It was 1981. I had just moved to California. I didn't know anyone, and I was still furious over the election of Ronald Reagan. So I decided to become a grassroots volunteer for the Democratic Party. I figured it was a way to meet like-minded people, plus I was idealistic enough to think I could change the world. What I didn't realize was how politics can consume your life.

I now consider myself to be a recovering activist, having spent 12 years performing every conceivable task in grassroots politics. Along the way, I've been part of some winning campaigns and some horrible losers. We won some big ones in Santa Barbara in 1982, and even bigger ones in L.A.'s South Bay in 1992. But in 1994, I walked away from it. It got to be too time-consuming--I did it all while holding a full-time job--and it had unique aggravations.

Here's a chronology:

1982-83: I was a volunteer for two victorious legislative campaigns in the Ventura-Oxnard area: Jack O'Connell for Assembly and Gary Hart for State Senate (not to be confused with former Colorado Senator Gary Hart). Both were ex-schoolteachers who emphasized environmental and education issues, and both won, Jack by only 1200 votes against a millionaire vintner named Brooks Firestone. Jack's victory in particular was a testament to the power of grassroots politics--I figure I probably got him at least 1200 votes myself just by walking precincts. Twenty years later, California voters elected him State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I also worked on Tom Bradley's unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign. I was elected vice-president, then president, of the Ventura County Young Democrats. Secretary of State March Fong Eu spoke at my swearing in, but instead of congratulating me, she offered her condolences. At some point I also became a member of the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee.

1984-85: By now I was living in Santa Barbara, and became involved with Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign. It turned out that I was the only one of the core group who had ever worked on a partisan campaign or attended a caucus. I got pegged to run the delegate-selection caucus, after which the state Jackson campaign kindly informed me that I had automatically become the Congressional District Coordinator. We ran a shoestring grassroots campaign and got about 12 percent of the vote. However, four years later, Jackson carried the city of Santa Barbara and picked up a couple of delegates in the area.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. During the primary campaign, a retired dentist/political activist named Murray Goldberg--who was also supporting Jackson--suggested that I run for a spot on the S.B. County Democratic Central Committee. I did, then he suggested that I run for chair! Although It was it was the county's official Democratic body, it was a moribund group and no one really wanted to be chair. So at age 25, attending my very first meeting of the committee, I became the Democratic Boss of Santa Barbara County. Too bad I didn't have any patronage jobs to hand out. It was a heady experience though; I'd bang the gavel and tell a bunch of lawyers (and a retired county supervisor) to be quiet--and they would shut up.

There followed the ill-fated Mondale campaign; one highlight for me was meeting veep candidate Geraldine Ferraro during one of her swings through California. I also ran the precinct operation for Jim Carey, an underdog candidate for Congress (we were trounced). On the bright side, Jack O'Connell, running for re-election to the state Assembly, handily defeated the county sheriff.

1986-87: Another ill-fated Tom Bradley for governor campaign, but we re-elected Sen. Alan Cranston in a squeaker. At the end of 1986, I passed the chair's baton to an attorney named Gloria Ochoa, who would later win an upset victory for county supervisor. Another member of our committee was Anita Perez Ferguson, who went on to run for Congress and then became head of the National Women's Political Caucus.

One highlight of 1987 was an Easter Sunday march on Reagan's ranch by a bunch of Vietnam veterans. It got ugly, though, when one of Reagan's neighbors ran his car into a few demonstrators. The other demonstrators piled onto the car, bashing in the windows with wooden crosses until a Secret Service agent aimed his shotgun at the crowd. At that point, Charles Liteky, a former Army chaplain who was one of the organizers, reminded everyone that this was how wars got started. Liteky had earlier renounced his Congressional Medal of Honor in protest of the Reagan administration's criminal policy toward Central America. Another marcher was Brian Willson, who lost his legs a few months later in an infamous incident involving a train at the Concord Naval Weapons Station. For some background on Reagan's Central America policy, see this and this.

In August 1987 I moved to Los Angeles to take a new job. But the political bug was too strong and I discovered a wonderful group of active Democrats in one of the most conservative parts of L.A. County, the South Bay area west of Long Beach and south of LAX.

1988-89: Again, I got involved with the Jackson campaign. I had written a small organizer's guide for the folks I was leaving behind in Santa Barbara. I discussed it with Mike Murase, the state campaign coordinator--he added some of his own material and we ended up with a campaign manual for grassroots Jackson organizers throughout California. As I mentioned earlier, the Santa Barbara folks did better than anyone had a right to expect. I played a more low-key role, helping out with the local Jackson effort in Venice. One highlight was meeting Ron Kovic, the Vietnam veteran who would later be the subject of Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July." He was a Jackson delegate from our area.

Jackson lost, of course, so then it was on to the ill-fated Dukakis for President campaign. Later that year I became the chair of the 51st Assembly District Democratic Committee and a member of the L.A. County Democratic Central Committee. Yes, I've been on the DCC's in three different counties.

1990-91: A strange period in which my boss, Jim Cavuoto, ran for Congress, losing by 200 votes in the primary. I was the precinct coordinator for Marilyn Landau, our sacrificial lamb--er, candidate--for State Assembly. We actually ran a strong campaign (considering our meager resources) and Marilyn, a schoolteacher in South Central L.A., carried a few precincts in the beach areas. I'd like to think that we were laying the groundwork for what was to come. . .

1992-93: This was the fairy tale year, thanks ironically enough to reapportionment, which was supposed to benefit Republicans. When Democrats drew the lines, they put as many Republicans as possible into a handful of districts, one being ours. Under the new plan, our solidly Republican district was carved into two slightly less Republican ones. Still, every pundit in the state pegged these districts as sure GOP wins. They didn't count on us having strong, well-financed candidates, they didn't count on the appeal of Bill Clinton, and they didn't count on us having such a strong grassroots effort.

Our A.D. committee, along with Assembly candidate Debra Bowen and Congressional hopeful Jane Harman, sponsored a united Democratic headquarters. We had some seed money but ended up financing most of the operation, including a huge phone bank, with the proceeds from sales of Clinton-Gore buttons and T-shirts. To get those buttons and T-shirts, we had committed to a large wholesale order, and we wondered at first if we'd be able to recoup our investment by the end of the campaign. We sold out in a week, the first sign of Clinton's strong appeal in that area. Soon, the state party was using the headquarters as a base for paid organizers who were targeting other areas. We told them that if they were going to use our facility, they should also provide a paid organizer for our area. The party complied, and so we got a full-time staffer to organize our volunteers.

An even bigger miracle was brewing in the other Assembly District, which stretched from Palos Verdes to Long Beach. There, the local Democrats had tried unsuccessfully to recruit an elected official to take on an entrenched Republican incumbent named Gerald Felando. No one was willing to run what was sure to be a losing race--Felando had even scared off a Democratic incumbent named Dave Elder who found himself reapportioned into the same district. So the A.D. chair in that area, a math teacher named Betty Karnette, decided to run just so there would be a Democrat on the ballot.

To make a long story short, we shocked the Republicans in our area by electing all three: Betty, Debra and Jane. The GOP pundits called them "borrowed seats," meaning the Republicans would win them back. But Jane and Debra survived two re-election bids. Jane, of course, ran for Governor (losing to Gray Davis), and is now back in Congress (she's the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee). Debra is now a state Senator. Betty narrowly lost her re-election campaign thanks to a $100,000 donation from Philip Morris to her 1994 Republican opponent, but she later won a state Senate seat. And what happened to Elder--the guy scared off by Felando? He moved into a heavily Democratic Carson-based A.D., where he planned a primary campaign against another Democratic incumbent named Dick Floyd. In this battle of Titans, victory went to... neither. They were defeated by a third candidate, Carson council member Juanita McDonald, who now serves in Congress. I had endorsed Juanita.

In 1993, I stepped down as A.D. chair, handing the gavel to an attorney named Bob Bohner. But things started to get unpleasant. Suddenly, our formerly Republican district was hot, and the political pros and ladder-climbers began moving in.

1994: The beginning of the end for me. A nasty State Senate race was looming. Ralph Dills, first elected to the legislature in 1938, decided at age 84 that he wanted one more term. Because he had been reapportioned out of his original district, he decided to move into ours.

Dills had begun his career as a progressive, but eventually became the worst kind of special-interest politician, taking tens of thousands of dollars from oil, gambling, and liquor interests, and then advancing their agenda in the State Senate. His environmental record was horrible, especially for a Democrat. In 1993, at the behest of the California Manufacturers Association, he introduced a bill that would have gutted the California Environmental Quality Act, the state's primary environmental protection law. Now he wanted to run in a coastal district where even many Republicans are environmentalists. He won in the Democratic primary over a candidate I supported, thanks in part to some underhanded campaign tactics. He then went on to win the general election, though the flak he caught from environmentalists caused him to improve his record on that score. He passed away in 2002. George Nakano, the Torrance city council member I supported in that race, is now in the State Assembly.

The campaign experience caused me to question my role as an activist, since much of my motivation had to do with countering the influence of monied special interests (and opposing Reagan's Central America policies). I later realized that I'm much more comfortable being the underdog--call it a personality quirk. The bottom line was that I could no longer put my heart and soul into those activities.

Still, the bug hasn't been completely cured--especially given the insanity that currently prevails in Washington. I spent 12 years accumulating these skills, and I'm willing to put them to some good use. If you need any advice on issues related to progressive grassroots politics--running campaigns, managing organizations, dealing with the media, etc.--send me an e-mail and I'll help out if I can.