Chair's Blog

March 6, 2007 - Bob Hattoy - A Remembrance


By Rachel Binah, Chair Emeritus of the Environmental Caucus

Bob Hattoy founded the Environmental Caucus of the California Democratic Party. He knew that we must educate, support and occasionally prod Democrats to be the Party of the Environment. He was an inspiration, a friend and a fearless foe of those who harm our planet.

Flamboyant and always outrageously funny, Bob was a vain publicity hound with flashes of insecurity. He always needed reassurance -- "How was my hair on Nightline, last night? The make-up they put on made me look like Hitler."

Bob could never resist a barb or a jab at those in power. And he kept us laughing because he rarely, if ever, edited his clever thoughts. His mind worked triple-time. If he thought of a pun or joke, he simply was unable to suppress it. He was a master of the one liner and could have been a stand-up comedian. He invented environmental sound bites.

When he was critical of the Clinton White House, in which he worked as Liason to Congress for Environmental Affairs, he always joked about being transferred to the Interior Department's Bureau of Mining -- where he worked in the basement. He said if they had a sub, sub basement, or an actual mine, they would have put him there to keep him quiet and away from the media.

Recently, at a DC reception, as she was being sworn in as Chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee, Bob said to Senator Barbara Boxer, "I'm so used to criticizing the government that I forgot that with you, they'll be on our side now. I want to testify. Have a Hearing so I can testify!"

OBITUARIES

Bob Hattoy, 56; witty and outspoken advocate for the environment, AIDS research



By Elaine Woo, Times Staff Writer
March 6, 2007

Bob Hattoy, a brash, often brutally witty environmental advocate and political consultant who made headlines in 1992 as the first openly gay person with AIDS to address a national political convention, died Sunday at UC Davis Medical Center. He was 56. Hattoy died of complications of AIDS, said Adrianna Shea of the California Fish and Game Commission, of which Hattoy was president. A longtime Santa Monica resident who moved to Sacramento in January, Hattoy was well known in environmental circles as California regional director of the Sierra Club from 1981 to 1992. Soon after joining Bill Clinton's presidential campaign as an environmental advisor at the start of the 1992 primary season, he learned that he had AIDS-related lymphoma.

Two months later, he stood before thousands of delegates at the Democratic National Convention in New York City and assailed then-President George H.W. Bush for not making AIDS treatment and research a priority.

"Listen, I don't want to die. I don't want to die," Hattoy said at one point in the four-minute address when he fought to maintain his composure. "But I don't want to live in an America where the president sees me as the enemy. I can face dying because of a disease. But not because of politics."

The prime-time speech made Hattoy a "poster boy for AIDS," as he often jokingly described himself. After Clinton's election, he joined the White House staff as an associate personnel director but gained the most attention in his ad hoc role as administration critic.

His belittling of Clinton proposals to limit the deployment of gays and lesbians in the military was quoted on the front page of the New York Times and eventually led to Hattoy's redeployment to a less glamorous Washington job.

He told that newspaper in March 1993 that he "almost started to cry" when he heard Clinton say at a news conference that he would consider limiting the assignments of gay soldiers. Such a move, Hattoy said, would be akin to "restricting gays and lesbians to jobs as florists and hairdressers" in civilian life. By the next year, he was reassigned to the post of White House liaison on environmental matters at the Interior Department, where administration officials thought he would be less likely to be consulted about issues affecting gays and lesbians. He remained in the job until 1999.

He remained active as a political consultant and in 2002 was appointed to the Fish and Game Commission by then-Gov. Gray Davis. He became commission president in February. "Bob was just one of a kind," said former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, who often had to scold her longtime friend for his nettlesome remarks.

"He had a great sense of humor. He was quick with a line. He could never resist using it when he had it in his head. These things would just come out," Myers recalled in an interview Monday.

"The problem was that whatever he said was both funny and revealing. He wasn't wrong, but he wasn't necessarily helpful to the administration causeŠ. He had one foot inside and one foot outside. He was Bob first and foremost."

Hattoy was born in Providence, R.I., and moved to Anaheim with his family when he was in junior high school. His sharp wit was already getting him into trouble then, according to Joel Sappell, an editor at The Times who grew up with Hattoy. They both belonged to a Long Beach marching band, and the bandleader "used to scream all the time, 'Hattoy, shut up!' " Sappell recalled. Not surprisingly, Hattoy played the cymbals.

He bounced around from college to college, never earning a degree, and eventually drifted into politics. His first real job was working on rent control and environmental issues on the staff of then-Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

He joined the staff of the Sierra Club at a grim moment for environmentalists, who had lost many allies in Washington as a result of President Reagan's landslide victory, and inspired his colleagues with his irrepressible wit and energy.

Among his many one-liners is a comment he made comparing naming a national forest after Reagan to "naming a day-care center after W.C. Fields." During his presidential campaign, Reagan had outraged environmentalists when he said "A tree is a tree ‹ how many more do you need to look at?"

"Bob refused to get glum about everything or to say woe is we, which many were doing," said Carl Pope, the Sierra Club's longtime executive director. "He plunged into battles to protect the California coast as a happy warriorŠ. We won an enormous level of protection for the coast from the oil industry that, in the immediate wake of Ronald Reagan's victory, most people would have thought impossible." Hattoy also helped change the image of the environmental movement.

"He humanized the Sierra Club, which had often been thought of as an austere bunch of mountaineers like John Muir who only cared about rivers and mountains and didn't really relate to ordinary people who lived in cities. He put a different face on the Sierra Club," said Mary Nichols, who met Hattoy in the early 1980s and later worked in the Clinton administration as assistant administrator in the Environmental Protection Agency.

Hattoy was campaigning with Clinton in Portland, Ore., in May 1992 when he discovered a lump under his right arm. He had been diagnosed as HIV-positive two years earlier. He soon learned that the virus had progressed to lymphoma, and he began chemotherapy treatments.

Several weeks later, after an emotional conversation in which Hattoy told the future president what it was like to be diagnosed with AIDS, Clinton asked him to address the convention.

Hattoy beat the lymphoma and by July was sharing a standing ovation at Madison Square Garden with pediatric AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser, who had contracted the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion during childbirth. She died of AIDS in 1994.

During the 15 years he lived with AIDS, Hattoy battled recurrent pneumonia and other complications, including a bone marrow infection last month, but he had such long periods of good health that he often joked he would be the first person with AIDS to die of obesity.

Hattoy told friends that instead of a funeral he wanted four celebrations of his life ‹ in Los Angeles, Sacramento, New York and Washington D.C. They are being planned. He asked that his ashes be preserved in a martini shaker.



November 8, 2006 - The Day After

It's a shame that on such a great day in America, some of our best friends are not having such a great day.  

It was merely fortuitous that I happened to vote at the same time as Phil Angelides yesterday and had a moment with Phil & Julie before the press descended.  He seemed to be genuinely in good spirits, as did Julie and two of their daughters, despite the fact that the handwriting on the wall was all too clear.  I'm personally disgusted with the Monday (well, Wednesday) morning quarterbacking on the part of some Democratic consultants.  From the very start, when Steve Westley decided to get in the race, Phil was up against a stacked deck.  Sure, I take issue with some campaign decisions that were made, but it seems highly unlikely that there was anything Phil could have done to take the steam out of Arnold's sails.  Phil has been a great friend to many of us and to the Party generally.  He's a fine man, a very smart man, and he has much more to give.

I also have to express my personal sadness over the apparent demise of Cruz Bustamante's political career. As many of you know, I was fortunate enough to work for Cruz as deputy director of the Speaker's Office of Member Services.  I've never had a better boss than Cruz (no offense, Willie, Antonio or Hugsberg).  I wish him the best in whatever direction life takes him.

Beyond those sadnesses, however, it was a great day in America. The rest of our constitutional officer candidates all won, in most of them it wasn't that close. The Legislature remains firmly in Democratic hands.

The House is now solidly in Democratic hands as well, with a 28-seat swing and 10 still undecided; we picked up at least five Senate seats and, as of this writing, Webb holds what I would think is an almost insurmountable lead over Allen in Virginia. If that holds, Democrats will control the legislative branch for the first time in -- Jeez, I'm 63 and I can't remember that far back.

I know that every member of the Environmental Caucus had a hand in this national victory. From the checks you wrote, the precincts you walked, the hundreds of people you talked to on the phone, the meetings you organized, the campaign offices you opened, the trainings you gave, the young people you brought into the party, you are the spirit that gives the lie to Republican cynicism. No matter how bad it's looked out there -- and it's looked mighty bad -- you never despaired or gave up -- and now all that work and hope has been rewarded. The Republicans like to refer to us as a Godless party. I think God was with us yesterday. I haven't been to church in a long time, but before I went to bed last night, with things still up in the air, I got down on my knees -- literally -- and promised Whoever that if we took the Senate, I'd go to church on the following Sabbath. Looks like I'm going, whether to church or synagogue I haven't decided.

I want to give a nod to my fellow Caucus officers: Vice Chair Fred Keeley, Treasurer David Lanier and most especially to Secretary Barbara Graves, who will not rest until every last Democrat knows how to organize a precinct the right and most effective way.

Finally, I want to thank (and hug) my predecessor Rachel Binah for alerting me to the fact that Jerry McNerney could defeat Pombo, which got me to attempt to get all of you involved in calling for Jerry in that race. Thank you, Rachel darling.



November 7, 2006 - What are you doing today?

I suspect all members of the Environmental Caucus have been busy for weeks, months, years, preparing for today. Here's a few of the things I've been doing:
  • I did an afternoon of phoning for Jerry McNerney in his race against Rep. Richard Pombo. By all estimates, Pombo is among the worst environmental votes in the House, coupled by his immense power as chair of the Resources Committee. Hope we've done enough to end his career of eco-terrorism.
  • Walked precincts for Phil and Charlie Brown, our candidate running against John Doolittle, another incredibly awful Repug, even by Repug standards.
  • Helped organize environmental ammunition to use against Schwarzenegger for Phil (although in the end it didn't come to much).
  • This afternoon, I'm hosting a MoveOn phoning party at my house. About 20 people have signed up, and we will call into a tight congressional race until just before the polls close.

    • After the polls close, I still haven't decided what I'll do. Probably head over to the Sheraton and join Phil and others, but maybe just for a little while. I've had so many sad election nights in the past few cycles I'm tempted to stay home alone and savor the victories or...well, you know what the alternative is.

    We'd all like to know what everybody else has been up to. Send me a paragraph or two about how you participated this election cycle, especially if you were involved in some new interesting promising way to stir up our vote, and I'll post them in this spot. Also, anything you saw or heard that gave you ideas for how we can do better.

    Well, I'm off to the polls and then I'll start to prepare for the MoveOn party. Good luck to all of us...good luck to America! Today's the day the U.S. reaffirmed its opposition to emissions caps to halt global warming. Yippee.



    September 20, 2006 - 50 State Plan

    I remember lots of e-boards and conventions where many of us complained bitterly about the Party's ignoring areas of the state where they felt Repugs held an impervious advantage. But Art and Kathy have changed that a lot in California and, nationally, Howard Dean campaigned for and seems hell-bent on pursuing a 50-state strategy.

    I always have to remind myself that Bush won lots of so-called "red" states by a couple of percentage points. Lots of Democrats live in many red states!

    For the first time in decades, Democrats seem to have a true 50-state operation on the ground. Over the last year and half, they've invested in building the infrastructure for a permanent Democratic Party -- one that doesn't need to be rebuilt from scratch for every election. How is this going to pay off this November, in what could be the most momentous election in a decade?

    According to the DNC, "For the last 50 days before the election, Democrats will run a 50-state voter turnout operation for candidates up and down the ballot everywhere."

    This seems like the point to me. If we can get Democrats to vote in anything like the percentages that Republicans can routinely count on, we're gonna turn a lot of red states blue.

    I don't know about you, but I'm going to help by visiting this site.



    September 18, 2006 - 50 Days & Counting

    I both love and hate this time of year.

    I love it because I love politics, and politics is in the air.  If you want, you can eat, drink, sleep and dream politics 24 hours a day.

    And on November 8th, it'll be over.  Win or lose, that's the time I hate.  The adrenalin drains out of your body as if the plug had been pulled on your tub.  Victory (or sad consolation) parties are over and you are by yourself again, alone to contemplate the future of our state, our country and our world.

    And we've all been here before: the frantic letters, emails and phone calls from the various campaign operations pleading for our last-minute contributions, all of them assuring us that the polls show we can win, win back the House, win back the Senate, win the Governor's race, hold the state constitutional office and defeat McPherson, etc.

    One thing about political party operatives & fundraisers, Republican and Democrat alike: they manipulate us.  They spin the polling numbers, they spin the various races, and we won't know if they were telling us the truth or not until after the election or even then. I sort of forgive them, they have to raise the money, but it doesn't mean we weren't manipulated.

    Still, we live in hope, and we give.  Most of us are the kinds of people who give more than we can really afford, both of our funds and our time.

    And, as you give, you also can't help but wonder what group is going to use your money most judiciously, most wisely.  The DCCC?  The DSCC?  The DNC?  The Angelides campaign?  What about the campaigns of the downticket candidates like Bowen, Garamendi, Lockyer, Bustamante, Chiang or Jerry Brown? Or one of the 527 committees like Move On that are targeting the most progressive candidates or the League of Conservation Voters, targeting the strongest environmental Democrats?

    Well, as Chair of the Environmental Caucus, as much as I like the idea of giving through LCV, I'm doing most of my giving directly to Democratic Party organizations.  I'm understand that groups like the DCCC are focussed entirely on winning enough seats to give the Speakership to Nancy Pelosi even if some of the Democrats elected are too far to the right for some of our tastes.

    This is a very hard message to give to the average voter, whose party loyalty is not necessarily paramount, and who doesn't think very much about whether the House is in Democratic or Republican hands.  And all of us in the Environmental Caucus have had many moments of despair over the votes of some of our elected officials on environmental issues.

    But the one thing we Democratic activists understand is that it's a numbers game.  If we capture the Speaker's office, we also capture the Resources Committee chairmanship.  That means Richard Pombo with his 6% LCV voting record is gone and that Nick Rahall of West Virginia with his 83% LCV voting record is in.  Rahall who supports the ESA, opposes drilling in ANWR, etc., will set the environmental tone of the House.

    So as we are down to the last 50 days, it's time to break out the checkbook or the credit card.  My personal priorities are going to be Phil (because he's going to redefine environmentalism in California), the DCCC (because the idea of SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi sends shivers -- good shivers -- up my spine), the DSCC (because with a Democratic Senate we can put ANWR behind us forever and start investigating the shit out of the war crimes this dastardly president has perpetrated), the CDP (because Art & Kathy will make sure our money is well-spent on behalf of our statewide candidates) and if I have anything left over after that...well, I probably won't.

    OK, that's it for now.

    Luke