Sen. Dawn Euer will seek reelection to the Rhode Island Senate’s District 13 seat, which covers Newport and Jamestown. Her campaign is set to kick off Saturday with a fundraiser that will also collect food donations and grocery store gift cards for the Housing Hotline.
Euer, a Democrat first elected in a 2017 special election, has built her tenure around environmental, economic, and civil rights legislation. She was the lead Senate sponsor of the 2021 Act on Climate, described as the most comprehensive climate legislation in state history, and was part of the effort to codify abortion access into state law through the Reproductive Privacy Act.
She has also sponsored measures, including the Student Loan Bill of Rights in 2019 and legislation safeguarding insurance coverage of contraception. Other bills she has introduced would bar high-capacity firearm magazines, remove the spousal exemption from the state’s rape law, require the registration of short-term rentals listed on third-party platforms, create an independent redistricting commission and prohibit evictions during a declared state of emergency.
Euer currently serves on the Senate committees on Judiciary; Rules, Government Ethics and Oversight; and Special Legislation and Veterans’ Affairs.
A recent academic analysis ranked Euer among the General Assembly’s most productive lawmakers. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, based at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, ranked her the second most effective Senate Democrat in its analysis of the 2023-2024 legislative session, the most recent term covered by the report. Her State Legislative Effectiveness Score of 2.07 placed her behind only Sen. Alana DiMario, D-Narragansett, on the top-10 list. The report, released March 31, evaluates legislators using 15 metrics that capture how many bills they sponsor, how far those bills move and the substance of the policy proposals.
Before entering the Senate, Euer was an activist and organizer who helped lead the campaign for marriage equality in Rhode Island. She has been recognized by several organizations for her legislative work. In 2022, USA Today named her its Women of the Year honoree for Rhode Island. In 2021, she was honored as an Environmental Champion by Clean Water Action for her work on the Act on Climate, received a Humane State Legislator Award from the Humane Society of the United States, was named Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly Attorney of the Year and received U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s Service Recognition Award. She was named Legislator of the Year by the Audubon Society of Rhode Island in 2019.
Euer attended COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021, where she participated in panels on state-level climate action.
A 2007 graduate of the University of Minnesota, Euer earned her law degree from the Roger Williams University School of Law in 2010 and is currently a candidate for a master’s degree in marine affairs at the University of Rhode Island. She works as an attorney in private practice at the Law Office of Dawn Euer and serves as general counsel for the Capital Good Fund.
She is a member of the Rhode Island Bar Association Board of Delegates and a board member of Higher Ground International. She previously served as supervising attorney of the Roger Williams University School of Law Pro Bono Collaborative and on the boards of the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island and Bike Newport, as well as on Newport’s Energy and Environment Commission.
