Education
Brigham Young University.
Brigham Young University.
In 1986, Marian Bergeson Elementary School in Laguna Niguel was named after her. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Bergeson earned a Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from Brigham Young University. Her daughter Nancy was an attorney in Portland, Oregon, before her murder in 2009.
Elected to the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Education in 1964, she was reelected to the board in 1968, 1972, and 1976.
Bergeson was reelected in 1988 with 71% of the vote in a three-way race. In 1990, Bergeson ran for Lieutenant Governor of California.
Bergeson was unable to unseat the incumbent McCarthy, losing by a margin of 51%-42%. Bergeson was elected to her third term as a State Senator in 1992, winning 62.2% of the vote in a three-way race in her district after it was partially redrawn and renumbered the 35th District in the 1990s redistricting.
Bergeson resigned from her supervisorial seat in 1996 when she was appointed by Governor Pete Wilson as California Secretary of Education.
In 1999, outgoing Republican Governor Wilson and incoming Democratic Governor Gray Davis agreed to appoint Bergeson to the California State Board of Education. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Bergeson to a four-year term on the California Transportation Commission in 2004 and reappointed her for a second term in 2008.
The first woman ever to serve in both the California State Assembly and California State Senate, she was a member of the California State Legislature from 1978 to 1995, a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors from 1995 to 1996, and California State Secretary of Education from 1996 to 1999.