38-year-old Iranian Irvine native Alex Mohajer is running for California State Senate in the 37th Senate District, representing his hometown in Orange County, CA.
Mohajer is an award-winning independent political writer, advocate, and organizer. He was the first millennial and first Iranian American elected President of the Stonewall Democrats, one of the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ political advocacy organizations. He is also an active member of the sobriety community and volunteers his time helping people who struggle with addiction.
Alex was born and raised in Irvine, CA by a single mom who immigrated to the United States from Iran. He graduated from University High School and Irvine Valley College before attending the University of California, Berkeley for his undergraduate education. He returned to the district for law school, and graduated with a J.D. from Chapman University School of Law in 2011. For the past 10 years, he has been working in public service, trying due process hearings and investigating allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination as a Civil Service Advocate for the County of Los Angeles.
Alex is also an award-winning political journalist and in 2018, he won the Excellence in Journalism Award for Excellence in Feature Writing from the National Association of LGBTQ Journalists.
Alex has been an activist since he was a teenager. In 2016, he partnered with Hillary for America’s digital team to promote Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, driving more than 40,000 supporters to phone banks, voter registration drives, and other GOTV efforts. He later organized around the 2018 American mid-term elections, helping to usher in a historic “blue wave.”
Alex is a public speaker and media personality who frequently appears on panels, conferences, television interviews, and podcast/radio broadcasts across the country, including Politicon, the Women’s Leadership Conference, Indivisible March, and more.
In 2019, Alex executive produced the National Vote-at-Home Initiative, a multimedia GOTV project that recruited the talents of Debra Messing, Lynda Carter, and other notable celebrities to register more than 30,000 voters to vote by mail in 16 swing states. For his efforts, Alex received a 2020 Truman Award from the Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley.
If elected, Alex will be the only Iranian in the California state legislature, the first openly gay legislator elected from Orange County, and one of the first openly gay Iranians elected anywhere in the world.