I don't often write on or speak about my years in California politics. It's just a position that I took when I moved to Idaho 18 years ago. Nobody wants to listen to a new kid moving into a neighborhood who says "when I lived back in my old city, I did such and such..." Now is now, then is ...ancient history.
Dennis and Susan Mansfield, of old and ancient Californian days...
However, I came across an article in the NY Times by Samuel Freedman that made me reevaluate my position.
I've pasted the full article below for your reading, but wanted to give a brief preamble to the Times' article. Here now is the confession of a recovering Californian....
- My first few years in politics were spent helping conservatives in LA county, notably David Dreier, of Covina, who was elected to US Congress. He lost in '78 and won in '80, becoming one of President Reagan's key Congressman (and an intial and influential supporter of Pres. Bush The First). He's served ever since. I continue to admire him greatly.
- I was on the initial team in LA County helping Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann with Proposition 13.
- In 1980, at 24 years of age, I ran for US Congress in CA's 36th CD, losing to a Religious Right candidate (how funny!)
- In '82 I ran Bob Henly for State Assembly and through that experience, I met the GOP Assembly Minority Leader, Pat Nolan.
- In '82 I became the Chief of Staff for newly-elected Assemblywoman Doris Allen. It was in that position that I came face to face with Pat Nolan's group of elected tough guys who called themselves "The Cavemen" - because they did what they wanted to do by sheer power. Doris Allen was one of their "investments". She later was recalled from office as a political party traitor.
- Nolan's Cavemen ethically travelled right next to "the line" and I did not like it. Because of my new-found faith in Christ, I initiated an investigation of them by CA's Fair Political Practices Commission, ultimately being fired from my Assembly staff position - because I was not a team player. That investigation went nowhere.
- Pat Nolan, however, later went to Federal Prison on other charges...and I moved to Idaho.
- After he served his time, Chuck Colson of Prison Fellowship reached out to him; a change had occurred in Pat's life while in prison. This is how Pat told the NY Times: “I went into prison believing in God, and I came out knowing him,” he said. “I understood how much he loved us, even in a dark place.”
- I heard of his change. About 9 years ago, Pat Nolan and I were reconnected at a public policy meeting in Colorado Springs. We hugged as only two brothers who had not seen each other for years could hug. It was quite amazing.
- Today, all these years later, Pat Nolan provides an excellent example for me of the need to reach across idealogies and bringing people together.
I hope you enjoy reading this NY Times piece on Pat Nolan and Mark Early, former Attorney General of Virginia. Here's a sneak preview of Mr. Earley's transformation: "In those moments of recognition, Mr. Earley began a startling transformation from a tough-on-crime crusader to an advocate for prison reform and a prominent critic of the very type of drug laws he had formerly promoted".
I can relate,
Den
Unlikely Allies on a Former Wedge Issue
Correction Appended
During his years as the attorney general of Virginia, Mark Earley periodically visited his state’s prisons. In a very real way, he was looking at the human consequences of his career as a public servant, the men and women jailed for fixed, lengthy sentences without parole under laws Mr. Earley had endorsed. Not surprisingly, many inmates pulled back a few steps when introduced to their visitor.
Mark Earley with a cross made by a Colombian inmate.
Eventually, though, Mr. Earley took their measure. What he discovered, he recalled in a recent interview, were “not the Ted Bundys, the mass murderers” but “kids who reminded me of my kids, serving 5, 10, 15 years for drugs and going out and being rearrested again.”
In those moments of recognition, Mr. Earley began a startling transformation from a tough-on-crime crusader to an advocate for prison reform and a prominent critic of the very type of drug laws he had formerly promoted. Since leaving the attorney’s general’s position in 2001, Mr. Earley has taken his new cause to a position as president of Prison Fellowship Ministries, a national organization based in the Washington suburbs.
Motivated both by religious faith and a secular analysis of public policy, Mr. Earley and the fellowship’s vice president, Pat Nolan, a former California legislator, have regularly testified before Congress, written op-ed essays and given speeches on behalf of efforts to roll back mandatory-minimum sentencing, equalize penalties for crack and powder cocaine, and offer nonviolent offenders treatment rather than incarceration, among other initiatives.
On the surface a redoubt of the religious right, firmly rooted in evangelical Christianity and conservative politics, the Prison Fellowship Ministries’ liberal position on such issues underscores the increasing irrelevance of such rigid categories.
The group’s role in criminal justice bears similarity to the stance taken by evangelical leaders like Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church in Southern California, on global warming, AIDS prevention and Third World poverty.
“What’s distinct is that we’re in an ‘Aha!’ moment now,” Mr. Earley, 53, said in a phone conversation. “The crime issue used to be such a driving wedge between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and now it’s not. In the presidential campaign this year, when have you heard crime as a wedge issue? It’s a common-ground issue, and no one would have envisioned that in the ’70s and ’80s.”
Indeed, an earlier, opposite version of bipartisanship during the 1990s led to the proliferation of severe antidrug laws and a boom in prison construction. President Bill Clinton in 1994 introduced a $30 billion anticrime bill, a main element in his effort to move the Democratic Party toward the center, if not the right, on the law-and-order issue.
To whatever degree the pendulum has now swung toward second thoughts about drug laws, the efforts of a group like Prison Ministry Fellowship have been both a cause and an effect.
What is indisputable is that those efforts have made for an unexpected coalition. While heading into the Capitol one day last year, Mr. Nolan recalled, he was spontaneously embraced and called Baby by Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat, who had been his political antagonist when both served in the California Legislature.
“What the Prison Fellowship brings to the discussion is a different approach, a different perspective, that says this is not a liberal-versus-conservative debate,” said Marc Mauer, the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a group based in Washington, D.C. “This is about what is effective policy and compassionate policy.”
Last year the prison-reform movement won Congressional passage of the Second Chance Act, which supports job training, education and other services for prisoners being released. Also in 2007, the federal Sentencing Commission amended its guidelines to stop penalizing crimes involving crack more severely than those involving powder cocaine. The governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, a Republican, reversed the state’s lifetime ban on voting by felons.
What brought Mr. Earley and Mr. Nolan into the debate was a mix of factors. Before their arrival, Prison Fellowship Ministries — founded by Charles Colson after he served a prison sentence for his role in the Watergate scandal — had already staked out reformist positions on prison rape and prisoner rehabilitation. Mr. Earley referred to his political evolution as “an attitude-adjustment by God.” Mr. Nolan, 58, experienced his own road-to-Damascus moment while serving a two-year prison sentence in the mid-1990s on a corruption charge.
“I went into prison believing in God, and I came out knowing him,” he said. “I understood how much he loved us, even in a dark place.”
Practical reasoning coincided with revelation. Nationally, Mr. Earley had seen the population of state and federal prisons triple to 1.5 million over 20 years, and spending on corrections increase by 125 percent. The result, he came to believe, was that “the people we sent to jail were coming out without rehabilitation, without drug treatment, more bitter and more antisocial than they went in.”
Not every precinct of the religious right has been persuaded. Julie Stewart, president of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said her organization had been repeatedly rebuffed by Focus on the Family, the influential and powerful group led by James Dobson. Still, the drug war’s dissidents now clearly exist on both sides of the partisan and ideological divide.
“In a way, that’s a religious experience, too,” Mr. Nolan said of the unlikely alliance. “Doesn’t the Bible tell us the lion and lamb should lie down together?”
Hey Dennis and Sue it's Nikki from across the street in Rialto. I tried to send you an email, but it showed an error so send me an email so I can write back and we can catch up. I remember your CA days.
Posted by: Nikki Crowe | July 07, 2008 at 06:15 PM
Den and Sue my email is mcmahoncountry@hotmail.com, Nikki
Posted by: Nikki Crowe | July 07, 2008 at 06:30 PM
Hi Nikki!
How fun is that...thanks for connecting with us. Best email address for us is Dennis@DennisMansfield.com. Love to catch up on you, John, Ethan, etc.
Dennis
Posted by: Dennis Mansfield | July 07, 2008 at 11:58 PM