Ginny Burdick

Ginny Burdick
Ginny Burdick
Majority Leader of the Oregon Senate
	In office; September 28, 2015 – May 22, 2020
Preceded by	Diane Rosenbaum
Succeeded by	Rob Wagner
Member of the Oregon Senate; from the 18th district
	In office; January 1997 – 2021
Preceded by	Dick Springer
Succeeded by	Akasha Lawrence-Spence
Personal details
Born	December 3, 1947 (age 77); Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Education	University of Puget Sound (BS); University of Oregon (MA)

Virginia Burdick (born December 3, 1947) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Oregon, who served seven terms in the Oregon State Senate.^[1] She represented Tigard and Southwest Portland in Senate District 18.^[2]

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Early life and education

Burdick is a native of Portland, where she graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. She earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Puget Sound in 1969 and her masters in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1973.^[1]

Career

She was a member of the Land Conservation and Development Commission from 1987 to 1993.^[2] She ran against incumbent Portland City Commissioner Erik Sten in 2006.^[3] In the May 2006 primary election, she narrowly missed qualifying for a runoff election.^{[citation needed]}

Burdick is also a communications consultant, specializing in crisis communications.^[2]

Oregon Legislature

Burdick served as the Majority Leader of the Oregon Senate from 2015 to 2020.^[4]^[1] She also served five years as Senate President Pro Tempore. First elected to the Senate in 1996, Burdick has served as chair of the Judiciary Committee, the Rules Committee, the Finance and Revenue Committee, and co-chair of the Marijuana Legalization Committee. She currently chairs the Senate Finance and Revenue Committee.^[1]

Burdick is one of the Legislature's leading advocates for gun control legislation. In the 2017 Legislative Session, she joined with Republican Sen. Brian Boquist, R-Dallas, to sponsor Oregon’s Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) law. Oregon's ERPO is a tool to help prevent suicide and other harmful behavior by removing dangerous weapons from people in crisis. Similar to Washington's Extreme Risk Protection Order – a ballot measure that passed statewide with about 70 percent of the vote in November 2016^[5] – Oregon's ERPO allows a process for keeping deadly weapons away from a person found by the court finds to be at risk of suicide or being a danger to others.

In the 2018 Legislative Session, Burdick supported the passage of House Bill 4145, which strengthened Oregon's gun control laws by aligning the definition of a domestic violence conviction under Oregon's Unlawful Possession of Firearms statute with the definitions of domestic violence found elsewhere in Oregon law, effectively closing the loophole for when there is a dating relationship. It also adds a stalking misdemeanor as a qualifying offense, subject to firearm dispossession.

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