously run for the 6th District Congressional seat many years previously (in 1992) against Woolsey, but only received 4% of the vote at that time.

Nation was born and raised in Richardson, Texas. He graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.A. in Economics, German and French. He studied at Georgetown University under Madeleine Albright as a James T. Webb Fellow in Science, Technology, and Diplomacy while earning a Masters in Foreign Service.

He subsequently earned a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis from the RAND Graduate School and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, where he conducted research on defense conversion and wrote a book, The De-Escalation of Nuclear Crises.

He is a former Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco and the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where he taught economics, public policy, public finance, and foreign policy.

Nation served two terms on the board of the Marin Municipal Water District, including two years as President. Shortly after being elected to the California State Assembly in 2000, Nation was chosen to be Chair of the Assembly Rules Committee. In 2004, he was asked to create and direct the Office of Policy Planning and Research. He was recently named Chairman of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.