A Bay-Area Liberal in King Arnold’s Court
by Jason Elliott on September 17, 2007 in Features
Expectations are dangerous. That’s what I learned this summer.
I expected that working in a Republican Administration would be a masochistic but necessary exercise in demonstrating my commitment to the State of California. I expected to feel awkward all summer without my copy of “Atlas Shrugged” and my pocket squares, and with an abiding belief in a strong government. As it turns out, there are a lot of smart, principled people running the State of California who care more about good ideas than political expediency.
I’m a liberal Democrat from the San Francisco Bay Area. Taking a job with Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger this summer in sleepy Sacramento, California seemed antithetical to my political and policy interests, and silly in terms of planning for a career in Democratic politics and governance. But I care deeply about my home state, and I plan on spending my professional life there. With this in mind, I wanted to get a jump on it while still in grad school.
Career services set me up with an internship in the Office of the Special Advisor for Jobs and Economic Growth. My role was loosely defined: the governor’s close advisor and closer friend, David Crane, needed someone to do some thinking for him around greenhouse gas and economic development issues. California just passed a landmark piece of legislation, A.B. 32, which aims to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. To say this is a challenge is an understatement, and policymakers are struggling with ways to meet the targets.
I know a bit about environmental policy, I know a little bit about the state’s labor market and I know a lot about California. Armed with my regression calculator and an ability to fake my way through memos, I set about solving climate change through market mechanisms in California’s $1.7 trillion economy. I read a lot, I contemplated a lot and I wrote a lot. The summer turned out to be incredibly rewarding, not only because of the deliverables I created, but also because of what I learned about nonpartisan policymaking.
As a liberal, pro-labor Democrat working for a moderate Republican, I walked on eggshells the first few days, hoping to not alienate anyone with my leftward ideals. My boss and his deputy wasted no time putting me to work on weighty policy issues. But I was gun-shy at first about positing any policy that someone higher up could deem as thinly-veiled socialism, as conservatives often have a way of doing with any policy not explicitly anti-government.
It quickly became clear to me, however, that the people above me cared about California just as much as I do. Instead of checking my ideas against some predefined grid of politically acceptable policies, the litmus test was whether a proposal made sense for California’s economy and environment. After two semesters at KSG, tinged with cynicism about the American political system, this came as a splash of cold water to the face. Politics don’t exist in the Governor’s office the way they do in D.C. or even in the California State Legislature. Instead of a fanatical adherence to any compound words – pro-business, anti-welfare – I felt guided by an Administration-wide belief in classical economics combined with strong state oversight.
I left Sacramento with a reinvigorated sense of altruism about the power of governments to make changes for the better. I learned that assuming I can’t get along with Republicans is naïve and that a commitment to a place matters more than a donkey or elephant lapel pin. I’m a bit less anti-corporate than I was before the summer, and a bit more enthused about the ability of elected officials and their staffs to do good things for people. As much as I’ll miss beer and volleyball, this summer made me eager to get out there and start doing something.
This article is part of a longer series “Summer Dispatches.”
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