Candidate for
Supervisor; County of Los Angeles; Supervisorial District 3

Even before I ran for the State Assembly in 1994, I had been an attorney, law professor, domestic violence victims' advocate, and managing attorney of the California Women's Law Center, working on issues about which I cared passionately. Every single day, throughout all those years, I was struck by the incredible impact that governmental policy had on the lives of real people--how government decisions could make people safe or not, treat them fairly or not, give them a helping hand or not, open educational, training or job opportunities, or not. I wanted to put all I had learned and experienced to work....so I ran for the Assembly.

Thanks to you, I won five elections and served for fourteen years in the State Assembly and the State Senate, representing much of the westside and the Valley. In those fourteen years, I served on virtually every committee in both houses, headed up the Assembly Judiciary Committee, the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water and the Senate Health Committee, and chaired the entire house as Speaker Pro Temps, the first woman in California history to do so. In addition, as the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to the California Legislature, I learned that one person can make a difference, speaking for those who have had no voice, and carrying, with a lot of help, the first bill to protect kids in schools from harassment or discrimination based on their perceived sexual orientation.

I carried 171 bills that were signed into law, covering a vast range of subjects from education to water, from paid family leave to nurse-to-patient staffing ratios, from domestic violence to environmental protection.

Through all those years, I learned an incredible amount about the crucial issues that impact the people of Los Angeles County: healthcare, education, transportation, environmental safety, conservation and protection, arts funding, state and federal budgets and their impact on the counties, equal protection under the law, social services, juvenile justice, prisons, civil rights, employment, housing and the ways in which so many of these issues are connected.

All of this has uniquely prepared me to serve as the next County Supervisor for the Third District in Los Angeles. As an Angelino from the age of two, this district, from the ocean to Los Feliz, from Westlake Village to San Fernando and Griffith Park, is a part of my history. I represented much of it in Sacramento and I have worked, listened, met, and served the people of this district from one end to the other, including work on many of the local issues for which the county is deeply responsible: social welfare, child welfare, transportation, environmental and water quality, protection of the Santa Monica mountains, juvenile justice, education, public safety, and budget, budget, budget. I want to bring my experience and passion to this job--to maintain the good work that's been done to keep the county fiscally solvent, to make certain that the new healthcare programs roll out smoothly, to improve the care we give foster youth and the children who need us, to continue to connect all parts of the county by affordable public transit, to be a champion for the arts, to work with our fire and public safety officers to make sure every person feels safe and fairly treated.

Those are my issues: I want to use my years of experience to keep the county running smoothly, to work to fix some of the most difficult and intractable problems: child welfare, budget soundness, the new healthcare rules, access to affordable healthcare for everyone, a continuation of the transportation vision of an interconnected county, clean air and water, re-entry and rehabilitation for the many low-level offenders who are now the county's responsibility, and so much more.