New City’s Top Vote-Getter Stresses Caring

Patricia Carmody Bates said she was pleasantly surprised this fall to find out how many people in Laguna Niguel knew about her.

“I’d go campaigning door to door, and people would thank me for my work in the community,” Bates said. “I’ve been in Laguna Niguel for many years, and I’ve worked on a number of issues, and actually I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction out of helping people. And I guess when you enjoy working with people and helping people, you attract people to you.”

Bates’ political attractiveness made her the top vote-getter in the crowded race last Tuesday for seats on the new city of Laguna Niguel’s first City Council. Now she appears likely to be elected the city’s first mayor by fellow council members.

A slim, athletic-looking woman with light-brown hair and blue eyes, Bates, 49, has lived in Laguna Niguel for 11 years.

Although long prominent in South County government affairs, her role in helping to found the 40,000-resident city--and her smashing City Council victory at the polls--have further enhanced her political credentials.

“I’ve known Pat for several years, and I’ve been very impressed by her abilities,” County Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley said last week. “I’ve appointed Pat to several citizens committees and task forces in the past, and she’s always responded with energy and contributed very positively and productively.

“It is no surprise that the citizens of Laguna Niguel have so overwhelmingly elected her to the new City Council, as she’s always served them so well over the years.”

Although Bates is a Republican, former County Democratic Party Chairman Howard Adler is among her fans. In an interview earlier this year, Adler said of her: “She’s very well respected by community leaders and business leaders, and you don’t often have that combination. . . . She’s got a great future in politics.”

Bates did not seek out politics. She came into it gradually, over many years, as a housewife, mother and volunteer worker. But her professional background--she was once a social worker for Los Angeles County--played a major role in Bates’ philosophical beliefs about government, politics and people.

“What I learned as a . . . social worker was that government must not rob people of their self-esteem,” she said. “If people are to better themselves, they must have a good sense of self-esteem.

“I also learned as a social worker not to take things personally when people speak their minds. Like other social workers, I’d be in these small cubicles working with people who had difficult problems. There I was, a white college graduate, obviously successful, and I’d be working with an 18-year-old black woman who already had three children.

“If such a person got angry, I’d think, ‘Good, speak out. Let’s make government work for you.’ I wouldn’t take it personally.”

Born in Los Angeles’ Queen of Angels Hospital, Bates grew up in the San Gabriel Valley town of Rosemead. Her family moved when she was 12 to Long Beach, where she graduated from Wilson High School. “I then went to Occidental College (in Los Angeles) and majored in psychology,” she said.

Bates went to work for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services after her college graduation in 1961. She worked for the department for 10 years, then became a deputy district director.

In 1963, she married architect John Bates. “We started a family, and I decided to stay at home as much as I could,” she said.

As housewife and mother, Bates said she shifted much of her energies to volunteer work. While they lived in Long Beach, she was active on the Junior League’s statewide public affairs committee. “Our coalition was successful in getting a new law passed that made it a felony to use children in pornography,” she said.

In 1978, the Bates family moved to Laguna Niguel, where she began volunteering to help in the schools and became active with a group working to persuade county government to make Crown Valley Parkway a safer thoroughfare.

“I really believe in volunteer work,” she said. “You can be anything you want as a volunteer. You don’t have to pass a test. And organizations need volunteers for so many positions.”

Bates’ volunteer work caught the eye of officials in the Laguna Niguel Community Council, which tapped her to fill a vacancy. She was its president in 1986-87. When Laguna Niguel formed a quasi-governmental Community Services District in 1986, she was among five members elected by residents to its board.

And when Laguna Niguel made its move for cityhood, she was among five elected to the new municipality’s first City Council, which will take office when Laguna Niguel officially becomes a city Dec. 1.

In a field of 23 candidates, Bates got nearly 2,500 more votes than the second-highest candidate. Traditionally, the candidate with the most votes on a new council is named a city’s first mayor.

“If my fellow council members want to elect me mayor, I certainly will serve in that capacity,” Bates said.

In addition to her volunteer work, Bates handles personnel and community relations for her husband’s architectural company, John Bates Associates.

They have two children: Jason, 22, an international relations graduate of the University of San Diego, and J’Amy, 19, a communications major at the University of Colorado.

Bates loves to ski, “though I’m not very good at it,” she said. She also likes to camp out with her family and go boating with her husband.

Asked whether she subscribes to a personal saying or credo, the former social worker did not even pause and instantly she summed up her beliefs in one word: “Caring.”

CIVIC TIPS

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