Hand in Hand
By Molly Rose Teuke
Although they sit on opposite sides of the aisle, Congresswoman Napolitano
and Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen are both passionate advocates of their
communities.
Congresswoman
Grace Napolitano
(D-California, District
38)
When 10 million tons of radioactive uranium ore
tailings threatened the health of 25 million Southern Californians,
U.S. Representative
Grace Napolitano (D-California, District 38) did what she does best:
She took action.
It was 1999, her first year in Congress,
when she heard about the threat. Though a now-bankrupt mining company
had deposited the uranium
tailings on the banks of the Colorado River in Utah, Napolitano knew
her constituents could be in danger. One-third of Southern California's
drinking water comes from the river.
'I’ve always
thought of myself as a voice for those who have no voice'—Congresswoman
Napolitano |
While the cleanup became the U.S. Department
of Energy's responsibility,
Napolitano also knew that more than the river's banks needed cleaning.
Her style is to frame policy issues in terms of human impact, then
finesse the policy implications.
"I'm not a policy wonk," she asserts. Yet,
as a member of the Committee on Resources and ranking member of the
House Water and Power Subcommittee,
she succeeded in forcing the question on uranium tailings and efforts
are now underway for safe disposal.
"The constituent issues Napolitano addresses often are rooted in policy
decisions, and she is a pro at demonstrating their human consequences,
much to her constituents' benefit. True to her style, she brought the
uranium issue very close to home: "I don't want my grandchildren to
glow 20 years from now," she says.
Napolitano's fierce loyalty to her constituents parallels her penchant
for direct action. "I hate letters," she says, "I pick up the phone
and call someone and say, 'Can you help me with this?' Together, we
can formulate solutions. You use your mind, your imagination, and your
contacts, and you make things work.
"My job is public service," she adds. "I've always thought of myself
as a voice for those who have no voice. It's not politics so much as
taking care of business at home. My commitment is first to my community-to
my district and those who elected me-second to my state and third to
my country."
Napolitano, 67, began her civic career as
a Sister City Commissioner in Norwalk, Calif., after raising a family
and retiring from a career
job at Ford Motor Company. In 1986, she won a seat on the Norwalk City
Council by a slim 28-vote margin. In 1992, she defeated six men to
win a newly created seat in the California State Assembly. In 1998,
she was elected to Congress from California's heavily Hispanic 38th District,
where she is now in her third term in Congress. "Every single first
election I've been through has been brutal," she says. Reelection is
a different story. She's never lost a race and garners remarkable percentages
of the vote-most recently 71 percent in her 2002 reelection to Congress.
That kind of voter loyalty may well stem
from Napolitano's ethic of
keeping a tight focus on what's going on in her own backyard. On the
city council she worked hard on redevelopment and transportation to
establish a more diversified economic base and create more jobs. In
the State Assembly, she was recognized as a champion for women, small
business, economic expansion, and job creation.
In Congress, her work on the House Small Business
Committee has enabled her to promote small business access to international
markets; to help
minorities, women, and new entrepreneurs secure business capital and
gain access to federal loan and assistance programs; and to fight for
high-wage jobs in the export market. She has secured economic development
funds for her district, including a $2.8 million Labor Department grant
for worker retraining and $4 million for redevelopment and reuse of
a former defense industry facility. Training funds have helped more
than 70 low-income women, many of them hispanas, learn new skills,
and ease California's nursing shortage.
Napolitano is also first vice chair of the
Congressional Hispanic Caucus and heads its International Trade Task
Force. "Small business
is the crux of my economy," she says, "and that means that while I
sit on three [congressional] committees, I've been more interested
in international trade, because that will help my constituents the
most."
In a classic Napolitano spin, she adds, "If
I help my businesses, I help my economy, and that will help the women
and the kids going
to college."
Earlier this year, at the start of the 108th Congress,
Napolitano founded the Congressional Mental Health Caucus, which now
numbers more than 70 representatives from both parties. As co-chair,
she is helping raise the standard in mental health care, particularly
for adolescents, children, minorities, and seniors.
When she learned from a 1999 study that young hispanas are
at higher risk of suicide than girls in any other ethnic or racial
group, she was able to secure $1.6 million for a suicide prevention
pilot program for the 38th District. Now in its third year,
the Adolescent Mental Health Program has been recognized as
a model of success.
When Napolitano reflects on her political
career, she looks back to where she started: community service. "It's about volunteerism, about
being part of the solution and not sitting back and bemoaning that
things are not what you'd like."
She adds, "Latinas are sometimes not allowed to be part of the solution.
They need to find the way to deal with their own issues and have the
right to choose their own path for growth.. If you can justify issues
to yourself, then all you need is your own integrity to carry you through.
Your passion and drive and sincerity will show, and people will become
your supporters because you stand for what you really believe in."
Seeing more women in public office at all
levels is one of Napolitano's
deepest hopes. "One of my proudest accomplishments," she says, "is
having women come up to me and say: 'Because I heard you talk and say
we can do anything, I ran for public office-and I got elected.' "
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen
(R-Florida, District 18)
Tackling tough issues is what U.S. Representative
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida, District 18) not only does best, it
is what she loves. Her playing
field spans the globe, but her home state is always a priority.
On Capitol Hill, she is widely regarded
as a player on international affairs and a defender of human rights
and democracy. To her constituents
in South Florida, she is known primarily as an advocate on issues that
hit closer to home: health care, children and the elderly, women and
health, education, victims' rights, and the environment.
“In many instances,
we don’t
have to reinvent the wheel—we just need to do a better
job of getting the information out there”—Congresswoman
Ros-Lehtinen |
For someone who fled Cuba with her family in 1952, the dual focus
makes a world of sense. She was just seven when her family came to
the United States. She knew only that she was being uprooted; it was
her parents who had a real sense of fleeing political upheaval.
"My father is responsible for my interest in
foreign affairs," she says. "Having lost his homeland to Communism, he
always talked about the loss of human rights, about the need for people
to be free. International issues became domestic issues for us, and it
remains that way for many individuals in our community. We thought the
revolution would last for days or weeks, but the weeks turned to months
and the months turned to years. We're still waiting for freedom to come
to Cuba."
It's not surprising, then, that Ros-Lehtinen was
instrumental in the passage of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity
Act of 1996, though her interest is not limited to that part of the
world. She currently serves on the House Committee on International
Relations, where she chairs the Subcommittee on the Middle East and
Central Asia and is vice chair
of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. She is also
former chair of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human
Rights.
Despite her global view, she keeps one foot firmly planted in her district.
She spent seven years in the Florida State Legislature: four in the House,
three in the Senate. In 1989, when the legendary U.S. Representative Claude
Pepper passed away, Ros-Lehtinen defeated 10 opponents to become his successor
in Congress.
Constituent service has always been central
to her political life, and she keeps tabs on a spectrum of issues. "Education is a primordial concern
to the Hispanic population because we have such a high number of youngsters
who do not complete high school," she says, noting that her district ranks
third in the nation in Hispanic population.
A scan of Ros-Lehtinen's radar screen reveals
her interest in scholarships for Hispanics, empowering Hispanas in the
job market, improving job opportunities
for all Hispanics, eliminating discrimination in the workplace, and establishing
retraining programs.
"Drug abuse among our young people is of increasing concern, as well," she
says. "We think it affects other communities and doesn't impact the Latino
community-but it does, and it can have very serious consequences."
Health care is one of the broadest issues Ros-Lehtinen
tracks, because it touches on so many aspects of her constituents' lives. And when her
father became ill last year, it "brought the health care issue to a more
personal level," she says.
However, she recognizes special needs among
women. "We Latinas have traditionally
been so caught up in taking care of our families that we forget to take
care of ourselves," she says. "We need more screenings, more preventive
health care, more pregnancy care for mothers, and more immunizations for
kids. We need to structure programs that will help women find the time
to get checked out and make it easy for them to bring their children, and
we have to offer programs in Spanish."
Many such programs exist, says Ros-Lehtinen, noting that the greatest
need is to get the word out on both the issues and the solutions. She does
that by holding briefings, press conferences, seminars, and town meetings,
and by speaking on Spanish-language radio.
"We can pass myriad laws, but it won't get people any healthier if they
don't know about programs already available to them," she says. "In many
instances, we don't have to reinvent the wheel-we just need to do a better
job of getting the information out there."
The same is true, she says, for another sensitive
issue in the Hispanic community: care of aging parents. "The Latino population
is very young, but we're also now dealing with an older population that
does not have the traditional family safety net, where abuela and abuelo would
stay with the family."
According to Ros-Lehtinen, more family members
are working and they're
stretched to the limit, but because of our traditional family structure,
we're reluctant to use the many excellent programs that are out there.
She adds, "We have to remove the stigma that we're less loving of our parents
if we are not able to take care of them ourselves. When my mother-in-law
passed away, for example, there was hospice care. We have to let the Latino
population know about such great services."
When she steps back from her work for a moment,
Ros-Lehtinen reflects that serving in Congress is an awesome responsibility. "It's a heady jump
for a kid who came here at seven and spoke no English," she says. "It says
not so much about me as about the opportunities we have. When I think about
what I really want to accomplish here, I want young people to say, 'Boy,
what she does is great, she gets to help a lot of people.' I want them
to see public service as a benefit to society."
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