Q & A : A Faith in Politics : State Senate Candidate Catherine O’Neill Discusses the Issues

For the first time in years, Democrats on much of the Westside face a real election with real choices on June 2. Redistricting has shattered the political tranquillity of the last decade. Nowhere is that more obvious than in a bitter and costly primary battle being waged for the state Senate.

In little more than two weeks, voters will decide who will represent the 23rd Senate District, which stretches from burned-out businesses in Hollywood to oceanfront homes in Malibu, and from Studio City across the southern San Fernando Valley to the Ventura County line. The district is such solid Democratic turf that the Republican Party has not fielded a candidate, so the winner of the primary will face only minor party opposition in November.

This Q&A; with Pacific Palisades businesswoman Catherine O’Neill begins a series of interviews with the three candidates. Interviews with Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) and state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles) will run in the coming week.

O’Neill was interviewed by Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin. Q: Los Angeles has experienced the nation’s worst urban riot of this century. Parts of this Senate district were touched by the violence. Has this affected the campaign?

A: What happened is a concentrated form of what had been happening daily throughout our community. The tragedy is that it takes an explosion to get our attention. One of the saddest scenes was the picture of the 2,000 people lined up (for government checks) at the post office. That is a sign of the failure of what was meant to be a transitional program to enable people to get on their feet. We have to revise the welfare system so that the check is no longer in the mail--the check is at the job.

Q: What can you do to address these problems if you’re elected?

A: We have to change the way that social services are delivered. We have to move from a sense of entitlement and dependency to a sense of participation and responsibility. We have to do that by requiring people who receive welfare, who are able-bodied, to work. If there is no work in the private sector, they have to put in a certain number of hours in public-sector work. That should be coupled with job training and child care.

Q: What was your reaction to the jury verdict in the Rodney G. King beating case? Do you believe the four LAPD officers used excessive force?

A: From the primary piece of evidence introduced in that trial--the videotape--the verdict was unimaginable.

Q: Is this riot a landscape-altering event in terms of the kind of issues you are talking about?

A: Since I started to campaign, I have talked about the fact that in the last 10 years the issues of family and children have literally fallen off the table as a priority. We have come to accept conditions that we would never before have accepted as normal. I’ve spent time over the last 10 years in refugee camps throughout the world. In Los Angeles today there are many, many children with less access to normal health immunizations, less certitude of minimal daily nutritional requirements and who live in greater fear of random violence than at refugee camps. That is a scandal.

Q: What role should the state be playing?

A: We need to reshape the programs that have failed. Without spending new money, we have to bring people who were standing in that post office line into the system. We need to pass laws to aggressively disarm the gangs. Whatever legislative support the community needs to stop from being terrorized they should have.

Q: Are you willing to raise taxes?

A: I do not go there determined to oppose an increase, but I know that we don’t just throw money at the problem alone. That’s the difference from before. I am very supportive of this enterprise-zone concept. We definitely have to have a strategic plan for the economic development of this state.

Q: Do you favor police reform, Measure F, on the June ballot in Los Angeles?

A: The passage of Charter Amendment F is essential. We must never again get ourselves in a situation where it is unclear who can tell the police chief what to do. If eight years is enough for the President, it should be enough for the police chief of Los Angeles.

Q: What do you see as the underlying causes of the rioting?

A: There has been disaffection, disassociation from society. We have to acknowledge that the gangs were involved in the original explosion. The expansion of gangs unchecked over the last 12 years in Los Angeles is Chief (Daryl F.) Gates’ greatest failure. As long as they were just abusing their own communities, the Police Department has not responded sufficiently to check them or to protect their communities.

Q: How would you respond differently as a legislator?

A: We have to provide Draconian seizure laws for gang members carrying guns, Draconian measures to keep in jail people who are selling drugs in large quantities, long-term sentences to people who are committing crimes with guns. We need much better deployment of the police forces and a much greater attempt to integrate them into the community. A much greater attempt to (require) work as an essential element of receiving welfare. Vocational education so you stay in school to get a job. We have to be much more aggressive in intervening on behalf of the child when they come from families that are completely dysfunctional.

Q: You returned to California last October after more than 10 years out of the state. Three months later, you entered the Senate race. Given your long absence, why are you qualified to be a senator?

A. Two-thirds of my adult life has been spent in this district. I know it from every prism a person possibly could. I know it as a mother who has now sent three of her children to the public schools in this district. I know it as a woman who has started a manufacturing company in this district. I know it as a person who’s spent two years writing editorials about issues confronting California. So I think that I bring an unusually distinguished understanding of the issues affecting California.

Q. At the moment you’re living in a rented house in Pacific Palisades, and you and your husband own a home in New York. What are your intentions in terms of residency?

A: We are living in California and raising our family in California.

Q: Until you got involved and started raising questions, there was little controversy about the County Transportation Commission’s award of a contract for Metro Rail cars to a Japanese firm, Sumitomo Corp. Something about that contract struck a nerve with you.

A: You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that if you want to move away from a military-industrial economy, you have to look for (other) opportunities. I wondered why a decision had been made to give a contract, which exported almost all of the money out of the country, to a company that had been a higher bidder. If we only do what we’ve done before in our economy, we’re going to have to hope the world wants to buy a lot of missiles and bombs.

Q: Some of your critics have questioned your timing. Did you raise the rail car issue with the expectation that you’d soon be running for elective office?

A: When I came back to California I thought I had another civic surge in me. We moved back to the community I had always lived in. Reapportionment lines had not been formed. There was just a (state Senate) election two years ago out this way. So it certainly did not occur to me that I would be running this year. Nor was I sure that I would ever try this again.

Q: So your involvement with the Sumitomo issue was not political?

A: There would have been no way on God’s Earth to ever imagine that this questioning of the contract would escalate to the kind of public attention that it did.

Q: It became an issue that was associated with Japan-bashing. Did it get out of control?

A: The end result is really important for this community. It is having repercussions, nationally and definitely in Los Angeles. Everyone who spoke publicly at any meeting I was involved in spoke about the importance of investing in California, about having confidence in the workers, about expanding the job and industrial base of California. I don’t think it was Japan-bashing. If any individual along the line called in and made any statements against one country, that was unfortunate. I do not think that expressed the mood of the working people of Los Angeles who crowded the hearing room that day.

Q: A moment ago you said this issue focused attention on the need to expand jobs and investment in California. How is that consistent with your driving a Japanese car?

A: I have owned only one car in four years. I bought an Oldsmobile Cutlass which I own. I also owned a Ford Taurus. We lease two Nissans, one of which is made in the U.S. and the other made abroad.

Q: Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to talk about investing in California jobs and industry on the one hand and leasing a car made outside of the United States?

A: Three of the four cars that our family drives are made in the United States. We need to understand that we are in an international economy. We are not going to start persecuting people for purchases made outside the U.S. That does not mean that it is not the job of political leaders to try to develop products and industries which will expand our industrial base and prove attractive to international buyers as well.

Q: Your husband, columnist and author Richard Reeves, says that your narrow loss of a state Senate race in 1972 still eats at you. Does it? Do you feel your life’s work is unfinished?

A: I’ve had a very, very rich life. I’ve raised two sons. I really know and understand the world in my time from many, many dimensions. I was lucky in being able to start a manufacturing company that ended up selling furniture to department stores around the U.S. I taught at a university. I’ve been a social worker, I wrote editorials, and then I had the opportunity to learn about the world from a prism of working outside of the United States. If there’s anything else that I’d like to do in my life, it’s be a state legislator.

Q: Did the experience of running and losing the 1972 race and the secretary of state’s race in 1974 cause you to drop out of electoral politics?

A: I decided that was not something I was going to be pursuing in my life. It’s extremely hard to run when you’re not an incumbent. I felt I’d given it my best effort. I lost by 1% two years in a row, and that was it.

Q: Were you turned off to electoral politics?

A: No, I wasn’t. Because I’m a believer in the political process, I started the Women’s Commission on Refugees, recognizing that the way to help women in refugee camps was to change policy at a political level. The gut of my thinking is that the political system can bring about change. It is not something that operates on the periphery of life--it shapes life.

Q: May I ask what drives you?

A: I don’t know. I think I have tried to do good things in my life. I would like to try to do something good in the legislative arena.

Q: What happened in the 1972 campaign? Your church opposed you.

A: I had been to Catholic grammar school, high school and college and was a Catholic missionary. I even taught religious instruction. At 5:30 on the Saturday before the election, my husband’s former coach from high school came to the door and said, “I’ve just been to the 5 o’clock Mass, and the priest read a letter (from the bishop) telling people not to vote for Cathy on Tuesday.” I just was devastated. A lot of churches read that announcement.

Q: Was the letter based on your support of abortion rights?

A: It was because of my position on choice. It was the sole basis of the criticism.

Q: Did that experience sour you on running for office?

A: I ran two years later, but I did it because everyone said: “Oh my God. You came so close.” I was raising my kids. I never mourned losing the secretary of state race.

Q: It’s clear that the ’72 experience was painful.

A: I was very upset at the time. I thought about filing a lawsuit--you know, about separation of church and state. I remember people used to send me--it was disgusting--I used to get pictures of, oh God, postcards of fetuses. It was really horrible what people do. I was at a meeting in Fresno and I remember saying to people: “Why me? Why did you single me out?” They said because you would have been a problem for our position because you’re a Catholic mother.

Q: When you ran for office in 1972 and 1974, a reform message was fundamental to your candidacy.

A: That’s exactly right, and it is right again now--only more so. You’ve got to get the special interests out of politics.

Q: The special interests, or special interest money?

A: The money which dominates politics today. In California, the problem is the districts are so huge. I mean this Senate seat is bigger than a congressional district. I had forgotten how hard it is to be a non-incumbent running for office.

Q: What distinguishes you from Tom Hayden and Herschel Rosenthal?

A: The priorities that I would bring to the office. I would be a legislator who would not sit back and quietly watch colleagues kill no-fault auto insurance and not at least start screaming. I would work much harder than they have to try to put together a strategic economic development program. I certainly would bring a different emphasis. The people I’m running against have been up there for 28 years collectively. If they were going to bring some passion to some of these subjects, they’ve certainly had ample time to do it.

Q: Given your interest in political reform, why do you say on your economic interest statement that your financial interests and investments are personal rather than detailing them?

A: Because of my commitment to full disclosure, I filled this out when I was not required to. Because I felt it was important for people to understand what my investments were, I volunteered my investments were all in government treasury bills, rather than leaving the page blank. This is a page for people to fill out who have investments which might potentially conflict with something they do in the Senate. I don’t.

Q: Do you intend to disclose the clients of your public relations business if you’re elected?

A: I would be happy to, but the truth is if I were elected I would not accept income from any outside source at all. It’s disgusting that in the state Legislature, the leader of the Assembly has a list of clients whose interests are specifically germane to issues that come before the Legislature. California has to extend conflict-of-interest legislation so that people who are up there making laws are not benefiting financially from anybody. Disclosure alone hasn’t been enough, so we need to start moving from disclosure to prohibition.

Q: One issue where you appear to differ from Hayden and Rosenthal is rent control.

A. Not rent control. It’s vacancy decontrol, which Los Angeles has and Santa Monica does not.

Q. What do you mean by vacancy decontrol?

A. That means when a person moves out of a $150-a-month apartment, the owner can move the rent toward a level that reflects the reality of the market. In areas where the rent stays extremely low, two things happen. First, it becomes kind of like a headhunter’s fee to match up a person looking for an apartment with an empty rent-control apartment. Secondly, people stop building affordable housing and communities lose their affordable housing. That’s what’s happening in Santa Monica. (Landlords), in disgust, stop repairing buildings and tear down rent-control buildings, replacing them with high-priced condominiums. There is zero incentive to go out and build new apartments. Only two or three cities in the state do not have vacancy decontrol. Santa Monica is one of the most extreme.

Q. You have to be specific because this is a very big issue in Santa Monica.

A: I support what is the standard in 90% of the urban areas in the state. When people live in rent-controlled buildings, people have the right to stable rents with increases reflecting reasonable cost of living. They have the right not to be harassed by their landlords. They have the right to have the building maintained and reasonably secure. These are what I would term renters’ rights. The owner has the right to bring a vacant apartment up to market standard, presuming they have not harassed the people into leaving. We have to do a more aggressive job of stimulating the building of affordable and moderate-priced apartments.

Q: While you were gone, Santa Monica restaurateur Michael McCarty and his plan to build a luxury hotel on the beach became quite controversial. He has hosted two fund-raisers for you. If you had been here, what would your position have been on his project?

A: If I had been in the Legislature, I would not have allowed private clubs to be on state beaches. My opponent, Tom Hayden, has taken money from the person who managed the private club.

Q: But the divisive issue was whether you should have a luxury hotel on a public beach.

A: Well, certainly we shouldn’t have luxury private clubs.

Q: What about luxury hotels? Would you have voted to overturn the City Council’s approval of McCarty’s project?

A: It included a community meeting room. It would have allowed passersby to go in and have a place where they could have a cup of tea and sit on the beach, replacing a private club. I probably would not have opposed the Santa Monica City Council. ( Editor’s note: Santa Monica voters later blocked the project in a referendum.)

Q: One of your opponents, Rosenthal, has introduced legislation to ban luxury hotels on the public beach.

A: I don’t agree with a blanket proposal at all. In fact, you should think the other way. We are in competition with other places, and tourism is clean, very labor intensive and brings in money from other places.

Q: How do you respond to the health insurance crisis that has left millions of Californians with no access to medical care?

A: It’s disgusting. Other states have put in place some programs while waiting for the federal government to figure out what to do. We’ve got to move ahead with that in California, extending a basic health care system to people who are not covered. It needs to include the working poor who fall outside of Medi-Cal and don’t have health insurance.

Q: Who should pay?

A: It shouldn’t be done only by employers unless we change some of the cost factors. I think we have to end up using some tax money, there is no way around it. I think there should be some private participation for those who are not covered through employment. Then there should be this pooled system so people who run small businesses have the opportunity to get health insurance.

Q: For autos, I gather you favor no-fault insurance.

A: I favor no-fault as an option available to everybody. If people want to sign on to more expensive proposals, fine. Nobody should be given plates for a car unless they can prove that they have insurance.

Q: What are your views on increasing fees at state colleges and universities?

A: I think it is reasonable to expect families who can afford to pay the current fees to pay them. If families are not able, there should be two options. One should be a low-interest loan, to be paid through a deduction from paychecks after graduation. Another should be a California service corps, which would allow people to go to school with the understanding that they can pay back a public scholarship by working in the public sector--in a child-care center or a day-care center for elderly or as a teacher’s aide in an overcrowded classroom.

Q: What is your position on the death penalty?

A: I am for long-term, no-possibility-of-parole jail terms for people who kill people.

Q: Does that mean you oppose the death penalty?

A: I am not a supporter of the death penalty. The United States and South Africa are the only industrialized countries which at this point in history execute criminals. We have to certainly punish as harshly as we can those who would deny life to another human being, never allowing them to return to the streets. But I am not a person who supports execution.

Q: Would you support anti-discrimination legislation for gay men and lesbian women?

A: Yes. Next, we need to move in the direction of the Laguna Beach thing, which is recognizing domestic partnerships, not specific to sexual choice. We have got to recognize in our society that people who couple and commit a shared life to each other have the right to have that relationship dignified in the broader sector, even if it is not through marriage. Public policy has to start moving in the direction of recognizing those relationships, which affect gay men and women, but also affect senior citizens and other people.

Catherine O’Neill

Background: O’Neill, 49, narrowly lost a race 20 years ago to become the first woman elected to the state Senate. Her campaign began early this year, little more than three months after she moved back to Pacific Palisades after more than 10 years in New York, Washington and Paris. Upon her return, O’Neill co-founded a group that successfully fought to overturn the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission’s award of a major contract for light rail cars to a Japanese company, Sumitomo Corp.

Professional: Works as a public affairs consultant. She also chairs the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a small New York-based organization that publicizes the plight of refugees and lobbies for legislative action. She has worked as public affairs officer at the International Monetary Fund, the International Herald Tribune, the Atlantic Institute for International Affairs and the Foreign Policy Assn. of the U.S. Before leaving Los Angeles a decade ago, she was a prize-winning editorial writer for KFWB radio, and co-founded a Santa Monica-based company that made casual furniture.

Personal: Married to columnist and author Richard Reeves. They have a 7-year-old daughter. O’Neill has two grown sons from an earlier marriage.

Education: Bachelor of arts degree in history from St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, N.Y., master’s degree in social welfare from Howard University, and a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, where she also worked toward a doctorate in international relations.