Jen McEwen

Senator Jen McEwen represents Duluth in the Minnesota State Senate. She serves as the Chair of the Senate Labor Committee, Vice Chair of the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Policy and Legacy Finance Committee, and a member of the Senate Transportation Committee and the Senate Energy Committee. She is a founding member and co-chair of the legislature’s Minnesota Health Plan Caucus, which advocates for universal public health care coverage for all Minnesotans regardless of employment status. She was a founding member of the legislature’s Reproductive Freedom Caucus.

Jen was the lead author of the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act that codified the legal right to an abortion in Minnesota state statutes. She successfully established a massive funding initiative for the state-wide replacement of all residential lead service lines in Minnesota, and led the Senate in correcting a historical wrong by finally allowing hourly school workers like kitchen staff and paraprofessionals to receive unemployment insurance when they are laid off.

Jen spearheaded and led the 2022 Omnibus Labor package, hailed as transformational for unions and workers in Minnesota, including banning captive audience meetings, voiding non-compete clauses, expanding teacher bargaining power, extending earned sick and safe time to every Minnesota worker, and strengthening common sense worker safety laws, among a number of other initiatives.

Jen lives in the house that her great-grandparents built in the Morley Heights neighborhood along with her husband, with one child in Duluth Public Schools and another at college. She served as an attorney representing workers with disability claims against insurance companies and served as board chair of the Damiano Center.

“These times call for bold and courageous leadership. The decisions we make today will chart the path for the kind of future that we want for ourselves and for our children.”

Vision -- Passion -- Integrity