Apprenticeship for Aspiring Policymakers

The white-haired man with the cowboy-style hard hat is barging through freeway traffic in his Suburban, spilling out the accumulated wisdom of his life.

“If you are perceived as weak when negotiating, then you’re going to be weak. . . . Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is the show.”

Glenn Scalf, the business manager of the Glaziers and Glassworkers Union Local 636, explains all this to his target audience of one in the back seat. He’s one of the mentors for the Coro Foundation’s public policy fellowship in Los Angeles. For half a century, Coro has broadened the horizons of hundreds of eager participants, most of them in their twenties.

Over nine months each year, aspiring politicians, businesspeople and others craving a life in public affairs are thrust into internships in six areas: government, business, political campaigns, labor and the media.

On a given day, 12 Coro fellows in Southern California may shadow a school superintendent, walk precincts for a candidate or sit in on corporate strategy sessions (confidential, of course).

“Most people work in one world, and that’s what they see,” said John Arboleda, a 27-year-old Coro fellow who was union manager Scalf’s one-man audience for four weeks. “Coro is like a big buffet.”

Years later, former participants testify that the Coro experience was one of the most important in their lives.

Important not because the weeks run up to 80 hours, not just because the graduates are put on a stage at regular intervals, but because the intensive program helps them break down preconceptions.

Jessica K. Berman, for example, had never known a police officer until she was assigned to intern at the LAPD. She said she developed an appreciation of the importance of law enforcement, and found out that police work is more than responding to 911 calls.

“I discovered that crime prevention is a balance of reactive and proactive work, and that it’s really hard to find that balance,” she said.

Assignments are tailored to each individual’s strengths and weaknesses, and fellows are informed about their next assignment days before it starts. Adaptation, according to the Coro philosophy, is absolutely indispensable.

That kind of stimulation creates what Kerry Morrison called “intense intellectual meltdown.” Morrison, executive director of the Hollywood Entertainment District, went through the Coro grinder in 1980-81.

For one of her most memorable assignments, she recalled, “I was a Democrat assigned to the Ronald Reagan campaign.” In her campaign work, Morrison worked the phone banks and calculated results for a candidate she initially did not support. She even went to stump for Reagan at Garfield High School civics classes.

“I ended up voting for him,” she says.

One of her classmates was Leticia Quezada, who would become the first Latina president of the Los Angeles Board of Education. Quezada happened to be working on the Jimmy Carter campaign at the same time.

Quezada credits Coro with teaching her to maneuver gracefully through the contentious minefield of groups that make public policy.

“My Coro trainer had a great saying,” remembered Quezada, now president of the Mexican Cultural Institute. “He said, ‘Learn to manage the gray. Things are not always black and white.’ ”

As politics has changed, so has the Coro program.

When Coro fellows first hit the streets of San Francisco in 1947, the political world was smaller. In their introduction to real-world politics, fellows once went to swank restaurants and hotel lobbies to rub elbows with a clique of powerful men. Things are different now.

Although personal relationships are as important as ever, the political tectonic plates have shifted. Women are in those power-broker circles now, as are people of color.

Coro is acknowledged to be one of the best routes for public affairs hopefuls to make the political contacts they will need. That is why some graduates and program officials are trying to broaden the applicant pool.

“It gives you tremendous access to money and power,” said Ruben Treviso, a 1978-79 Coro fellow who now writes grant proposals and does public relations.

Treviso argues that since each fellow chooses which of four Coro cities to work in, the large Latino population of Los Angeles should be better reflected among the fellows studying here.

Latinos have made up 20% of program participants in the 1990s. But with Latinos accounting for more than 40% of L.A.’s population, Treviso contends that the ethnic group has been severely underrepresented.

Program director Carrie Lopez has been trying to make the program more inclusive, particularly to candidates with families who may not be able to spread an $8,000 stipend over nine months.

Another broader problem, Lopez said, is the perception of politics itself--not something that inspires enormous idealism these days.

“Politics has taken a beating” in the last few years, Lopez said. “But politics . . . is not a bad word to us. We need to toot the horn, and show that this is a noble field.”