Get Used to It: Ep. 80 , "Voices of Our Lives: Christine Kehoe"

uh [Applause] [Music] hi i'm sheila kuhl welcome to get used to it this is our show in which we discuss issues of interest to the gay and lesbian community and all the rest of you today i have the great pleasure of bringing one of my good friends and a wonderful woman to you as my guest christine kehoe who is a state assembly member in her very first term in her very first year of her very first term in california was a member of the city council in san diego california which unlike la and san francisco where the rest of us lesbians in california are from is a little more conservative so it was quite a coup for chris to be elected to our state assembly and this is a show about you chris welcome thank you sheila it's wonderful to be here i'm really glad you're here and i get to do this um people watching the show are often interested really in terms of people that they either know or they're learning about uh to know kind of you know where'd they come from because a lot of people say to me oh sheila i could never do what you do imagining that my life was somehow you know very different and therefore they could never do it um and i'm sure you get really the same thing but how did your life start out on this end of the country or nope i was i was born in toronto york troy new york excuse me 1950 so i'm 50 years old yeah and i grew up so far away from southern california and geographically and ideologically it was a small town irish catholic neighborhood my parents were a little bit older um good good people but very modest not ambitious you know fairness responsibility obedience things like that those are the values of my childhood i know they sound very dated now but um but they sound very irish catholic and it was it was a completely irish catholic neighborhood and our idea was diversity of diversity was the next neighborhood was polish catholic and the north neighborhood was italian catholic and that was as about as wild as it got so um what was it like you had brothers and sisters or two brothers two sisters two i'm right in the middle older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister and what did your folks do my father worked for general electric in schenectady new york which was then their international headquarters um for 42 years he retired from there when i was in i guess just going into college so what was your life like growing up it was uh very safe and secure our neighborhood was extremely stable we had all the same neighbors my entire growing up and as i you know it was happy and safe but by the time i got to be a teenager it was really kind of uh the 60s were we were right in the middle of the 60s the beatles were the biggest thing and you know bob dylan and my neighborhood was like victorian it was it wasn't like old-fashioned it was another century so there was a lot of friction i was very you know unhappy and restless in in high school and continued that way really you know until i came to california the um the high school you went to did you go to public school catholic grade school and catholic high school you know there's this there's this sort of myth i think about girls in catholic high schools and how many lesbians there are but did you have any inkling at the time i mean as a serious question honestly no i didn't i mean i was so out of it uh i don't think i started to think about um sex seriously it just never crossed my mind i was well into my 20s i was a virgin i can't even go into it so an intellectual huh yeah oh yeah i was telling reading was my the love of my life not school i bet no not school if it was an assigned book i couldn't read it but i would read hours and hours you know uh i started reading serious books uh pretty young you know i used to read like little kids biographies and our li the library the troy public library was about a mile from our house so even when we were little kids my older brother and sister's sister would walk us up there i was had a library card when i was actually the summer before i was five years old and um then when i got to be going into high school i became enthralled with you know thomas hardy and hemingway and willa cather and all that you know i just loved it i and um but yeah it was all intellectual nothing wasn't exploring anything physical so did you go on to college yep i went to uh well because i was such a slacker student i went to um hudson valley community college was my first college and um i transferred then i got married then i transferred to lyndon state college a little public college in new hampshire excuse me up in the very northeast corner of vermont right by the new hampshire border and i finally graduated from state university of new york at albany let's go back to the married piece yes we skipped over that really quickly but um i told you i wasn't given the really big questions in life a lot of thought well and so i always sort of grew up thinking i would get married though my mother you know she wasn't like pushing me down the aisle it was kind of something that it was i guess at that point it was the only way to get out of the house you know that happens to a lot of folk i mean not just you know gay or lesbian people but i think young people who are dissatisfied but they don't know exactly why and part of what's sold to us is you know well you find a somebody to marry it'll all get better and it does get you out of the house so what was he like uh we were uh more like brother and sister he was um we were the same age we met at uh hudson valley community college he was a very uh he loved sports he was a jock but not a macho kind of guy his name is greg and he's a great skier tennis player he taught me how to play tennis he was in baseball football track in high school we just we continued to go to school together we moved up to vermont for that year um both drove uh he drove an mg and i drove a tr6 i don't know we just hit it off in some ways and not in other ways about five years later i realized i was not happy being married i remember um when i got married in new york state you still had to change your name on your license to his name yes uh-huh and it came you know the license came back and i remember thinking now this is so strange you know i'm not a keyhole anymore because it was always the key how's this and the key how's that because we there's a little tribe of us you know my brothers and sisters and i were close growing up and the younger ones were only a year younger than me so we actually you know played together and stuff like that um but about 26 27 i knew i wasn't going to stay married and i separated and wound up within a year coming out to san diego now why did you leave new york i just wanted to stretch my wings uh you know i wanted to i was restless i they were i don't think i was dealing consciously with all the different ways i felt um kind of stuntified and i wanted to get away i'd even i remember taking a you know one of those personality intelligence tests in college you know guidance counselor kind of a test and the ones where they say would you rather test toothpaste and mouthwash or drive a truck yeah something like we all chose drive a truck they wound up telling me i would have been a good military officer i was just stunned you know because the vietnam war was going on it was the last thing that i would have ever thought would have been advice on career or whatever and uh but of course it was true you know i love structure and i can give orders or take orders as long as there's some kind of order i'm happy you know it would have been perfect for me it just never dawned on me in that age to go run away to the navy or something and i didn't um although in san diego i mean it sounds like right but that wasn't the reason no it's totally serendipity it had nothing there was no plan involved at all i had never been west to utica new york i didn't know anything about california except for what was on the tv you know johnny carson was so what was the impetus what got you in the car or the plane or that a friend of mine was coming out here to visit his friends and i came along for the ride i packed a bag and i had 300 in cash or whatever and i just said goodbye east coast i'm going to go see what's out there and i i told my parents and my brothers and sisters that i was taking a vacation but i think secretly i was thinking i wouldn't come back and actually you were still married yes i was still married but i had been separated for about not quite a year maybe nine months and neither greg nor i were really gung-ho on finalizing a divorce we're just kind of letting it ride so you did you go right to california nope we stopped in arizona that's where the guy was going i had friends yes and um so the very southerner of arizona bisbee arizona which is a very cool town you know except in the summer yeah before it became uh like now it's a little bit of an arts colony but back then it was sort of i guess kind of a hippie hangout and there was still a little remnant of the mining town that was it was a arizona's largest open pit mine is between bisbee and and and douglas and there's this huge you know there's train tracks in it and stuff they look like little toy trans i mean that's how big it is and dodge phelps the huge copper company owned the whole town there was a company store that looked just like a old-fashioned you know jcpenney or wards and it was charming it was all little hillsides and uh there were no sidewalks the hills were so steep there were no sidewalks there were little steps going up like parts of san francisco to the houses and there'd be mailboxes on the steps um and you know that that was the address and i stayed there for um a couple of months and then came out they came hooked up with a friend of my sisters who was living in phoenix and planning on moving that very month to san diego so i went along with mary and helped her pack and uh she moved in she came into san diego and um that was my first glimpse of san diego she stayed and got a job and i stayed and got a job you know we went our separate ways so we continue to be so you've never thought about i someday i really want to live in california or it looks really great i want to go to california can you believe it no never crossed my mind i think there's this sort of in you know i'm a chauvinistic californian i think there's a sort of incohat thing in people especially in the east coast or the midwest or anywhere that they imagine that california is a place which is to the united states the way the united states is to europe in or or to other continents i think in in a way where people imagine it's a place where you can be free it's a place where you can be you can start over it's a place where you can you know even assume an entirely different identity if you want to the the loose objects roll to the southwest corner yeah so some image i read in one of the california books yeah it's like you if you tilt right tilt the country on its end and uh all of us roll down here that's the way it worked out for me huh i mean it was a complete liberation i love san diego from the beginning i can still remember the first time i saw the harbor um star of india uh that whole walk there uh i went and i lived in ocean beach i rented an apartment right at the end of the pier so i had this fabulous view um and um i got a job in a little diner a little you know cafe restaurant coffee shop whatever you want to call it which was a very popular spot it's still there it was right on the corner you know so the buses went by and all the locals came there the business owners and the surfers and the you know there's still a bunch of little banks on the main street and five and dimes and things like that i mean it was only 25 years ago but it does seem like kind of another world now that whole strip is they've taken the old stores and made them into the antique malls where there's little booths of antiques and that's fine but it's not the same as it used to be when they're actually independent little businesses in there well it's kind of a long way at least it's a leap of imagination from the waitress that just came into town waiting tables in you know ocean beach to the city council of san diego and i know that there's a through line there what was the first step on the through line the first step not that you knew it at the time if your life is anything like mine so it only makes sense when you look back on absolutely i was just going to say that yeah by the time i ran for office and they said well you know you got to type up some kind of biography you just can't beat it you know you just like connect the dots right you just can't like hatch we have to make some kind of a story so the voters know who you are um by the time i got to there i looked back and i had all this community experience and all this and i thought my goodness it's like i planned this whole thing you know first so this good progression it was like that i had a five-year plan or a ten-year plan or that i gave it some forethought and none of those things were true i had never had even a two-year plan um i the first thing that happened was i had the restaurant was fine and dandy and it was great uh playing around but you know there was no intellectual stimulation there was no i you know i had graduated from college a year before and i kind of missed the intellectual just you know reading and being around teachers and other students and and so i signed up with the as a volunteer with the center for women's studies and services which was a feminist collective and they had a battered women's railroad where they would place women that were escaping violent homes in to other people's houses we couldn't run a shelter there wasn't enough money and they had a later on they opened up an art gallery and then they and there was a newspaper that we did every couple of months we put out this newspaper and uh i got him very involved there i just immersed myself it was a feminist collective and you know i just came on as a volunteer i just said i'll do whatever you want and uh which was just what they liked so i got you know involved in a lot of different things and i gradually they took me out as a staff person i got kind of part-time and then full time and i just it was a wonderful experience and it was in that atmosphere of feminism there were active lesbians and there were active straight women in that in that collective it was in that process in addition to waiting just and i was still waiting tables at the at the little chef in ocean beach that i came out as a lesbian so it was it took a couple years um it wasn't a high stress thing i just kind of went along i gradually i got to know more lesbians socially and it just seemed natural to me so there wasn't a moment when you had that sort of panic feeling like one of the hardest things was using the word lesbian yeah it wasn't uh being a lesbian it wasn't you know having sexual relations with a woman it wasn't hanging around with women which is you know all i ever you know even when i was a straight woman i mostly hung around with my sisters and things like that um it was that was one of the you know coming to terms with the word lesbian was one of the things that made me kind of flinch well it feels like going through a door or stepping across a line that i really don't even see yeah because you have a label and it it's not only what it means to you but even more i think what it means in society because when society is going to label you and that label is a bad label according to society and you know at that time even certainly worse than now it feels like a turning point but um you know there's something sort of clinical about homosexual you know you kind of but lesbian is sort of this you know very erotic and you know sort of ancient uh whatever media that's older than medieval but you know it has this kind of other time ring to it and uh it was my i mean i'm talking about i'm exploring something that was in my head for you know a relatively short period of time it's you know and then it just was yeah and then it just was you know it just was so did you stay at the center a long time uh four years which is a long time in a place like that a lot of people did internships and and volunteers come and go but i was there for a long time and was there a a gay and lesbian community in san diego yes there was but um i was still hanging out with my pals in ocean beach and so i didn't go to the gay bars and things like that i went to there used to be a little tiny women's bookstore in golden hill where studio maureen is now and uh i went there and that was really wild oh you know there were bus schedules and you know it was kind of uh it was more you know it was more there was a it wasn't just about being a lesbian there was about um uh you know economic and class issues and things like that which was that was uh you know broader ideas than i had and after i left the center i went to work for a gay weekly san diego day center yes i became the editor their editor left they were looking for an editor they hired me and it was a huge big leap and we you know suddenly i was covering bars and um all the the gay men had a million clubs i mean there were ski clubs and there were tennis clubs and you know all kinds of things going on leather clubs hadn't been with gay men no at this point because you know a number of us sort of experienced this not i was never a lesbian separatist but my immersion such as it was early on was really with women you know the battered women's movement and sort of the same progression in a way right and then when the the sort of the gay movement especially around the aids epidemic um and the lesbian activist political kind of not political but you know activist movement got closer together in these ways when the men became activists and the women got a sense of humor i don't know what you know we all sort of came together but this would have been the first time that you're that you would have experienced those communities melding right right absolutely it was it was huge the the staff of the paper had um a couple of very strong men on it one was um john ciacio who was this young funny guy totally charming had a million boyfriends uh was probably hiv positive when i met him though no one knew what it was then they were still calling it grid you know gay related immune deficiency and all that stuff they had not discovered hiv when i started at the paper so the all these huge issues were coming down and the little gazette troop we were there every week you know doing our slant on the discovery of the immune virus and things like that and it was it was you look back on it it seems um you know like so parochial sometimes you know we were doing it in this little upstairs uncon air conditioned office and a house that had been converted to office space in hillcrest in san diego but there were really big issues and we really did our best to cover we covered the navy and the balboa hospital and their hiv policies and closeted sailors being just you know tortured and hounded and we'd send our little gay reporters down to their military courtrooms and they'd stand out there i don't know how you know i don't know how they took their notes but they did and they came back with reams of coverage and we printed and uh you know the aids foundation and all its different permutations you know and whether they had honest directors or didn't and you know the struggle to provide services and we covered um lesbian events and we printed writers that went on to publish books wendy caster and amy boyd became a stand-up comedian and does the lesbian cruises and things like that now you know it was just a very creative and um is a cauldron it was fun it was really a great experience for me well it was a whole new world it's not the same and i bet you had never thought of yourself as a as an activist uh well i had uh you know i had done cwss was an activist kind of organization for sure and i'd done lesbian solidarity in between which was an outdoor you know kind of festival for women that had political overtones and you know poetry readings and music and food and all that kind of stuff and i knew that i liked that kind of grassroots organizing you know let's do an event let's have a parade let's have a festival i was very into that so um i didn't need a whole lot of political theory to get me involved i you know basics you know equality for gays and lesbians you know feminism is the right way to think about women's issues you know and i didn't really have to delve into um the nuances of whether you're a socialist feminist or some other kind of feminist well i mean i didn't have to not only did i not have to delve into it you know it's like it just doesn't that wasn't the way i approach things i'm the big tent the san diego community though has always struck those of us from the slightly larger urban areas and san diego is a pretty big one as being much more conservative in its outlook partly i mean looking from the outside at that area it's not orange county i mean no one thinks of it as a sort of a republican bastion or a conservative bastian but still partly i think as the military's there one tends to think of so many people in in the service uh sort of skewing it a a certain way there's sort of old wealth uh there and a lot of retirees yeah so i guess um i i wonder how the community itself how the the san diego area um came to embrace um you know a lesbian on its city council that may be the sort of outside story and then kind of explore how it was for you the the you know we ran a very straightforward campaign there was no chance of me running in any kind of a closet i'd been co-chair of gay pride and i'd been openly gay aid at city hall i mean all the people city hall knew i was the gay one and and for many people you know like at city hall i was the first lesbian they knew first i mean maybe they knew some people socially or something but anything about gay pride they just automatically come to our office and ask you know like where's the parking how do you get it you know what time does it start who's in charge and things like that she worked for a city council member who was a straight person for about three years um and then i ran for that office uh and i knew from and i was uh just a regular old aide i handled i mean i was the gay but i was and i handled the gay and lesbian community in the hillcrest neighborhoods and things like that but i handled you know planning groups around the district and economic development issues and transportation you know streets and roads and turning the lights from yellow to white the street lights which is a big deal down there i worked on all those issues so i knew many many many community leaders just as john hartley's aid and they had had time i think to kind of digest the fact that i was a lesbian and that yeah i was active in the gay community and they might see me in the parade or over at the gay center but they also knew me doing all these other things so i think that's one of those um that's one of it i'd help me understand that to win a race you've got to appeal to a broad base of people the idea that you could and they're my good some i had good friends tell me you know when are you going to go on the attack as a lesbian one guy said to me during my first campaign it was like well never you know my my campaign was about you know i'm here to represent all the people in the district all the time you know we're going to work on streets and gutters and better public schools and safe neighborhoods and brighter lights and you know senior citizens and disabled people and people of color and east san diego and hillcrest they're all important to me that was the message and people bought it now when you went what was it that brought you from this activism in which feminism and the gay and lesbian community had really been central to your work life um sort of your enclave i guess what took you to being an aide to a city council member i mean it's a very important job and a lot of people don't i know well have made the transition from this kind of community activism to public policy at you know at whatever level but it's it's another line really that you cross well you know your you know the answers i think as much as i do i it's about uh coming to um it's about you know maturing a little bit i think uh it's also growing i mean how many times can you do an outdoor event i've probably done 20 of them you know after a while you kind of i'll rent the sound equipment i'll get the generators you know it's like i've done it and and as much as those events are consciousness raising you know you do kind of i guess you want to do more things grow handle larger issues work inside the system that's very important you want to be on the outside advocating for change you want to be on the inside and you know as an elected official you and i know you get to decide on policy you get to allocate the funds you get to start it see if it's working and look at the results and you can that to me is a very you know it's endlessly challenging and creative i love that um and uh when i won the city council race i can remember being on the floor of election central in san diego where all the elections gather and all the media gathers it doesn't matter if it's democrats or republicans or a congressional race or a city council race all the elections go to this one hall it's a great i love doing it and i remember standing on the floor with julie saying you know they can never take this away from us you know we got you know now i'm the first openly gay person this is a big step forward it's going to be very challenging but i was confident that my message was the right message and that the voters were comfortable with me we won 55-45 against a woman another democratic woman who had run for office several times so i knew that you know we had connected and i knew it was something i could do i had worked in that office for a long time and i had very strong ideas about how to be a good council member and was julie incorporated like the other spouses were in the i can't say that we did uh but the photos in the brochure were about me with different kinds of constituents children and seniors and things like that now i didn't mean in your campaign so much i guess although it would have been a good question that i probably wouldn't even have asked because if the answer was no i don't know you know i would have to go on and say why not which would be a really stupid question because it was the the 1993 campaign was about like most campaigns finding out what i had in common with the voters and reflecting their issues on on safety on clean neighborhoods on equal services the neighborhoods that i represent are the older more urban neighborhoods so most people tend to feel they don't get the same services level of service that la jolla gets or tier of santa so you know these are the kind of issues that we dealt with and no there was never the picture of me and julie on the back of the brochure um like well that can cut the other way too when i ran for the senate very good man who had been an assembly member um ran against me in the primary and his his brochures always had him and his wife and his daughters and i can't tell you the number of phone calls i got from people saying that they were offended because they felt that that was a sort of a roundabout way of saying and she doesn't have one you know right her family's different or whatever um poor guy couldn't win one way or the other you know what i mean wanted just to show his family but it is interesting how people are are somewhat protective on our behalf sometimes too yeah almost uh overreacting yeah i think there was a comparison piece put out by my opponent of her self and me and she said that there was marital status in children and property owners and all these crazy little things they in boxes and she put down divorced um for herself which is fine i was also i'm also divorced but i don't think they mentioned that or i can't remember uh they and then the under family they had for her you know a son and a daughter or whatever she has and under me they had zero the number zero and uh uh and a couple got you the childless vote yeah and uh oh man the gay community just came unglued and they picketed her office it was just all the things we didn't want to have happen we didn't want to emphasize you know that i'm the gay candidate but it was sort of like some kind of reverse gay baiting anyway some of our gay supporters really went after her on that and said that it was an outrage and completely homophobic and you know i don't know if it rises to the level of all that but they felt that it did and we had to kind of talk them out of well it's really sort of sweet sometimes yeah when i when i ran actually a couple of people in the community were upset because i didn't put lesbian you know on my brochure right but there had been a story in people magazine the new york times the l.a times because you know as a former tv that's right that's like the whole thing lesbian jumps you know out of her tv series and out of the closet and into the state assembly or whatever that was the whole story and i thought my god it's been in time magazine and people magazine in the new york times why do i have to put lesbian you know on my brochure it was sort of irrelevant to my uh education brochure or my you know public safety mailer or whatever right and that's that's what like you can't it was a 93 campaign when my friend asked me when i was going to go on the attack as a lesbian it's like that's a heck of a strategy let's see even if we gave the gay community vote an enormous cushion and said maybe it's 15 in the district it's pretty good and then the lesbian vote would be half of that right so we're down driving home for that we'll just go with the seven percent and leave it there that's our statement and uh uh i was asked if julie was going to you know be sitting on a couch with me you know in the family portrait and all like that but we didn't do that and we managed to struggle through and win and that was the end goal but in the city council was um i assume other city council members had spouses or family or whatever was there i don't even know if you guys socialize with each other but what what was the sort of the acceptance or the non-acceptance factor great even as an aide i never had the most conservative ones and san diego metropolitan san diego was not this right-wing pocket that you know some people like to think that it is but even the most conservative ones were never um i never had anyone at city hall bring up my sexuality in a sexual orientation in a negative way and when uh when we were when i was sworn in and julie came along and stuff the other council members and their families and stuff were great one of the other council members um has a lesbian daughter and at the one of the council members at that time and you know i think people every day more and more people are are so much more comfortable with it now chris i think um we started to hear your name around the country not just in san diego uh when you ran for congress 98 tell me something about that it's the hardest year of my life yeah really tough race not for being a lesbian we got within two points of beating a pretty popular republican incumbent in san diego it was a very tough race we raised a ton of money um and it was uh it was very much a learning experience a congressional race you're campaigning in washington as much as you're campaigning in your district and you're always because it's such a large playing field and you know 98 the democrats were once again trying to regain control of the house and uh dollars are always there's never enough dollars to do what they needed to do and they have to weigh how successful i will be in my race in the 49th district in california against the other 35 or so races that are in the exact same category of you know a local elected official running against an incumbent i mean you know they weigh it all different ways so it was it we we managed to keep i felt as though our we kept our head above water the whole time um but it was you know a constant effort it was you know we campaigned seven days a week for the almost the whole year just taking a step back though what was the process that got you to decide to do it i mean i know you a little bit you're a very practical woman um you know what you're getting into generally i mean unlike both of our youths in which we sort of would both characterize it as well i just did the next thing that sounded interesting and that led to this and this but these days we don't operate like that these days it's it's really planned what was the process knowing that it would be difficult that brought you to run for congress well i didn't know nearly how difficult it would be i mean i thought maybe that's a good thing right my 93 race was just a you know community crusade was so great i had a fantastic manager and uh who went on to uh work for the poster i used at the time ruth bernstein she was just terrific smart funny likable everybody loved her you know the old people the young people the straight people the gay people i mean just perfect none of that got replicated in the in the uh congressional race it was there's a lot of internal problems and we never quite gelled as a team which was um it was that was hard i didn't know nearly how hard it was going to be and but i knew that i was term limited and i was i was in my last term i was elected in 93 and i had a short first term and i was reelected in 96 with a really great margin i forget it was almost 80 percent um and i knew i had to do something you know to kind of expand my id everybody thought well yeah she was she's a lesbian council member and then she's going to do something else i mean you know nobody no one ever talked to me about running for assembly no one ever talked to me about running for congress they would come and recruit other democratic women actually in the building and not come talk to me so i felt like you know i got to sort of shake this up a little and this came up it was you know the free ride year it was a year then i would i i was not running for my office and i was i guess feeling a little feisty and uh so i decided to jump in everybody around me was kind of what the hell are you thinking but i knew i could get really close i felt i could get really close i didn't know i could win maybe i should have thought i could win i could have put myself over nah you should never blame yourself for what the voters decide i mean i talked to people and most people said you know you probably shouldn't do this but i felt like there was something in it for me well i certainly think it raised your profile in california completely did they recruited me for the assembly race a month after january or the next year yes i know i know and i know i know you helped with that and stuff but you had a lot more to go on didn't you well and i didn't have to talk anybody into it i mean that was the interesting thing is that um i don't think people really understand that it's not always about winning and losing but sometimes it's about what you show while you're going for it right uh you know that gets other people's attention or it's not just that that sounds phony what i mean is there's something deeper that is shown your metal i guess my grandmother would have called it and also and and i think an ability not to freak out and panic because it's so hard and you know they do lay all these things on you we you know you'd open up the newspaper and brian bilbray be saying something about me not a lesbian you know the gay thing was the voters in san diego have dealt with it so many times in relation to me i i don't feel like it's stuck it's been an issue yeah it hasn't been an issue in years and years but you know it's just it's very hard you know he's you know whatever he's raised a million dollars and i haven't though we were very close uh he came on he had uh i was criticized for my tv for being too negative um you know there's just always somebody saying something pretty harsh the whole time but last year not much better but the assembly member representing that area and that's about a half a million almost half a million people the assembly seat that's right was termed out and actually ran for congress and once and it's now there susan davis who if you're watching we say hi back in washington um and so we were all thrilled that you agreed to you know to go for the seat and knew that you would win i actually were pretty confident that you would and thank you i don't know how it felt to you but there was a lot of enthusiasm about you in sacramento and in our democratic caucus we had uh yeah people were very supportive and you were very supportive and the speaker was very supportive both of them the transition between uh antonio villaraigos and bob hertzberg i thought it was a real doable race i i you know i don't want to sound overconfident i like campaigning i like talking to the voters i like even explaining difficult things to the voters i think if you're honest with people that they respond to that above first they may disagree but they may agree but at least they feel like you're giving them the straight scoop and i try to do that so despite the difficulties of the 98 campaign it's not with the voters i always enjoy campaigning and the my opponents the republicans didn't have a strong candidate despite they're trying to recruit several that could have been formidable but they i think again because of my fundraising and my stamina in the congressional race right more accomplished republicans probably gave it a second thought and decided they could wait or do something else so are you in the right place now i think so is this a good place for you i yes i where it has been the first six months as you know uh were really very challenging the energy crisis the whole the size of the assembly going from nine city council members and a mayor to 80 members uh was a huge change the travel being out of san diego four days a week you all of those have been really big challenges but um going through the legislative process has been terrific the the support you get from the speaker's office from other members you have been absolutely great well and now with our little four-member lesbian caucus and probably more uh maybe some gay men next year um what has been the hardest thing for you and in terms of either a day or an issue or an experience since you've been in in the state assembly well i hate to sound like a baby but the hardest thing is being out of san diego four days a week i mean i the one thing about the city council is you know you walk out of your house you walk down the steps and your constituents are right there and the you know the weather or the ball game or the traffic or whether the marathon shut down the access to the airport for four hours on sunday all that you know you just get it you just get it it's not a constant struggle of kind of keeping up which i feel like i have to do in sacramento keep tabs on san diego um that's that that's been and also and being away from julie because we are you know have a great house and social circle and relationship in 16 years yeah so that's been hard and i think uh up in sacramento as far as the nuts and bolts of being an assembly member so much of it is new uh you know dealing with the senate trying to be conscious of the governor's office and what they may want or what they may see in your legislation all those are new elements for me well i haven't had like one miserable day well i had a series of them i saw you know every two years we all we have the debate this would have been the first one you went through on the gay bill whatever the gay bill of the moment is um you know two years ago it was my student bill and this year carol migdon had a bill to follow up on the establishment of the domestic partner registry as you know to add to you really just a few benefits for people who registered as domestic partners and it was interesting to me because being in the senate i didn't we were in session at the same time and i didn't get to see the debate but i know it went on for a long time over two hours and i know that people came immediately to me in the senate and said you're not going to believe this but jackie goldberg who is the other freshman lesbian from los angeles um stood up to speak and couldn't speak was overcome right and was crying and that was sort of amazing to people because i don't think they really know what it feels like i mean we're pretty much protected personally right from all of this stuff we have to deal with things about whether you know children get milk or poor people get food or whatever and it's always hard on the heart if you care about people but often it's not personal you know it's not about me or my family it may have been what my family was like and therefore i feel for this issue there's a protective buffer right but this one i never had a very good protective buffer on this one i was always it went cut you know right to the heart and i guess i wonder what it was like for you that was um the um that was the most thrilling moments of being in the assembly thus far listen to that debate though there was a little part of me that felt like this whole two hours is almost dated you know it was important i was glad that uh i was glad for all the discussion really and it stunned me still to hear you know sam aniston stand up and say that he felt obedience to his god that's why he couldn't vote on this bill and several other members voted that their religious beliefs prevented them from working on this from voting on this bill and i thought you know the whole discussion about church and state and the importance of civil rights what citizenship how you define citizenship is you know is is put aside by these few because they believe their religious beliefs or you know supersede that that is something i vehemently disagree with so i absolutely respect people to adhere to the religion no matter how fundamental it is or how liberal it is i mean i you know it's just that's totally personal but it's not public policy um but that was it was a wonderful thing to to be on the floor and hear that discussion the range of discussion from all the different people excuse me jackie was wonderful um a number of the members of the democratic members had wonderful things to say comparisons to personal experiences that they had that made them realize that you know everybody should be treated equally um carol did a great job well it was um it was certainly an interesting having that bill in committee uh was more emotional for me she had it in um carol must have taken it to judiciary first that's right and i was still on it for i was on judiciary for about a month and i heard it there and uh people had invited the woman who lost her partner to the dog attack in san francisco and having you know a you know a young lesbian there testifier younger telling such a personally you know gripping stories you know such a hideous thing that really uh that really upset me and i was more emotional and choked up literally at the congress at the uh committee hearing that i was on the floor yeah well the witnesses of course which we don't see on the floor um are always very moving i i find the same thing in health committee when you know people come and talk about the children they've lost or people often say to me well you know does that make any difference does anybody even listen and we we listen to everybody we kind of hear the lobbyists but we know because they've already come and talked to us or send us a letter or whatever we know what they're representing and who their clients are but when the real so-called the real people come and that does touch it it touched me when the the queer youth came to testify on my bill partly because i admire so much their courage because for me i can stand up and i still feel it or i felt bad when i got those kind of questions you know directed to me as the author in committee but the kids who don't do this every day and who you could practically hear their knees knocking together you know i just have such admiration for them because i there's still a lot of courage required in our community to just do the most basic things to get public policy uh-huh actually i couldn't agree with you more first on you know people who come and tell a real story is always so moving and so much more um you know emotionally informative than all the factual letters and the summaries by the um professionals uh and that it does take it still takes tremendous courage to be out especially for young people especially for so many what you were just saying um you know for us i'm assuming you mean out you know gay elected officials we're we're so everybody already knows it remember be well you've been famous a long time but you know for most gay people you're always coming out every time you change jobs every time you move every time there's someone new in your social circle unless you just hang around you know exclusively with gay people you've always got to say well yeah i'm gay that's my partner whatever you know and it's you know that constant exercise of of pushing back the assumptions that the assumption that everyone's heterosexual or most people are and we don't have to do any of that every time we run for office it's taken care of somebody's going to make sure they know that it's true but there's a hundred and let's see 120 take away 416 straight people in this in the california state legislature who can never again say they never met one that's right because now they know they've met one that's right actually they've met four i think it's one of the most important things about being an elected official thousands of people can't say that anymore and you know they whether they approve or disapprove what you know i think just walking out of a meeting whether it's on transportation or police response times or you know foster care they've seen a lesbian a different way you know whatever their stereotype is they've seen you as a functioning professional you know policy maker and i think that broadens people's definitions but you know chris but i really do get upset i mean this may be personal with people and not any of the other three of you up there but with people who are in a profession they're out but they they want to kind of run away from it a little bit they want to say well i just happen to be a lesbian i'm a you know i'm a newspaper editor who just happens to be a lesbian and i think that was the way we used to talk about feminism in the old days unless we were sort of in the radical part where you know well i it's not like i really want to push this agenda i don't have a radical agenda it just happens to be part of me but it that's not quite right and at least that's the way i feel in our job that it's more than i'm a state senator and i just happen to be a lesbian no big deal don't you know don't even bring it up because i think it is a more basic part of it um i agree with you it's not uh there's sort of you're right at the you're on a fine line there um the you know being out how out you want to be is such a personal thing some people do see it as a big risk i think for some people it is more of a risk than it is for others um yeah but i think for you and for me and for carol and for jackie there's more to it than just being there i mean we've got to push for policies that expand uh equal rights and civil rights for gays and lesbians and bisexual and transgender people we've got to make sure that we're included when policies are formed that are supposed to be helping californians and there's two sides of it but for for people in private life i strongly encourage people to be out i think that once you come out you really wonder what you're ever afraid of i think that being in the closet is so people don't even realize how internally costly it is how physically wearing i mean people give up smoking you know it's like it it's there's a physical and a psychological element to being in the closet of always second guessing yourself guarding what you say where you are who you're with you know people should leave it behind them but it's up to the individual to decide so where do you think we go policy wise in terms of our community um well that's a huge question yeah i think um i think uh the gay community's uh political organizing is uh and the our our growth over the last 20 years has just been stupendous i don't know if you could look at another minority group and see the same kind of you know access to fundraising you know good candidates and ability to you know move people through the process you know from local office to state office and we've got to do more you know i'd love to have a governor we don't you know have you know someone in the u.s senate and all like that but i think we have made incredible strides i think the organizing around aids was the seed of that and i think we've just got to keep pushing it i think we do have to always and i think we have to have coalitions with other groups i think sometimes a gay community does come across as two white and two middle class and uh you know especially at the professional level and we've got to remember that um you know uh communities of color and ethnic groups and disabled groups were all part of wanting to have our communities uh have access to full equal rights and so many you know there are many many people that don't have access to it so i have access to full civil rights and it's buried all kinds of different ways we've got to keep doing that so if you um serve out your term which i have no doubt you will and we have term limits in california and even you know if you're looking at the state senate and you want to serve out that term you still will only be a little past halfway through your life do you have do you have things that you think about um either after politics or you know alongside politics just so either the road not taken or things that you would dream of doing um yeah a million i mean i i always have 25 more things to do every day than i get done i mean you should have seen the list of things i thought i was going to get done before i left for los angeles this morning no wonder we were late i think about geez i think about retirement i think about you know just relaxing and not having to fly back and forth and stuff like that i still am totally without any kind of even two-year plan yes i think about the senate race but that that would be 2004 or you know uh whether i or i could serve six years in the assembly and and just do something else um i think about running the gay center i think about more traveling i think you know there's all kinds of things to do there are all kinds of things to do but i think it's been it's been really fascinating and wonderful to talk to you and time goes by life goes by fast but this hour really really went by fast i have to agree with you i'm really really glad you joined me today and thank you for making that uh what 200 mile drive no not nearly 125 oh 125 see it only seems like 200. when i'm you know when i'm driving it uh in the middle of the night or whatever yeah quite a schlep you told me one time is the way you described the drive to san diego well it was quite a schlep actually but it's uh you know it works you had julie writing with you and i was writing in my little sports car so it was great but chris thank you so much for doing this and i want to i want the rest of you to uh to listen to this both of us sort of wandered through the early part of our lives and then suddenly something clicks and some of it has to do i think with sexual orientation knowing who you are admitting it to yourself coming out to other people you kind of get kind of integrated and have a kind of integrity that's right um so i would say when you think about what you want to do think big because you know you could get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you