Elected Officials

Recently someone nice person left a complimentary comment on this blog regarding the fine line one has to walk when in elected office, and this started me thinking about some of my experiences when elected to a county level office – that of a county supervisor; what one would call a commissioner back east perhaps. 

I had already been on our county planning commission, an appointed position, for eight years, so as a candidate for supervisor (the next step up, so to speak), I made only two promises.  The first was to return phone calls within twenty-four hours, and the second was to only promise to do the best I could every day.  Because of my time with the planning commission, I knew that occasionally there are things one simply has to vote for because the applicant has a legal right to the permit, and that there were no environmental constraints that I could use as an excuse.  Therefore, I knew that occasionally similar situations would arise as a Board of Supervisor’s member where I had no choice, and since I could not know what these were in advance, I made no promises because I knew I might not be able to keep them.  A promise to me is something that one keeps, so best not to make one.  Fortunately for me, technology had not reached the point where people had cell phones with cameras, and videos of me blithering on were never on YouTube!  The written word was bad enough simply because one would make a comment in a letter based on a prior conversation which letter could then be badly misconstrued. 

Probably the worst experience with the best outcome was a proposed conservation easement on the Hearst Ranch at San Simeon.  I had been involved while on the planning commission contending with the management of the Ranch over a rather large development on the Ranch.  I won’t go into detail here, except to say in my opinion that level of development in a remote area was absurd on many levels.  In fact, I ran on my opposition to those developments.  Subsequently, the management changed and a   young family member took over.  I had been in office about six months when this occurred, and Steve Hearst and I met.  It took us about two years to become comfortable with each other because of my earlier opposition, but he was about the age of my own kids, so I just treated him like one of them.

He had been trying to meet with the environmental community in the county for some time but they refused to meet with him.  So I put together a meeting with members of the community from the north coast area closest to the ranch.  These included the school superintendent, the manager of the local services district, a representative from the agricultural community, two environmentalists, and some others.  It did not occur to me to invite people from outside our local area, since the meeting was to discuss the impacts of a huge development on our local community. 

Well!! The radical left in our county freaked out that they had not been invited.  One would think that I had turned into an instrument of the devil – actually conversing with a member of the Hearst family.  Traitor, etc.  Time went by, and Steve and his local attorney, a gentleman in the best sense of the word, Roger Lyon, asked me to meet with them, and I agreed.  Steve and Roger presented me with a proposal for a conservation easement, with some minor development consisting of 27 home sites and one 100 room motel in the old town of San Simeon, on the 82,000 acres.  It was a one page document with statements like, “Houses shall be built on existing roads only.”  Short, using the word ‘shall’, that is a term that brooks no interpretation, and is to the point.

I took the document home with me, and my husband who one of the most intelligent people I know, and I wrangled that thing for three days.  We tore it up one side and down the other, and when we were finished, I knew it was a good, positive document that I could rely on.  The radical left had another fit that I had not taken it to them for approval.  I laughed because they were not the ones who had to make a final decision to approve it – I was, and I needed to know that it was good.

After some four hearings in Sacramento for approval of the state funds to be used for the conservation easement, and much howling from the radical left that one couldn’t believe any of the reports, that I had “become a wholly owned subsidiarity of the Hearst Corporation”, that one couldn’t believe a Hearst, that Steve was a sneaky so-and-so, the conservation easement went through.  The State of California paid less than $100 million dollars for 18 miles of California coastline, plus 82,000 acres of virtually pristine land that can never be developed.  But, as Steve Hearst has phrased it, “We all had to do some pretty heavy lifting”. 

The reason I am telling this story is because I have been constantly reminded of it these past few weeks with the debt ceiling crisis and Barack Obama and the attacks he is receiving from the radical left.  One expects it from the radical right, but when I hear left-wing pundits declaring that Obama has caved, Obama is abandoning his base, Obama is this that or the other thing, I can feel my irritation level going way up.  What I had to deal with was miniscule with what Obama is dealing with now.  I can’t imagine what he is going through.

There is no way anyone can know what it is like to be in elected office unless one has been, nor the balancing act one has to practice and practice, or the constant rein one has to have on one’s speech since every word is parsed to prove the point of the listener.  We trusted him enough to elect him, now let’s trust him enough to get the job done the best he can, considering the monumental opposition he is facing.  Again, what I went through is miniscule compared to what he is dealing with.  If at the end of his term he hasn’t done what we think he should, then don’t vote for him.

 In the meantime, I am reminded of a line kids would hurl at each other as teen-agers, and one I then hated.  I now find myself saying it over and over at the TV – “Get off his case, toilet face”.