Freshman Homecoming : Bowen, Back in Her District During Recess, Doesn’t Let Up

As Assemblywoman Debra Bowen nears the end of her first year in the Legislature, she says she has “relaxed into the job.”

Yeah, right. On her desk in her district office one recent morning was a plastic container the size of a shoe box for vitamins. The cup from which she drank coffee held more than a quart--taken black. Across the top of her schedule were scrawled the words “Day from Hell.” And Bowen could be heard murmuring, “I’ve got to get some sleep. Got to. Got to,” as she went through the stacks of mail on her desk.

Bowen (D-Marina del Rey) is formally on recess. The Assembly doesn’t reconvene in Sacramento until Jan. 3, and Bowen has found this a daunting period.

“Recess is hard because there are so many choices to be made,” she said. “In session, there are limits on what I can do, where I can be. I’m in Sacramento every Sunday through Thursday. That leaves only Friday and the weekends for the home district. . . . Learning to cope with not having those kinds of constraints is an adjustment process.”

If Bowen’s first year in office has had a theme, it has been one of learning how to conserve energy and use it effectively. As a lawyer before winning election last year, she embraced various environmental causes and worked extensively on behalf of nonprofit organizations; she viewed herself, essentially, as a do-gooder. She went off to Sacramento determined to make a difference and quickly learned, she said, that “the ruts of the way things are done are so deep, it takes tremendous effort just to get the wheels out of the ruts.” Focus has become her rallying cry.

In Sacramento, that means picking her issues--the environment, efficiency in government, defense conversion (many major defense contractors are in her district), and campaign finance reform.

At home, it means entrusting her staff with a large amount of responsibility. “I hire people I know I can count on, give them a lot of latitude and let them do what they think is best,” she says.

As a result of the budget cuts imposed on the Legislature by Proposition 140, Bowen’s district staff is tiny--two field representatives, an office administrator and a chief of staff. Among them, they handle community projects, constituent work and help represent Bowen at the countless meetings, fund-raisers and events to which she is invited.

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For her part, Bowen tries to make herself available every minute to meet every constituent she can. She would probably do it this way even if she didn’t have to, because it is her nature to be a workaholic.

But the fact is, she does have to. Alone among Westside Democrats in the Legislature, Bowen does not have a politically safe district in which she can coast to reelection. Her 53rd Assembly District, which follows the coast from Venice to the Palos Verdes Peninsula, has definite Republican leanings. The next election is now less than 11 months away; she has to make herself known and make a lot of friends fast if she is to stay in office.

On an average day at her main district office in Torrance, Bowen sees a steady stream of business leaders, elected officials and people just wanting to be heard. A group of insurance agents comes in to talk about auto insurance issues; the mayor and police chief of El Segundo visit to introduce themselves; a nurse representing home health care providers tries to enlist Bowen’s sponsorship for a bill her employers hope to see introduced in the next session.

There’s an emotional meeting with a group of engineers panicked by a proposal to have Caltrans do more of its own engineering and construction work, and to stop setting aside 10% of its budget to hire outside contractors. They are all but begging Bowen to intervene, painting desperate scenes of having to stop work mid-spade and lay off large numbers of workers. She sympathizes, but does not offer to come to their rescue.

“One thing I have learned this past year,” she said. “When things are controversial there is usually a reason. I want to hear the other side of the story.”

Sometimes Bowen escapes from these office meetings to take her show on the road, where she has (what else?) more meetings. Most evenings, she speaks in front of civic groups. On Saturday mornings, she holds something she calls “mobile district offices”--really just a table and a bunch of folding chairs set up outside city halls in her district.

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On a recent Saturday morning in Hermosa Beach, about 40 people responded to the postcard invitations sent out to residents the week before. Many were distressed about crime in the area; others worried about ocean and beach pollution. An older couple wanted to discuss their fears about immigration. Many people stopped by just to say hello, clearly surprised and pleased to have such easy access to an elected representative. While Bowen spoke with each person, an aide sat and took notes. Her staff will later contact anyone it can help. But, as Bowen admits, most of the concerns people have don’t fall under her jurisdiction. Either they are broad federal issues or too localized for her to be able to step in. All she usually can do is lend a sympathetic ear.

In Sacramento, Bowen has a reputation for being outspoken. According to Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), “She’s tough. Principled. Articulate. No one intimidates her.”

With constituents, Bowen remains articulate, but forgoes the fighter’s stance.

“I try to listen, not just for the intellectual content of what is being said, but for the emotional content as well. We’re really all concerned about the same issues--public safety, the environment, government not working. People may have a different idea on how to solve these problems, but we all want them solved. Even with people with whom I don’t agree, I try and bring things back to a common denominator because it makes the differences less important.

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“The trick to this is to stay really involved in the discussion. If someone is going over an issue I’m already familiar with, I try to stay one step ahead and think about the next issue. With ordinary citizens, as I said, I try and listen for emotional content, while in Sacramento I pay close attention because I’ve learned that often the devil is in the details. A lot of people in the Legislature don’t pay attention to the fine print, and that’s where scary things can happen.”

When Bowen returns to Sacramento next month, she will begin deciding which bills she’ll introduce in the 1994 Assembly session. To that end, she has already begun holding issue-specific meetings with citizens to get their feedback on what kind of laws they’d like to see regarding women’s rights, the elderly, the environment and crime.

Bowen also says she’s wiser than in her first year. Then, she read each bill that came through, following it from its inception to the final vote. (Reading bills at any stage can be rare behavior for a legislator; former Sen. H.L. Richardson wrote a book called “You Think We Read These Bills?”)

Now, she says, “I learned that bills that go into committee looking like Great Danes come out looking like poodles. Not only is it a waste of time to study, analyze and work on a bill that may never come out of committee, I’ve learned I can say, ‘Yes, I’ll support this,’ then it gets changed so much in committee (that) in good conscience you just can’t.”

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What hasn’t changed is her frankness and candor. (The Sacramento Bee’s veteran Legislature-watcher Dan Walters, in a column commenting on the freshman members of the Assembly, remarked that Bowen had “jerked the Legislature into relevance and became a player through sheer force of will).”

And don’t look for Bowen to start taking it easy. She seems to have an almost pathological need to excel at her work; she’s the perennial A student.

So with the constraints on her schedule once she’s back in Sacramento and her determination to provide easy access to herself in the home district, how is Bowen going to fit in a bid for reelection?

“I haven’t had time to think about that. But I guess . . . it will be like everything else. I’ll make it up as I go along. You need to be popular enough in your home district to be reelected if you desire, but I think a lot of that just comes from paying attention to the district and being available to people. I think the work we do in this office will pay off.”