Doris Allen’s Legacy

The political legacy of the late Assemblywoman Doris Allen may be that she was a harbinger of “kitchen-table” politics emerging in conservative Orange County. This divisive figure left her mark on Sacramento, where she became the first female speaker of the Assembly and was embroiled in political intrigue and bitter warfare within the Republican Party. But Allen’s lasting impact won’t be so much in the legislative political chambers, where the entire picture has changed since her brief ascent and unceremonious fall. It more likely will be in her role as the early wave of a new kind of moderate politician, emerging more now because of the county’s ethnic diversity. There is much evidence of that on the landscape today.

Within the orbit of Orange County politics, the term “moderate” can be a loaded moniker. For many, it means “Democrat masquerading as a Republican.” Two events in recent days revealed the depths of passion. Allen’s death brought to mind this decade’s battles for direction of the GOP in the county and within state politics. But the struggle for the middle inhabited by moderate Republicans, conservative Democrats and independents was evident elsewhere as well. When state Republicans gathered in Anaheim last weekend, they began the Saturday session in two camps, with “moderates” caucusing separately across the street from the Marriott hotel at the West Coast Anaheim Hotel.

As the county approaches a presidential election year, the future of government and politics once again is open for debate in a county often thought of as core conservative. This restive atmosphere suggests that the opportunity is ripe for competition between ideas for acceptance and dominance with the electorate. For the long term, this is a healthy development for politics and public policy-making in the new century for Orange County.

Allen made some disastrous political missteps in the Legislature, and she never got a break from the people in her own party who treated her badly as a woman in politics. But for all that turmoil, many of the ideas she stood for resonate today. She may not have been a visionary, but she entered politics, and brought to the arena an appreciation for the environment, education, gun control and other issues that have made their way on to the front of the public agenda.

In recent elections, concern with such matters has produced some stunning victories for Democrats in heavily immigrant central county districts. Republicans still are overwhelmingly dominant, retaining five of six seats in Congress and all but two seats in the Legislature. At the same time, they showed some softness in their ability to win allegiance from independents and crossover voters. The result was that the county now has a Democratic congresswoman, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, (D-Garden Grove) and there were victories in the state Senate by Joe Dunn and Assemblyman Lou Correa in the central county districts.

If Allen was confrontational in her dealings with party bosses, the ideas she stood for--education, environment, gun control, safety around schools--are the kinds of topics discussed in the family room. Both parties must reckon with them.