Longshore Kept Hard to His Tasks Until His Last Breath

There are few symbols of power in the Capitol clearer than the size and location of a legislator’s office: the smaller the space and the farther from the action, the less clout the lawmaker possesses.

But when the Assembly leadership shuffled newly elected Richard E. Longshore from office to office in early 1987 before finally finding him a cramped, out-of-the way cubicle on the fifth floor, it didn’t faze him.

Longshore was so happy to be here he probably would have worked out of a basement closet if they had installed a phone and a desk and given him the key.

Longshore, a Santa Ana Republican, had run and lost twice in the 72nd Assembly District before winning election in 1986. By then he had matured from being an unknown but dogged Republican activist to a serious candidate who could not be ignored by the local GOP leadership or the statewide Republican organization.

Although he already had completed a 31-year career in the U.S. Navy and, at 60, was nearing retirement age when he was elected to the Legislature, Longshore relished his new post with a child-like exuberance.

Ultimately, Longshore’s love for the job may have played a role in his death.

Though he was hampered for months by nagging illnesses, Longshore did not heed the warnings of doctors, friends and colleagues who urged him to go home and get some rest. He kept up the weekly commute to Sacramento even when, too weak to walk, he was forced into a wheelchair.

Losing his voice, Longshore spoke in a barely audible whisper. When that proved too much, he sat mute in his seat on the Assembly floor while colleagues presented his bills and introduced his guests in the chambers.

Finally, pneumonia attacked Longshore’s lungs and his body lacked the strength to repel it.

Longshore died June 8 at Sacramento’s Sutter Memorial Hospital, with his wife, Linda, at his side.

“We pleaded with him to stay home or check into a hospital,” Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) said later. “But he wanted to be here every minute.”

Longshore’s doggedness stemmed in part from the emergence this year of a group of rebellious Democrats known as the “Gang of Five.” The Assembly Republicans needed every one of the 36 GOP votes in that house, combined with the five dissident Democrats, to form a 41-vote coalition that pushed through several controversial criminal justice bills.

In that context, Longshore, though not a powerful legislator, was as important as any member of the caucus. The joy of casting such decisive votes seemed to compensate Longshore for the frustration he had felt when he realized how hard it would be to implement his conservative agenda.

Upon arriving in Sacramento, Longshore had announced proudly that he would toughen prison sentences for pimps and prostitutes, crack down on teen-age hoodlums and make sense out of a bilingual education system that he believed had gone awry.

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

By the end of his first year here, Longshore, with his bills mired in committees dominated by the opposition party, conceded that he faced a long haul. But he expected to have time to complete his task.

“You have a lot of ‘new broom’ ideas,” Longshore said last September. “You’re going to come in and reform the world. But you find out that reforming the world takes a little longer than you had thought. You can’t sweep it clean in one day.”