Longshore Takes His Lumps While Learning the Legislative Ropes

Assemblyman Richard E. Longshore’s first few months in the capital have not been easy.

The freshman Republican from Santa Ana, Orange County’s newest assemblyman, was moved five times during Capitol office shuffles before finally settling into a cramped fifth floor suite a couple of weeks ago.

A chain smoker, Longshore found himself seated in the Assembly next to fellow Republican John Lewis of Orange, a clean-air advocate who told him not to smoke on the Assembly floor.

And then Longshore, who prides himself on being one of the more conservative members of the Legislature, cast a key vote to help Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) get a bilingual education proposal out of committee. He was promptly scolded by a fellow Republican who is carrying the party’s own bilingual education package.

“I think Dick thought he was getting some kind of concession out of the Speaker,” Assemblyman Frank Hill of Whittier said in an interview. “Willie can be impressive. He puts on his dog-and-pony show, and when you think he’s making concessions he’s just blowing smoke. Dick will learn that.”

But Longshore, who oozes enthusiasm for his job like a drill sergeant on the first day of boot camp, absorbs the bumps along the way as the price he’ll pay for the ride of his life. Longshore made two unsuccessful tries before finally winning the 72nd Assembly District seat, representing central Orange County, and he is just plain thrilled to be here.

“Sure beats the alternative,” he said last week with a wide grin.

Longshore, 60, is wasting no time moving forward with the conservative agenda he has espoused for years and which he is finally in position to attempt to carry out.

In a Legislature still controlled by the Democrats, many of Longshore’s proposals probably will be derailed. But that hasn’t stopped him from introducing 18 bills for this session, with prostitutes, pimps, teen-age criminals and welfare recipients chief among his targets.

Longshore sees himself as independent, and he says his vote with Willie Brown against his own caucus’ position is an example of that--but others say such moves are more a sign of inexperience or a lack of knowledge on the issues than of independence.

For example, Longshore, who spent 30 years in the Navy and normally is a supporter of veterans’ causes, recently voted against a bill by Assemblyman Richard Floyd (D-Hawthorne) that would establish a Vietnam Veterans’ memorial at the Capitol. Longshore said he opposed the bill because it would delay construction of any other war memorial until after the Vietnam memorial is completed.

“He distinguished himself as the only person in the Legislature who’s ever voted against the Vietnam veterans’ memorial,” Floyd said in disgust.

Floyd said Longshore, with whom he serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee, was “totally uninformed” on several issues. “Maybe if he hangs around for five or six years he’ll start to figure it out,” he added.

But Longshore said Floyd, like “a number of these liberals up here,” will always dislike him because he insists on asking questions the Democrats don’t want to answer.

“I’m going to ask questions and continue to ask questions about their bills until I find a common-sense solution to some of these problems,” Longshore said.

‘District Is Screaming’

Among his own bills, Longshore seems to most enjoy talking about those designed to crack down on pimping and prostitution. Sitting behind his desk in his sparsely decorated Capitol office last week, Longshore rubbed his hands together and let out a low, rumbling chuckle before describing how he hoped to make prostitution less profitable on the streets of Orange County.

“My district is screaming for this kind of thing,” Longshore said of his law-and-order agenda. “Somebody has to do something about it, and that’s what they sent me here for.”

Following are some Longshore proposals for dealing with various problems:

- Prostitutes--A Longshore bill would allow a judge to send a convicted prostitute to prison, rather than county jail, on the first offense, and would forbid probation or suspended sentences for any prostitute convicted twice.

Longshore said an ongoing problem with prostitution in his district prompted him to introduce the bill, and he said the added problem of prostitutes carrying the AIDS virus makes locking up hookers even more important. Longshore said he has heard of one case in Orange County involving a prostitute whom authorities were unable to keep off the streets even though they knew she had AIDS.

“They said, ‘Hey, stop it,’ and she said, ‘I’m sorry--I’m not going to stop it,’ ” Longshore said. “This would be a method of putting her in state prison and ensuring that she stopped it.”

- Pimps. Longshore would increase possible prison terms for convicted pimps and add more years to the sentences of pimps who work with prostitutes under the age of 18. Current law adds time for pimps who use prostitutes under 16 years old.

‘Slapped Hard’

“Eighteen years old is the legal age for voting and for other things,” Longshore said. “Anything under that, and a pimp or panderer should be really slapped, and slapped hard. He shouldn’t be allowed to get off the hook at all.”

- Harassing the elderly. Longshore proposes to give police the right to arrest someone for harassing or terrorizing senior citizens and to make such an arrest even if the officer does not witness the crime, as is the requirement for arrests on other misdemeanor charges.

- Welfare. Longshore says welfare recipients who win lottery jackpots can continue to qualify for aid if they spend their winnings or give them away before the next month’s welfare checks are distributed. His bill would classify lottery winnings as income, rather than a windfall, and provide for counting counted such income in determining a recipient’s eligibility for welfare.

“Society has given them a windfall of this nature, and they should be responsible to see to it that it’s properly utilized, not get rid of it in one month so they won’t get off the welfare rolls at the beginning of the next month,” Longshore said.

- Bilingual education. A foe of bilingual education as it is now practiced, Longshore wants to require that every school provide its pupils instruction entirely in English if their parents so desire. Under Longshore’s bill, schools could not fulfill the requirement by providing English instruction to such students within an existing bilingual class but would instead be required to provide classes taught only in English.

- Veterans. A Longshore bill would require that veterans seeking government benefits be treated the same as any other citizen rather than being sent to a special office to be handled separately. He says such treatment makes veterans feel like “second-class citizens.”

- Surrogate mothers. Longshore has authored two bills to regulate contracts between surrogate mothers and adoptive parents. One would require that all such transfers of babies be approved by the courts, as are other adoptions. The other would make unenforceable any contract through which an outside party could order a surrogate mother to abort a fetus.

Longshore sees himself as something of a populist, helping the little guy fight big government or overcome problems in society. He doesn’t wait for studies to show that problems are widespread before moving on them, he says. A newspaper story or an anecdote from a constituent can be all the motivation he needs to introduce a bill.

Avoid a Problem

Longshore introduced one piece of legislation he says is designed to help others avoid a problem he encountered with the bureaucracy. After his first wife died, Longshore said, it took him three years to remove her name from the voter registration rolls.

“Every time I went to the polls, I crossed my wife’s name out and wrote ‘deceased’ on there,” said Longshore, who has since remarried and started a second family. “Well, I got there early. But I got to thinking: If I hadn’t done that, what would prevent someone from coming in and saying, ‘I’m Gertrude Longshore’ (and voting)? Gertrude never would have been around to tell them otherwise.”

As a result, Longshore co-authored a bill to purge the voter rolls of the names of those who fail to respond to a notice from the registrar of voters, and he authored another measure that would require voters to show identification at the polls before receiving ballots. He said he had talked to constituents who had had experiences similar to his own.

“That’s the difference between me and Robinson,” Longshore said of his predecessor, former Democratic Assemblyman Richard Robinson. “That’s the difference between the parties. We’re talking in terms of individuals, and they’re talking in terms of groups. We’re trying to make life better for individuals, and they’re trying to make life better for groups.”