women in politics – RI Future

October 24, 2013

Interview: Gayle Goldin on election year lawmaking (Part 3)

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Freshman Sen. Gayle Goldin (Democrat, District 3 – Providence) won national praise for Rhode Island this session when she helped shepherd through legislation that expanded the state’s Temporary Disability Insurance to cover workers who need to take time to care for a new addition to the family or a seriously ill relative. Recently, she was kind enough to sit down with RI Future for a wide-ranging interview. The following transcript has been lightly edited for written media.

Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.

RI Future: Given that that would actually be a pretty controversial move in 2014, I’ve heard observers cynically remark that nothing big happens in an election year in the General Assembly, what’s your opinion on that kind of sentiment?

Gayle Goldin: I think big pieces of legislation pass when there’s the will to get them done. The value of an election year is that it’s an opportunity for constituents to be even more engaged with their elected officials and share with them their ideas about what is really important to them.

RIF: Given that 2014 will be an election year, if it yields a governor elected as a Democrat, do you think that relationship between the governor and the General Assembly will change much?

GG: I feel like as a new member of the Senate I can’t really talk too authoritatively about that, certainly I have worked with Chafee’s staff on my legislation this year, I have worked with different parts of the administration on that legislation, and I would assume that would continue, but I don’t really know all the levels of relationship. I only know my personal experience.

RIF: 2014 is also likely to see a vote on whether we have a constitutional convention, what are your thoughts on that?

GG: Our last constitutional convention was 1986, which is before I moved here. I have spoken to a lot of advocates about their opposition to having a constitutional convention. One of the things I really understand from those conversations is the level of risk to important issues that can come up through the process. I went back and looked at the ballot questions from 1986 and you can see how important issues, like reproductive rights, can be at risk during a constitutional convention. I think we can really see how many issues that are important to the progressive community come up to play and can be manipulated inappropriately through this process, given the amount of money that could now come into the state to sway the outcome of the convention.

October 23, 2013October 24, 2013

Interview: Gayle Goldin on voter ID, economic sustainability

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Read Part 1 here of the interview here.

RI Future: When you ran for office, your letter says you have a “commitment to the economic sustainability of families.” What does “economic sustainability” look like for you?

Gayle Goldin: For me it’s that everybody earns a living wage, that we recognize that working families are critical to keeping our economy going, and so those are things that are important to me, like paid family leave, like raising the minimum wage, insuring that we have full access to healthcare. All those thing that we have that I think help families be able to meet their own family needs and live in a society where our economy can flourish because of it.

RIF: Given your background with immigration, what do you think of the state’s current immigration policy, and are you happy with this?

GG: Immigration policy is primarily federal law, so I don’t know that there’s anything really going on on the state level at this moment. Is there something in particular that you were thinking about?

RIF: Well, allowing undocumented immigrants to get in-state rates in schools, and some people believe that if you’ve arrived here without documents you shouldn’t be allowed to access any kind of services.

GG: As I tell people, my parents moved to the United States when I was 7-and-a-half; they did so legally and I was in the country legally; but certainly as a 7-and-a-half-year old, I had absolutely no control over where I was moving or whether or not that was legal. I think it is really short-sighted if we do not ensure that people who moved here as children don’t have access to things like higher education merely because of a decision their parents made that they have no control over.

RIF: So you’re coming up on your second year of office, what do you think your biggest priority is going to be?

GG: I introduced legislation to repeal Voter ID, which while I had a very successful year my first term I was not successful in moving Voter ID. So I’ll be focusing on that again, and certainly I feel the 2014 deadline both because the law will roll into full effect in the election, and the election cycle itself will hopefully put the emphasis in getting that piece of legislation addressed, in some way. So that’s a real priority for me. There’s a variety of other things I’ve been researching and exploring about different functions within the state government that I would like to improve. I serve on the Health committee, and one of the things we oversee is DCYF [the Department of Children, Youth & Families]. I have been involved in child welfare policy and adoption rights for many years, so just trying to see if there are any gaps in DCYF that can be addressed through legislation or statutory change are some of the things that I’m looking at. And there are other pieces that are still in the research point, but I absolutely do want to go back to repealing Voter ID. Also, I think the health exchange will probably be something that the General Assembly will continue to have conversations about as it gets rolled out.

RIF: If you could make one piece of legislation happen on Day 1 of 2014, what would it be?

GG: That’s a good question… I really do think it would be addressing our Voter ID law. I feel that is critically important to the way we view people’s rights on voting and our access to voting, so I’d really like to make sure that gets done… Nothing really gets done in a day in the General Assembly. [Laughs]

Read Part 1 of this interview here. Part 3 will be published tomorrow.

October 22, 2013October 22, 2013

Interview: Gayle Goldin on the General Assembly

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RI Future: So Rhode Island’s seen a lot of female leaders stepped up and come to the fore in public life, but recently RI Public Radio’s Ian Donnis pointed out that less than a third of GA membership in the Democratic Party is women and less than a fifth in the Republican Party are women. Given that the most recent census estimate for Rhode Island is that over half our population are women, how do we rectify that imbalance and what policies can the General Assembly take?

Sen. Gayle Goldin: We rank 18th in the country in terms of the number of women in our General Assembly. Colorado is number one, and 42% of its General Assembly is female, so we have a ways to go to reach that first slot that Colorado has. I think that it’s not necessarily a role of the General Assembly itself, although I think having a woman as Senate President, and she is one of only a handful of women in the country serving that role, makes a difference. There many organizations that work on trying to increase the number of women in office. In my day job, I work at Women’s Fund of Rhode Island, and one of my tasks is overseeing the Women’s Policy Institute, which is designed to get more women engaged in public policy, generally and to really increase the voice of women in the policy arena. But there are many other organizations that work directly to recruit women into running for office and to support them in doing so. There’s been a whole host of research that identifies what various barriers are, and why women choose to run or don’t choose to run. I think certainly policy changes that are systemic changes to the way we work and live in general will increase the number of women who will also run for office.

RIF: So what would those policy changes be?

GG: Paid family leave was a big initiative of mine and a driving force behind that is because I believe having policies like that will create a more equitable society where both men and women can be engaged in the roles that they want to be engaged in. When we have universal childcare, when we invest in pre-kindergarten, when we make sure that we have eliminated the gender wage gap, women will more easily access all the roles they want to take, and that’s where we’ll hit a point where more women are holding office.

RIF: What was the most difficult part in transitioning to being a state senator from when you were a regular citizen?

GG: Well, I think that, and the literature certainly bears this out in terms of other women running for office, that fundraising is a very difficult task. I have been in the nonprofit sector almost my whole entire career and I have no problem fundraising for a nonprofit organization, but it’s a much different thing to shift and say “if you invest in me, then I’m working towards goals to change our society” and while I know people are really invested in those goals and really want to make them happen, it’s a dynamic shift go from fundraising for an organization to fundraising for your own campaign and I think that was one of the biggest challenges for me.

RIF: So was it harder to sell yourself than a cause… but you’re still selling a cause, right?

GG: [Laughs] Right. You’re still selling- yes! But there is a moment where you have to recognize that it’s okay to ask for money for yourself to help that cause and move that cause forward.

RIF: To me, it seems that the General Assembly has a set of traditions and unofficial rules that aren’t really written down that it’s just picked up over the years of operating. How do you go about learning all those? What’s the process for that?

GG: I’ve done public policy research and advocacy for many years through work and volunteering, so I’ve been up in the General Assembly in different capacities before and certainly that helps. I think that helps anybody who runs for office if you’ve already testified in hearings and seen what the system is, then you can understand it better. The staff in the Senate are absolutely incredible, and have been a wonderful resource in just understanding the plenty of written rules that you know you need to follow as well! I’ve really relied on the staff helping me figure out how to maneuver through my first year, and certainly many of the other senators have been very welcoming to the freshman class and have helped us understand how to do our jobs better.

RIF: What ways does the staff help?

GG: It can be from as simple things as in the first week of session… so sometimes the General Assembly will recognize the death of somebody or some significant event by reading a bill on the floor, and so in the first week of session, there was a condolence for somebody who had passed away and just not even realizing that it’s our job to stand up as basically seconding that as a way of showing our condolences. So just having staff behind me saying “okay, you need to stand up now” [laughs]. It’s as simple as learning those kinds of rules to really understanding what are the roles we can take within hearings, what kind of questions we- well not what kind of questions we can ask, but if my angle is to change public policy in a certain way, how can I best use my role as a state senator to do so.

Read the second part of Sam Howard’s interview with Sen. Gayle Goldin tomorrow.