Speier Expects Historic Niche in Assembly as Its First Mother

Sometime around July 25, Assemblywoman Jackie Speier expects to become the first modern California legislator to give birth while holding office. Such a happy event would have appeared unthinkable less than a decade ago.

In November, 1978, she was an aide to Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.) and accompanied his investigating party to cult leader Jim Jones’ commune in the Guyana jungle.

She was shot five times in the fusillade that was rained on the group of investigators, journalists and Jonestown defectors as they prepared to depart from a nearby airstrip.

Ever since, her life has been a series of risks, most of which paid off. She was elected two years ago to the Assembly seat Ryan once held.

Historic Occasion

“It’s historic in one sense,” the 38-year-old South San Francisco Democrat said of the impending birth.

Only 37 women have served in the 120-member Legislature, according to the staff of Sen. Rose Ann Vuich, who became the state’s first woman senator in 1976. Seventeen of them are in the Legislature now, the largest number ever.

“Most women,” Speier said, “came into the Legislature early on to fill the uncompleted terms of their husbands, who died in office. Then, when women were elected in their own right, they were already the mothers of children.”

Capitol old-timers are confident that Speier is the first legislator ever to give birth while in office, but no one is able to speak with assurance about the early women lawmakers.

Women Elected in 1918

California gave women the right to vote in 1911, nine years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution supplied it to all American women.

In 1918, an entering class of four women was elected to the Assembly, and since then the Legislature always has had at least one woman member, according to “California’s Legislature,” a book by former Assembly Chief Clerk James Driscoll.

In the modern era, Gloria Molina was pregnant while in the Assembly, but gave birth last year after she won a special election to the Los Angeles City Council.

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke served in the Assembly from 1966 to 1972, but waited until she was elected to Congress to become a mother.

The irony of the horror that Speier endured in Guyana is that she is convinced that she would still be a staff aide in Washington, D.C., had it not happened.

When she went to Guyana with Ryan, she was buying a home in Arlington, Va., and had just accepted a job as counsel for a subcommittee of the House Governmental Operations Committee.

After meeting with Jones in his People’s Temple commune, Ryan left with 17 staff members, reporters and photographers and 20 of Jones’ followers who wanted to return to the United States.

At the airport, the party was ambushed by a truckload of Jones’ henchmen, who fired automatic weapons into the crowd.

Ryan and four others died. Speier, seriously wounded, escaped being riddled with more bullets by feigning death, and spent 24 agonizing hours, fully conscious, waiting for help to arrive.

She was hospitalized for two months and underwent 10 operations. Doctors decided against removing two of the bullets.

“I guess when I was lying on that airstrip thinking it was all but over at the age of 28, I could not have ever dreamed that the next 10 years would take the various turns in the road that they did,” she said. “And I wouldn’t change it for a minute.

“I attribute the breadth of experience I’ve had in the last 10 years to that experience. If you learn nothing else from almost losing your life, you learn that it is very precious, and it is important to take risks because there may be no tomorrow.”

Defeated in First Bid

She was barely out of the hospital when she ran for Ryan’s congressional seat. She finished third in a field of 11 candidates but was left with the feeling that she would win election to some other office if she tried again.

In 1980, she was elected to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, defeating a 20-year incumbent. She was reelected four years later, then set her sights on the Assembly in 1986.

In the Democratic primary, she faced Daly City Mayor Mike Nevin, who had the backing of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and his allies. Nevin also happened to be the brother-in-law of Assemblyman Patrick Johnston (D-Stockton).

A Narrow Victory

She won the primary by 555 votes, little more than 1% of the total cast, then won the general election handily in a district that is safely Democratic.

On the day she was sworn in, Larry Layton, the sole Jonestown survivor to be charged in the massacre, was convicted of murder. Speier learned of it on the floor and wept openly.

In Sacramento, she has been building a record around consumer, environmental and family issues and is often associated with the “Grizzly Bears,” the Assembly’s most liberal Democrats.

She made amends with Brown early and, as one of his supporters, has benefited from the turmoil set off by the rebellion of the “Gang of Five” Democrats in the lower house.

Named Democratic Whip

When Brown punished the dissidents by stripping them of committee assignments, she replaced one as Democratic whip and took another’s seat on the influential Ways and Means Committee, the Assembly’s budget-writing arm.

She also sits on the Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee, the Health Committee and Natural Resources Committee.

Perhaps the most notable success of her freshman term is Gov. George Deukmejian’s signature on her bill that makes judges available after hours to issue restraining orders over the phone to police officers in domestic violence cases. The law went into effect July 1.

She has emerged as the Legislature’s leader in a movement to reduce the marathon work shifts of hospital residents and interns.

Married Last August

She introduced a bill to limit those hours, but was unable to move it over opposition from the medical and hospital industries.

She scaled her measure back so that it now would require only a study of the economic feasibility of limiting hours, and last week it won approval on the Assembly floor. She has vowed to pursue the issue in the years to come.

Last August, she married Steven Sierra, chief of the emergency department at Chope Community Hospital in San Mateo.

They got to know each other while serving together on a county task force to combat sexual assault.

For their first date, he invited her to watch a videotape designed to help teach medical personnel how to preserve evidence for prosecutors while treating rape victims.

Bullet Still in Pelvis

“The humorous thing about all this,” Speier said, looking back at the decade, “is that it was never really clear I could have children because one of the bullets is still in my pelvis. So you can imagine my surprise when the litmus paper turned blue on the home pregnancy test.”

Like many affluent working mothers, she will be hiring a nanny to look after her son--doctors have told her to expect a boy--so she can juggle her maternal responsibilities with her legislative duties.

And like members of other legislative families, the baby will be shuttled between homes in the district and Sacramento.

“We’ve just ordered two cribs and two chests of drawers,” Speier said.

And from her experience is emerging a new political issue: the absence of a maternity leave policy for legislators.