Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris Represents Business from a Unique Perch
By Tim Linden
Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris freely admits it was the election of Donald J. Trump in 2016 that first led her to consider a career in an elected office. “It was a wake-up call for a lot of us, ” she said. In fact, there was a clarion call for women to get involved and become candidates. “We wanted a seat at the table,” is how Assemblymember Petrie-Norris described it. Living in Laguna Beach with her husband, Colin, and their two sons, Dylan and Hayden, Petrie-Norris threw her hat in the ring and ran for California’s 74 th Assembly District, which includes Costa Mesa, Laguna Beach, Laguna Woods, Newport Beach and parts of Irvine and Huntington Beach. She ran against a Republican incumbent and was among the wave of Orange County Democrats who won office that year turning Orange County “blue” for the first time in decades. Petrie-Norris won re-election in
2020 and has announced that she is running again this year. The assemblymember admits that prior to 2016 she had not considered a career that would include being in the California Legislature. But looking back on her life, she realizes it is full of taking on new challenges, which prepared her well for her current life in politics. She was born and raised in California, growing up in a working-class family in San Diego. Her mother was a homemaker, who took on various jobs to help with the family finances, while her stepdad was a union machinist. Petrie-Norris went through the California public school system where she notes “she received a very good education” that opened the world to her. The first opportunity was the chance to go to Yale University, where she majored in Economics and English. After college, she went into banking and
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