If ever you needed a reminder that our nation has always been a confederation of diverse states united only when facing a common enemy, re-read Democracy In America, Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 masterpiece.
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“There are twenty-four small sovereign nations, whose agglomeration constitutes the body of the Union.”
That diversity is currently on display in Congress, where party affiliation is just one of the differences between representatives. It’s also on display in the California Legislature, where representatives of the most diverse population in the country labor to find common ground. Yesterday, GFC Legislative Affairs Director Rick Rivas and I traveled to West Covina to present a GFC Courage Award to one of those representatives, Blanca Rubio.
With our assistance, Blanca has obtained greater value and health from Medi-Cal spending and is sponsoring a bill to lengthen the time period before California grants tenure to teachers, a change that won’t easily be embraced in a legislature that for decades only special interests paid attention to.
No magic bullet can fix California’s governance. It will take decades of trench warfare in the Legislature to reverse the damages caused by decades of our collective failure to help legislators resist special interests. That doesn’t take a lot of money, just a lot of persistence. Thank you for your participation.
