Get Used to It: Ep. 70, "Voices of Our Lives: Susan Kennedy"

my [Applause] [Music] hi i'm sheila kewell welcome to get used to it or today it's get political because we have a wonderful guest who is the cabinet secretary and deputy chief of staff to california's governor gray davis susan kennedy welcome susan it's great to be here i'm really glad you're here finally after all this time well i freed you from all those terrible meetings you did you dragged me a million dollars and decide what's going to happen with all the water in california aren't you relieved i'm so happy to be out of the office i believe it well we're in sacramento today because that's where we're both working at this particular time um but i really want to talk to you really about susan kennedy i mean we do a series for this show that we call kind of a uh it's about people's lives and not just about what they're doing this minute because members of watched your show i'm a fan of your show it's late night tv in washington d.c so you didn't even know that i asked you to do the show that's good well um i've known you a long time i think in a lot of avatars all of them really political but i i i'm certain that you weren't born political or maybe you did grow up politically last name is kennedy kennedy right of course so where were you born and where did this all start i was born in new jersey and uh i've spent many years erasing the accent so most people don't unless i get around some from someone from new jersey but uh i was born and raised in new jersey up until about eighth grade uh ninth grade and then i moved to pennsylvania my parents my father moved there for work and it was um it was quite a transition going from uh little catholic school in in new jersey to a public school in new jersey that which which really hardened me to the amish country so i i had this real you know in and out of the fire experience so you started out going to catholic school in new jersey very small catholic school holy cross and then into a very large public high school middle school eighth grade was when i went into public school what did your folks do um my father worked for rca electronics i was troubleshooter i never knew what he actually did but he called him a troubleshooter and my mother didn't my mother was deaf and didn't work during what my growing up until i was uh an adult and she after all her kids were grown she went back to work as a secretary in the local school again a little catholic school uh and she loved it i mean she just loved going to work i could i think she was very unhappy not working all those years so it was great to see her go back my mom was kind of like that too and she she had worked before she got married and then didn't work again but really valued that kind of identity you know it gave her doing work i know i can't believe we both just did that you know as if my mother didn't work for all those years you know four kids so uh sorry about that it didn't work for money it didn't it didn't work for money but worked her tail off but uh it was good to see her have you have friends and that's the social life that comes with with work and they the identity of getting up every day and doing something in her case she worked with kids and my mother passed away uh was 1989 and uh when we we uh one of the things that school did for the funeral was all the kids in the school did took us this little notebook and drew pictures that reminded them of her some situation they wrote you know thank you mrs kennedy and that was the most emotional thing i could i mean i treasure that because it had all these pictures of these strange red colors and i had red hair and you know putting band-aids and giving them giving them you know aspirin or calling their mother or something like that but she touched the lives of so many i remember my school nurse when i was growing up so i know the impact of that that friendly face you know and and they loved my mother so so were your folks political in any way i didn't even know if my parents were registered to vote until after they were both passed you know when i was going through their their things so nothing you inhaled from the womb then far the opposite led you in this direction completely the opposite so what was uh what was your life like in pennsylvania uh well that was a a period of um respite for me after the three years i spent on the new jersey shore uh with there was you know a lot of a lot of drugs a lot of action a lot of you know peop kids in my school were very heavy drinking and so it was it was a very difficult transition for me to go from very small school small set of friends into this action-packed dangerous world on the jersey shores what it felt like and i had a i had a real hard time uh with that so how did you cope with it uh i don't think i coped very well you know i um i never fit in properly partly because of because i was gay and i didn't know it at the time or i wasn't out and so i just never fit in the way everyone else fit in but also because i never liked the the drugs you know i never i didn't fit in with that i just couldn't handle i couldn't tolerate them as well and so i just i wasn't quite the party girl to in that atmosphere so i i you know i muddled along as best i could but i just hated that i hated my life at that point in time so you must have been relieved then to go off yeah amish country as you call it yeah i actually have a piece of my my journal from uh i remember sitting in the ho the treadway inn in pennsylvania waiting for the house to be finished the carpeted before we moved in and and i i i wrote this long piece about uh the quiet you know it was about 11 o'clock at night i was writing about just this the blessedness of the silence and i didn't have all the pressure of all the all the drinking and all the drugs around me on a daily basis um i was a i was a going into my junior year in high school so it was a very you know influential year influential age for me and uh it allowed me to get my my head on straight to it to a degree it was a life-saving move i think well but not quite straight hey not that straight i mean it's interesting i think that there are probably a lot of people involved in um in our government in california that really have no idea that you're a lesbian nor would it probably matter that much to them but it it i don't know whether your experience is the same as mine but as i became more and more aware that i was i mean the first sense that i had was this sense of kind of like oh my god you know i'll never be happy in life i mean i uh it was such a horrible thing to be okay god me too you knew early on too i knew from my earliest days of cognizant uh movement with other people that there was something different about me i i can i now can look back and i can recognize what that feeling was but uh when i started to realize that it was because i was gay i remember you know when i i grew up in catholic school so i prayed a lot when i was a kid i was like please don't make me gay do anything but make me gay i mean i i can't that's i just don't want to live with that you know and he didn't listen so no but uh so it was yeah i remember this foreboding of oh god if that's if just anything but that because i don't want to have to live with that so you were you an activist of any kind in high school i mean did you get involved in stuff because it seemed like after you came to california as i know that you did and do you see anything looking back that you started to feel that you needed to be involved in i was a rabble-rouser i became everything had the potential to become political my hero growing up was jane fonda and it wasn't because i saw barbarella you know i was like i never saw any of her movies it was i i would i would read in the paper and see on the television news when i was growing up that she was doing all these things that that to help the indians and uh in her environmental rights and and to stop the war and everything and i was too young to even understand the politics of the war but um the the concept that she was doing things that made her terribly unpopular but she did them anyway for the for some greater good was a mind-blowing concept for a 12 year old and i remember when she won the the academy award for clute in 1972 and the picture in the paper the little captioner they're the left-wing actress and i went and asked my father dad what does left wing mean he says it means bad but so i had a sense of just i was attracted to people doing things for the greater good but it wasn't a single issue that motivated me and i found that when i was growing up or you know my you know high school when we went to pennsylvania they had a some rule i can't remember what it was but if some kind of a dress code that i just thought was idiotic i just thought it was unfair so i started a petition campaign and i got it overturned i mean they thought it was crazy to even try but i don't think anyone had ever challenged the authority before you know and so i developed this reputation as a kind of a bit of a rabble rouser it wasn't doing anything radical but just i didn't accept the status quo and i was willing to stand up and and challenge it i gave the the graduating speech for my high school class and it i was not valedictorian i challenged the fact that the valedictorian was giving the speech for this class because we graduated early and and my i took double courses towards the end so we had a small group of us who graduated in january instead of the traditional may or june ceremony and they were going to have the valedictorian give the speech for our class i said no you know and i i went to the principal and and and brought a bunch of petitions and everything and they just didn't even want to take me on so um they did a uh they let people write speeches and submit them and i won the so i gave the speech for my class so i just challenging the status quo was it was a natural thing for me and i got an adrenaline rush off of doing it uh and positive feedback about everything i did so um uh no i don't i can't say i grew up political but politics was in my veins well it's interesting because sometimes i mean it's it's hard sometimes to know what came first with people sometimes they just get this urge to do you know i mean where other people their motto might be i think therefore i am for me it's like i do therefore i am right and just do it well my my father one of the probably the most important thing not probably absolutely the most important thing that he instilled in me was the belief that there is nothing that i can't do if i set my mind to it that the the only limitations are the ones i place on myself and that's a pretty powerful thing to grow up believing whether it's you know physically climbing something you're not big enough to think you can climb or whether it's challenging authority by asking questions you're not supposed to be asking i remember at catholic catholic school catholic church whenever i would ask the questions about you know dad why do they have the american flag inside the church isn't god the god of all people he said go ask father donnelly [Laughter] so he sent me to father donnelly and i'd go ask him and they'd say it's faith you know i had to go back like three times with these questions you know and he just kept sending me to father donnelly he got a kick out of it but he encouraged that that kind of questioning and that kind of you know challenging whatever and so that was the most valuable thing that i that i learned as a as a child growing up it took shape around issues later on in life you know where they actually meant something in terms of the greater good i wasn't just stretching my wings anymore but um uh it was 1978 the three-mile island nuclear power plant had the problem and we lived within the uh this is in pennsylvania obviously when i was there um we lived within the uh evacuation radius now they didn't actually have an evacuation but they had outlined and they had planned and everything and i was within that that couple miles from the plant um they um they the government was saying that the releases of water and into the susquehanna river and the air were a little bit of radioactivity in there but it was under all the safety levels and they kept telling us this over and over again the whole place was in a near panic um just trying kind of shocked panic and there was a sierra club out there with geiger counters on the street corners taking taking readings and saying that's not true i mean what they said is absolutely wrong about what what what that was released just now or you know today or yesterday um so the realization that our our safety was in jeopardy or they just simply weren't giving us the information we were entitled to that was a shock to my system and it was it it gave shape to the my politics so it gave me a cause that i that i didn't have before i was just a rabble rouser before and then it became a cause uh and luckily there were organizations to hook into again back to jane fonda tom and hate tom hayden and jane's organization campaigned for economic democracy i got hooked up with them and when i moved out to california and their environmental justice campaign and that was a very powerful learning experience for me and what drew you to california though was that it no i followed my big brother oh yeah your big brother was already out here yeah he had been out here about five years before i went out to california and i just followed him he was my he's my big brother so you finished high school kind of didn't know what to do finish high school i went to college for a little bit in pennsylvania but you know i graduated early from from high school and and immediately left into college there with no mentoring at all my parents didn't go to college they didn't know how to go to college so they can't really help you go through the process and so i jumped in and started taking you know psychology 300 courses as my very first courses you know all of my classes they wouldn't have even counted because i didn't take the prerequisites but nobody stopped me so i took all these classes i was i was great but um i got overwhelmed and i got way into the the the frat life and next thing you know i'm having too much fun and uh so i ended up not finishing that semester so that was a not very successful foray into college life um there was really nothing to keep me in pennsylvania so it sounds like you really threw yourself into everything you did i mean i know you and that's what you do but it was um it it's interesting that you would be drawn to california but i guess because your brother was here i would probably come i would have probably done it anyway but he he just made it easy because i would if he had gone to alaska i might have followed him to alaska but california was um i don't know if i would have even read about california or heard about california had he not been there but he was sending pictures and he was talking about it so it was just inevitable i just remember i'm oh i was always going to california as soon as my brother went out there and as soon as i was 18 i think right before i turned 18 i left home and went traveling i lived in florida for about six months with a couple of friends and then started driving across country and uh i think it was 17 actually i didn't make it all the way across country the vw van broke down had to limp home uh you know work for the summer and you know get some more money back and then i finally left i set a date certain that i was going out to california so i was waiting i didn't get my last paycheck from this tree nursery i was working in but i was so determined to get in the car and go that i left without my paycheck and i told my mother i need you to you know wire me the money or something when you know how to wire at the time i made it as far as indiana before i had too little gas and no money left so and i luckily i had friends nearby there so i ended up staying there for a couple of days and then when i was when i was waiting there by my first i don't even remember what the details were but i couldn't stay there and my mother couldn't get me i had to wait like a week to get some money and uh so i got in my car and i had just enough just enough gas left basically to make it to manhattan kansas that was the end of the road and i ended up camping on an army base for two dollars a night because the only place that i had six dollars left and it was the only place that where camping was less than five dollars a night uh and i brought this bag of beans and a bag of rice that i had no idea how to cook this i didn't even know that beans were that hard to cook actually but i engendered such sympathy by my fellow campers that i came out in the morning and there was a cooler of eggs and food outside my tent but uh anyway so i i my check finally came in it was a little bit of money and it was enough to you know i got up to colorado and stayed there for about six months you know it sounds to me like you're like your folks were very supportive of you i mean that you you grew up it's never perfect but sort of confident you know it's a i haven't really thought about that but you're absolutely right i mean not my my parents were horrified i mean when i moved when i went to florida i i got a ride from someone in an 18-wheeler and my father was like please let me buy you a train ticket or buy you a plane chat i was like no no i really want to do this this way he let me go i could i mean i shot her to think what would have happened had something happened to me what he would have done he would have just been heart sick that he had allowed me to do that but he knew he couldn't really stop me and he knew i don't know what he was thinking but they did they let me go and they were very supportive well it's it's funny i just feel like now looking back on my life and people say gee you're so confident you know and you're so sure of yourself or you're so you have so much self-esteem or and i think well it's really my folks i mean just like you said your dad told you you can do anything you want to do that's really what my folks said to me and i never really thought about what a gift it was certainly they were critical at certain parts of my life or horrified you know not too thrilled when they found out that i was gay and but i waited a very long time to tell them so they had so much invested in me they couldn't really throw me out at that point but it really kind of gives you a real boost i think uh that you don't realize until you really get back until somebody points it out wow you can walk on water i didn't even realize that so did you know at this point in your life as you're traveling out to california that you were gay and if you did did they know uh i think i knew but i was in denial because i had had a relationship in pennsylvania right before i left and um but we were both in denial we were actually my girlfriend my best friend was dating my roommate this man and i and she and i had a very brief affair but it was always kind of triangulated and so it wasn't real um so i don't know what it was i don't know what it was to me at the time but i knew it was intriguing and i knew that it was a life-changing recognition of something and partly i i would imagine the reason i left so quickly from pennsylvania on my own you know but nothing was very conscious in me about that so i didn't i didn't really think about it in any concrete terms and when i got out to california i dated men uh you know and i never really kind of really invested in any relationship it's just you know did you get involved with um campaign for economic democracy right away um pretty soon my first year so you were in in la yeah i was in la for a couple of years what drew you to that um at that point it was the um what i had learned about them after the three-mile island accident they had the stop environmental cancer project and uh you know i had followed jane fonda to to a degree just uh and it was her organization and it just seemed like a natural fit you know i i was invigorated i wanted to do something political i had i had i had made the connection between doing something political and doing something that benefited me and my community directly through the you know what happened at through my island um and i i don't i couldn't even have told you what other games were in town i just knew they were uh so i made a couple of phone calls and went to a chapter meeting to get involved as a volunteer or yeah i went down to the office actually um and i started volunteering answering the phones and next within a couple of days i was organizing the people who were answering the phones uh and i took it very seriously so all of my time off and i worked in restaurants at the time i spent there and that level of commitment uh generated a certain amount of responsibility so they were treating me like a little staff person you know and then i i was uh there were a lot of folks that were trying to take me under their wing because to have me work with them and i i remember working with michael picker and stop environmental cancer project learned a great deal uh i don't think it's been a long time but i remember having the feeling of i could kind of pick and choose where i wanted to go because i was valuable and i saw it at the time it's just because i i would spend that much time doing something and i ended up working with students for economic democracy i picked they had a conference they were putting together in northern california and i went up and volunteered and lived you know uc davis lived on a floor in one of those domes out in uc davis great experience and it was a very successful conference it was we called it building the student movement of the 1980s and even tom hayden would say you know there won't be a student movement in the 1980s but we still he gave us all the encouragement and we had it we had gloria steinem and zimmerman i can't really remember who all we had but it was a very successful conference and i remember getting offered jobs after that uh the union organizers and stuff because the logistics of putting together a major you know hundreds of of students over three day period with speakers and logistics of picking up the airport and the press and the stuff around it that was i demonstrated a skill in that area that's very very valuable in politics and so people in politics were then attracted to me and offering me offering me jobs so i am that's how i made the transition into you know professional politics and away from restaurant work did you see any conflict between some people really feel there's a conflict between kind of grassroots organizing and electoral politics and that i remember especially in the 70s that people would often talk about how they didn't want to have anything to do with electoral politics it was all corrupt uh that you know organizing for advocacy was really where they wanted to go and yet you kind of made the transition at least you it sounds almost seamless when you were working in grassroots i truly believe that to the extent they are separated they are each worse for it they belong together and the you're not effective in grassroots politics if you're not affecting people people's lives or public people's lives through public policy so they they and if you're in public policy and you're not in touch with what really happens then it's a it's an empty policy or sometimes it's ineffective and it's a waste of money so they really are hand in hand and i i think that my experience as a grassroots organizer made me a very valuable person in electoral politics so is did you go then into an electoral poli sort of political job you said here's all these offers you're working with the beginning i stayed in organizing i i ended up doing some work for some initiative at the time you know signature gathering i was northern california campus coordinator to gather signatures on an initiative i ended up the students for economic democracy organizer for northern california for i don't remember how long my life is becoming very hard to calculate in time periods could have been six months could have been two years but uh that was fun and a lot of i learned a lot from that that was how do you go onto a campus where all you have is a name on a little piece ripped up piece of paper and a phone number and leave there a couple of weeks later with a chapter of your organization you have to conv you have to get them into a room you have to convince them to do something you have to organize them so that you can walk away and they'll stay together and that was a fabulous uh learning experience for me and one that probably the most valuable skill they ever learned so what came next um i don't remember i think what came next was california i worked for california national organization for women up north yeah and um you know with sed we did you know a divestiture in south africa for apartheid that was the main issue that i remember and then we went to i went up to i stayed up north after we did the student conference so i was doing most of my campus work in the bay area and then i worked for california now doing fundraising for them it was just just barely post the era campaign so they had and i think that's where the focus turned electoral for me because i remember the sentiment was everybody who didn't support the era we're coming into an election year and you're going to pay for it right because it was only a few votes in a couple of states right that really meant that the amendment was holding people responsible now it was holding people responsible for the position they took and there was a we were very it was pretty easy to raise money at the time and uh so that's what we were doing was running phone banks to raise money for an electoral campaign and but that was the nexus that was the the switch for me doing grassroots politics and then going into electoral politics the connection between the two so that was so california now was next but you ended up with a democratic party didn't you in california yes um i mean working for them a lot of us ended up with the democratic party but yeah uh after i left california now uh i went to by this time it was scd it was during my period at sed when i came out so my and that of course changed my relationship to politics and just you know my personal life became political in that sense um so i enjoyed doing you know california now is working with women so that was a great feeling for me at the time i i started working for the california abortion rights action league um i did in between that before i went into california abortion rights action league i ended up i went back to school san francisco state and uh got bored very quickly but stuck it out for a little while got something done and then had it yeah i had my political fix you know i couldn't let an election go by it's very tough going to college when you're a political activist because you have you know uh the the finals in november right you know right the election campaign it's very inconvenient and uh so it was very difficult i had very interrupted education but um so i went to volunteer for a firm that was doing some electoral work and for uh retaining the justices when the republicans were going after rose byrd and the other two justices um and i ended up volunteering with them full-time same thing and i didn't realize that it was probably the most prestigious political firm in in the state um and people were lined up to you know to get in there uh and and i learned a great deal it was marianne andresek was her her before she was married now she's mary ann gaddy one of the best fundraisers in the business taught me how to do real fundraising not raffle tickets but you know 150 bucks 200 bucks you know a thousand dollars ahead um for a you know big dinners and wally mcguire taught me advance you know the big advance he did advancement for the pope hands across america the camp david accord so he had that was just great working with the best in the business and those are great skills so i did that and then after that i went to uh i went to k-rail california abortion rights and that's except they didn't want you to leave necessarily did they no actually they um they were offering me a a full-time position and they were not offering me a great deal of compensation for that and there were these two women in this firm that were friends of mine who were counseling me behind closed doors you know close the door and say don't take what they're offering you you're worth more than that you know go in there and stand up and say okay so i went and i took all three partners were in there and all three of them were ganging up on me going you know pressuring me to take this uh for a little bit of money and um i i said no that's i have another offer and wally i love wally mcguire but he leans into me and he says do you realize there are people lined up down the street to get into this firm and i said if that's your final offer i have some place else to be but thank you i've really enjoyed my time here and i left and i couldn't believe i just quit this firm i can't believe i just walked out of this first and my friends were in the hallway going yes that i had you know i had done this and i went to narrow for 2.50 i went right for a third of the money but wally hired me back at four times what he was offering me as a consultant you become much more valuable when you go somewhere else but it did teach me the the line where i am more i know that my skills are more valuable than that and i'm worth more money um and i think that was pretty much the sole reason i left because it wasn't that i thought the k-row offer was you know my next career move but it ended up being my next career move i didn't well and it also ended up being a much more important issue yes suddenly it was personal and it and we when i got in to cairo they were looking for a field organizer for a pro-choice campaign and i was one of the only women uh field organizers in the business and this woman executive director kept calling me back going you're the only name that keeps coming back to me there's not that many women out there we really want a woman um so i i took it and it was shortly after i took the job as field organizer for k-row um lewis powell resigned from the supreme court and all of a sudden the five a slim five to four majority pro-choice majority with ronald reagan in office became we everyone expected that the next appointment by ronald reagan uh would be that one that overturned roe versus wade um so the importance of abortion rights just skyrocketed and it was a it was a great time to be involved with the issue where you know everything i did on a daily basis i feel like i impacted you know women's lives i feel like i impacted you know our political our body politic um so that was that was great i spent five years there i became the executive director not long after about a year after i got there and my counterpart with k in k row in southern california um which for those who don't know what k rally is it's the national abortion rights action league only their california affiliate and we're affiliated with neral um my southern california was broken up into north and south my southern california counterpart was robin schneider the who was the southern california organizer for students for economic democracy so the two of us have these things keep coming back together and it was just magical because she and i had the exact same organizing experience we knew exactly how to turn to how to manage large crowds how to and we but we had the electoral focus um so we uh uh we turned k row into a political electoral entity where it was not before my my the organization when when we got when we got there had its membership on three by five cards with 2500 members on three by five a little dog-eared down uh-huh in the recipe box you know we kept our members um and when i left five years later the 70 000 members fully computerized and and was recognized as a we were sought after for our endorsement in campaigns um and that was because of the issue i mean the issue sold itself i mean it was uh anybody could have i think led the organization at that at that point in time um but the key difference that robin and i did was making it electoral we didn't have a lot of money so we couldn't play with the big boys in terms of uh you know making campaign contributions we just didn't have the money and we certainly didn't have the clout to give an endorsement nobody wanted our who they don't want our endorsement but um we had volunteers we had bodies and so we picked a couple of campaigns in targeted districts where it was going to be very marginal it was a pro-choice candidate against an anti-choice it was very clear-cut and we picked two up north and two down south and i i just worked my tail off to get busloads of people down there walking precincts and i and we turned out in in this race up in northern california more people walk in precincts in the entire afl-cio i think it's really easy to see why you would be considered valuable and why the work of organizing is valuable and i want to i want to explore some of the stuff that you've done since because you know lately i mean i know that you were with the democratic party here in california for a while and i know that you really went national because you were working with senator feinstein as her press secretary um what was that like that was um that was a great experience i mean they've all been that sound like we're pretty redundant but uh i was executive director of the democratic party for three years in california and i ran to get out the vote through the for the party through uh in the 92 campaign and that was great i mean no one thought we could elect two jewish women from san francisco democrats from san francisco you know and at the time george bush was at you know 70 80 in the polls and people thought we were just a joke but we did it and we we that was a great energetic exercise in uh turning perception on its head and phil angelidus was a fabulous chair so he he really made it happen and then after the the democratic party i went to i'm losing track of time sometime after the democratic party i went to washington as senator feinstein's communications director and press secretary and that was uh that was a great experience because it was a whole new ball game i mean the professionalism and the the um i mean at least at the party and everything else you get to kind of create your surroundings and you create your own little institution and how things operate moving to that level where it's been around for 100 years and the traditions and the way the staff operates and the the way the staff operates with the members and with the press there's you had to learn all there was a big learning curve just in terms of which way the trains were coming you wouldn't get run over but and it was the republicans had just taken over congress so uh that was an interesting time to be there as a democrat and what it was great because dianne feinstein is is is in some ways better in that situation because she's completely undaunted she simply said oh okay shifted her sights and started working with the power centers in order to get stuff done she was extremely effective even though she was a you know barely a freshman at the time and and she got along she had a lot of respect she still she carries an enormous amount of respect in in washington and so that was a joy to work for such a powerful member of the senate and actually the best experience i had in the senate was right before the 96th democratic convention at all the women senators were supposed to appear uh at the democratic convention all the women's centers are supposed to appear together and there were two things that happened during that one was the arguments that the staff directors and the communications directors had over what they were going to wear i'm wearing the red no you're not i'm wearing red no look my boss always wears blue in public she's wearing the blue then you can't stand next to her it was it was they never i don't even think our bosses knew it but that was one but the best one was annie leibowitz came to the cats to the senate to photograph all of the women of the senate and uh uh and i sent my my deputy down there to staff her and i really wish i'd gone myself because i probably want to would have won a pulitzer for this he comes back up and he said you're not going to believe this they wouldn't let any of the staff in the room and so we all had to wait outside annie liebus doesn't like anybody else you know in the room with her so we were all waiting outside there were all these men staffing these women senators holding their purses and they were holding them like this like nobody would swing it on their shoulder but just the the the flip of power to have all these men all these men standing out there holding the purses for the senators was priceless and i missed it i can't believe it well it you know it can't all just be cake and ice cream i mean i enjoy my life too and it seems wonderful to me and as i tell the story of my life it's kind of like and then this happened you know and then they asked me to do this and then they came and got me and i don't know and you know that you're very smart and you know that you're very talented but you must have bumped your nose against something something must have gone wrong something must have been difficult well i don't think it wasn't you could that's well i i i don't i can't think of something i mean it wasn't that it wasn't difficult um i think the the most difficult the most difficulty for me was merging or taking care of my personal life with such a a roller coaster and skyrocketing career choice i mean i went from one very powerful job to another very powerful job and they were there was no breathing space i mean it was okay do you want to be executive director of the democratic party start tomorrow and next thing you know we're running a campaign you know and i've got 200 staff people um there was no downtime you couldn't not concentrate on what you were doing go when i went to the senate i mean it was a just 12-hour days just to start and then you know 14 to 16-hour days um no no outside life so that was that was good in terms of a career bad in terms of personal life both my parents died about a year and a half apart in 1989 1990 right in the middle of the um actually it was 1989 and then 1991 right in the middle of doing the camp the 92 uh campaign and that was um oh and in 1989 it was it was right before the webster versus reproductive health services decisions we were in the apex of our organizing um and it was uh very i just had to put my personal life in a box couldn't feel you know and of course that crap i crashed after that i couldn't mourn the death of my mother uh because if i i if i i didn't have time to even think about it and that had that has a tremendous personal toll um and you know i didn't my mother was in the hospital for a heart operation and she died on the on the operating table i didn't even know she was in the hospital wow now my mother was deaf we didn't talk on the phone for obvious reasons and so i really didn't we didn't keep in touch as much as we should have and we were we were close it wasn't that we weren't close but my father didn't tell me she was going in for the operation she had bypass surgery 10 years before and she was going back in but and i knew it was coming up but i didn't think it could i thought it was at least a couple of weeks away and for some reason she went in early and my little sister kept telling my father did you call you know people and and uh he said no i'll just call him when it's done he just wanted to call with good news well i got the call that you know she had died on the table and it was a complete shock i had no idea it was coming the guilt of not even being able to say goodbye or not even being there when she was scared not even knowing that she was scared that had a tremendous toll on me and then luckily i was i learned my lesson a little bit and was with my father when he died um uh actually i you know we helped him because he was he died of cancer and it was very very painful and that he died in my arms and that was a life-changing experience but it those two deaths in such a close period of time taught me the most important lesson in my life which is there's nothing in work that's more important than yourself or your family nothing right and you can think that but if you don't practice it it doesn't mean anything and my life changed after that nothing in politics got me nearly as energized as it used to i wasn't able to do the 20-hour days in the complete uh absence of taking care of myself physically or emotionally i wasn't capable i just didn't have the energy to do that and i think i went through i know i went through a period of depression after that so i couldn't feel anything for for a while but um but it it really changed my my my life uh also it i got sober after that my mother was an alcoholic and i was an alcoholic and very high functioning one i mean i worked at such high speeds but i couldn't i couldn't handle a lot of alcohol and i crashed after after my mother died and uh it put me into recovery i got myself into recovery and then when i went to washington dc i i really got sober and with the help of some very dear friends and that those two things change the order of priority in my life you know i don't i don't do things that that are entered into my detriment or would would jeopardize my sobriety i'm in a wonderful relationship and i wouldn't it wouldn't even occur to me to sacrifice you know my relationship or my or or something my partner needs or wants just to for work you know she constantly says when you uh someday you find that you're gonna die you know a month from now you're not going to sit there and say gee i wish i spent more time at work i'm sure she didn't coin that phrase but it's just so true you know what do you want to look i never ever want to look over my shoulder and wish i had well you have a very interesting juxtaposition now i mean i i certainly knew you when you were doing the democratic party stuff and i knew you working for di-fi but now we work in the same building you know you're on the first floor i'm on the third floor so i do actually get to see you more and and i'm envied for the friendship because everyone perceives that you're very close to the governor that he trusts you very much and yet i'm not sure how many people know but several people know that you're also planning to go to hawaii uh in actually only a month or so for your commitment ceremony and so you're either you know deciding what everybody's going to get in the budget or planning your wedding depending on what time of day someone calls you and it is just what you're talking about it's kind of a it's kind of a new and good balance i think for you but to just unpack that for a minute talk a little bit about the work that you're doing now well as uh as cabinet secretary my job is uh as secretary of the cabinet the all the agency secretaries uh i liaison with them so i'm their primary contact for the governor and if the governor needs something out of it i'm responsible for making sure that the governor never wakes up and reads in a newspaper something his agency or department is doing that he doesn't know about and when they need an answer on whether or not a policy change or they want to put in a budget change proposal or or an issue is coming up and they need some direction they they put it into me and i run the traps i run it through finance does it cost anything is it politically what we want to do is it you know what are the policy implications what are the legislative implications and then ninety percent of the time i can say yes or no ten percent of the time i have to run it further up the flagpole and either let the governor know or uh or ask the chief of staff to weigh in or and then we decide if the governor needs to uh be briefed in advance or make a decision or just be you know told about it i think i do have his confidence and i think that's because i it is cl even though i haven't known him that long i didn't really know him until i worked for him directly but he he believes and rightfully so that my agenda is his agenda and he doesn't question that i i pride myself on being a professional so i don't have a hidden agenda i have a perspective and he values that perspective and he solicits that perspective but he knows that when i'm making a recommendation to him he doesn't have to question if i have some political agenda or personal bias on something i will only recommend what i think is in his best interest in the best interest of the administration so um it's uh it's an interesting place to be and a very honored place to be and i'm i'm really uh i'm really lucky well it was i was thinking the other day and thinking about this this interview to come how fortunate a place is when it lacks homophobia or when it lacks racism or sexism because it really allows you to choose a person despite bad stuff and in because of good stuff i mean governor gray davis can say to himself i need a person just like susan kennedy you know office susan kennedy and someone clearly would have said to him gray but you know about her sexual orientation and i know that gray would say and your point is i mean you know not because only because he doesn't have a homophobic bone in his body but because he really does value bringing the best person in and i think understands that that kind of uh prejudice is detrimental to the highest functioning of an issue yeah and i actually think that in some democratic circles not not the least of which this one there there's those same advisors who were pointing things out they're not saying it well you know she's you know she's gay they're saying and she's a twofer it's a new century isn't it it's a new century so i think in in an enlightened administration it they're it's seen as an advantage uh on top of being the best person for the job uh because there's quite a few gay and lesbian individuals in very high ranking position in the in the administration and it was never a question they weren't looking for a gay person to fill a slot it just so happens and he knows a lot of people from the gay lesbian community so he had a talented pool to tap from when looking for for folks in the administration but now your commitment ceremonies it's a little it ratchets it up a little bit in terms of profile not that you've ever been the story because in your work with you know with candidates with elected officials etc you i mean you're a wonderful staffer you are you have never been the story and i don't think you'll become the story now but it does bring it a little more public don't you think absolutely yeah it does isn't just the process just the process of of uh sending out invitations i mean there's a there's a protocol and i learned the hard way that uh you can hurt people's feelings they're expecting to to be invited to something like if you're gonna if you're gonna have a ceremony that's anything beyond your immediate family it's what's more important is who's who doesn't get invited so um so the process of you know sending out i waited until the last minute to send out you know all the invitations to friends in the legislature because i didn't want the buzz but i walked into a i walked into a lunch about three weeks ago uh with a bunch of legislators and they were hugging me going oh i hear you're getting married so it's like it went around the building like that oh yeah so yeah yeah i think it does raise the pro raise the the profile and so far it's not it hasn't changed anything i'm waiting for a press story i mean i that's what i when i first got this job uh my friend called me from the san francisco chronicle and they they all excited wanted to do a story on me a profile story on me and how important this appointment was to the gay community i ripped her a new face i said you guys have known me for i've been san francisco is my hometown paper you've known me for a decade i've done a lot of high profile work you've interviewed me constantly you've even profiled me before for my work on abortion rights and you didn't even write two column inches about my appointment and you want you want to write a story about the fact that i'm gay i said that's an insult after all the work i've done they didn't write it didn't call me back well you're pretty scary susan no i'm not come on come on i'm 107 pounds in five times i understand but i i serve with 79 other state assembly members there are 40 state senators okay maybe scary's not the exact word but you really do have i mean you told me when you were much younger no you told me a few days ago that when you were much younger you kind of had to assume this kind of tough exterior i wouldn't say you have a tough exterior but you're very focused and very close to the governor and those two things together i think would give anyone pause in terms of sort of you know crossing you i mean you've really gained a really solid reputation but a a great deal of confidence as well and your point is it's like i'm enjoying it okay i think you're kind of scary but has anybody ever scared you oh yeah oh yeah i'll think of somebody in a minute you're scared it's not you used to scare me no no no i swear to god you used to scare me you because you have a reputation for being incredibly incredibly smart and sharp and uh years ago when i first met you i was afraid to talk to you because you were you just you were very articulate and i uh wasn't very articulate well i see i should have done the pre-interview better because that was an answer i really wasn't expecting at all never ask a question you don't know the answer yeah that's what they taught us you actually used to scare me uh uh who else um i can be i can be scared by people it not scared where it it becomes a challenge you know if if i don't know someone and i don't and they are um they're very smart and they haven't they have a a a place they want to be and you only have 30 seconds to get your point across or they're going to throw you out of the office that's intimidating you know and so i had to learn and i'm in that business and i was i i being the executive director of the party or the communications director for the senator i had to um be able to carry my weight i have i have cabinet secretaries who are almost twice my age reporting to me in in some capacity i mean they report directly to the governor but when i have to when i have to deliver something from from the governor i i know this one gentleman wonderful man i could tell in his face he was looking at me like you're a child and you're dressing me down it's like no i never dressed anybody down of course not but um you know what i mean i mean i had to i had to put the shield and armor on to be able to go in and pull that off and you said something to me like that last week about you know luckily you learned to be an actress first because you had to go in and act as if that is the magic being you know not showing that you're scared being able to go in and uh act as if and then you you get the respect well you have an extraordinary facility for um having a two-hour meeting in 10 minutes i mean you can get to the essence of something it's kind of like cut to the chase give me the information and beyond that to really synthesize the information i mean the the work that that we that i got to do with you last year on the whole hmo reform package where we were you know my side and your side at first were not in agreement on how broad this was going to be how narrow this was going to be who was going to get what or whatever and it would seem like you would listen for five minutes and you would get it i mean i can imagine if you go back into this meeting today about whether california is going to have any water or not you will have grasped more details than anyone it's a great facility and i think a great skill and i guess the question is you've been kind of behind the camera as it were in most of your career do you think at all about running for office about you know using i won't say it's a better thing or going beyond i mean i think you are it's extremely important but i used to but i think two things politics has changed i don't i'm not willing to give up my personal life what what the sacrifice that you have to make in order to be an elected official is not one i'm willing to make and it's i have nothing but respect for for your ability to make that commitment but it's just not worth it i mean i've i've worked on 30 campaigns and i've seen people you know what can what can happen to people in the campaigns they lose all privacy uh you know it's it's a dirty business running campaigns uh and it's i'm sure it'd be different if you were in front of you know if you're if you're the candidate you do it for belief or you do it for the for the right reasons but i've seen too much behind the scenes on a staff level in terms of uh how it how you know you can be i've seen fabulous candidates who deserve to be in office who couldn't raise the money and got slaughtered by by people who just didn't didn't deserve the time of day you know because the the ability of money and negative campaigning to uh to destroy somebody i'm not willing to do that you know and i think and also being gay i'm not willing to to to make myself a target it's just not worth it and i can accomplish so much behind the scenes that uh i in and i enjoy it i mean i'm not i'm not giving something up i mean i have a lot of respect and i thought about running for office because you know that's where the action is um but uh there's a lot of action behind the scenes and i found there's there's some it's a creative place there's more art i think being behind the scenes uh it's it it you can it's not easy to create so it's not easy to help an elected official create something um an image or a a message or help them help help them get a message out to thousands or millions of people you know the craft involved in making that happen is pretty is pretty incredible and doing it now for an administration i mean we were i was there from day one when there wasn't a paper clip to be found in the entire horseshoe not a paperclip not a pen and it was like little mash units kept coming up in every pot of offices go go find a pad and some paper and let's have a meeting and um you know and no one knew what our phone numbers were no one knew what you know it just took a week to watch his government rise out of nothingness and to to shape an administration to shape the policies and to shape the um the the uh the message and and stuff is just really powerful i'm so lucky well i can't think of anything we'd have to say after that it's really been wonderful um having you here for our show it's been wonderful having you here too and to give you a look at the variety of who we are and what we do because you might be next in the halls of power so you better get used to it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you