Look who’s getting hitched: Doris Matsui, Sacramento’s representative, plans to marry
Doris Matsui, Sacramento’s venerable congresswoman, is getting hitched.
The 75-year-old legislator, who took over the congressional seat of her late husband Bob Matsui when he died in 2005, said she didn’t expect to marry again.
“Bob Matsui was a special man,” she said.
So, when is the ceremony?
“In May”, said Matsui, who was coy about the specific date.
She will wed Roger Sant – a longtime Washington, D.C., heavyweight and billionaire who co-founded Applied Energy Services, described by the Washington Post as a “Fortune 200 global energy producer.”
Sant is 89 and, like Matsui, he lost his spouse. Philanthropist Victoria Sant died from cancer in December of 2018.
“I didn’t expect to ever marry again,” said Matsui on Thursday, during a visit to The Sacramento Bee. She was asking The Bee editorial board for its endorsement in her current re-election campaign.
Matsui won a special election in 2005 to hold onto her husband’s seat, this after many prominent Sacramento Democrats rallied to her side. And she’s been re-elected seven times since then.
A Matsui has held Sacramento’s seat in the House of Representatives for 40 years, which is quite an accomplishment. Both Matsuis were interned with other Japanese Americans during World War II.
Doris Matsui was born in an Arizona internment in 1944.
Doris Matsui grew up in the Central Valley town of Dinuba. She was attending UC Berkeley when she met Sacramento-born Robert Matsui.
They were married for almost 40 years before Bob Matsui’s death. They became one of Sacramento’s leading power couples. While her husband served in Congress, where he helped secure U.S. government reparations to Japanese Americans interned during World War II, Doris Matsui became an advisor to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Since her husband’s death she’s been a visible fixture at Sacramento political and social events. When civic luminaries such as restaurateur Lina Fat died last year, Matsui was there to eulogize her and to speak to Sacramento’s tradition of inclusion and opportunity realized by Fat and by Matsui herself.
Matusi has been a leader in securing flood protection for the Sacramento region.
But marriage? That wasn’t in the cards, until now.
“I’ve waited a long time,” she said Thursday. “I’m very happy.”
