Fellowship Program Provides an Inside Look at Legislature

Two years ago, Dr. Mike Ashcraft was a respected endocrinologist with a full patient load, a hefty salary and the expectation that he would practice medicine forever. Today he earns $450 a week as a staffer in the Legislature, slaving alongside pups not much older than his sons.

Ashcraft, 49, has not lost his mind. He is merely taking a midlife detour into public policy--and loving it.

“It’s fantastic,” says the tall, lanky physician, dubbed “Dr. Mike” by his capital colleagues. “Every day is a new thrill.”

Ashcraft is one of 36 men and women in the Legislature’s fellowship program, one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Offering a blend of academic training and nine months of hands-on experience in the Assembly or Senate, the program has been churning out graduates for 41 years.

Alumni include veteran Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles), actor Harry Shearer, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard Byrne and Rose Elizabeth Bird, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

Most fellows are recent college graduates. But last year the program expanded its marketing to attract a broader array of applicants. Along with Ashcraft, the 1999 class includes a nurse, a teacher and several lawyers. There are six “reentry” fellows in all, up from just one in 1998.

The mid-career people are treasured because they “bring a perspective and type of real world experience that’s very valuable in the Legislature,” said Tim Hodson, who oversees the programs for Cal State Sacramento. “If they’re willing to take a big salary cut for a year to do some public service, we’re delighted to have them.”

Ashcraft’s boss is certainly delighted to have him. State Sen. Jackie Speier (D-Daly City) calls the doctor “an absolute gift to the people of California.”

“To have a practicing physician with his analytical acumen working on public policy is a phenomenal asset,” Speier said. “He’s actually lived these issues we’re dealing with.”

Like several other mid-career fellows, Ashcraft arrived in the capital somewhat by accident. Discouraged by the changing practice of medicine in California, Ashcraft decided to resign from his medical group in the Sierra foothills city of Auburn. It was a wrenching decision.

“When you’re a doctor, it’s seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It’s who you are,” he said. “So the idea of changing careers just wasn’t part of my vocabulary.”

But managed care medicine, “where money comes first and patients come second, conflicted with my values and why I got into the profession,” he said. “I was miserable.”

He heard of the fellowship by chance, and thought it might be an ideal way to apply his training to the policy side of health care. With the program’s application deadline drawing near, Ashcraft dug up high school and college transcripts and pounded out the two required essays. His sons, both students at Stanford, were aghast at his rusty writing skills and pitched in.

Once accepted, Ashcraft and the other fellows began interviewing with various lawmakers. Legislators actively court fellows because they tend to be well-trained and highly educated. They are also free labor, because the university covers their salaries.

Speier’s office turned out to be an ideal home for Ashcraft, given the senator’s interest in health care. His duties run the gamut, from writing speeches for Speier to meeting with constituents and preparing bill analyses for the Senate Insurance Committee, which Speier heads.

He is also handling five of Speier’s bills, a job that includes writing the actual text of the measures to negotiating with lobbyists and lining up votes.

One such bill would provide discounts on prescription drugs to senior citizens. It was initially opposed by pharmacists, but their lobbyist, Peter Kellison, said negotiations with Ashcraft helped produce an amended version that pharmacies now support.

“He was very significant in creating the harmonic convergence that led pharmacists to support this bill,” Kellison said.

Two floors up from Ashcraft’s office is Pat O’Donnell, another reentry fellow. In normal years, O’Donnell teaches junior high school in Paramount. But 1999 was the year to try something new.

O’Donnell, 33, heard about the program from a professor at Cal State Long Beach, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in public policy.

“I looked at the list of previous applicants, and it was all people from Harvard, Princeton, that kind of place,” O’Donnell said. “I’m just a normal guy. I used to be a tow truck driver. But I got in.”

For O’Donnell, the experience has been a great way to “watch the development of policies that affect my classroom. Teachers are so affected by what goes on in this place, but most of us are also very disconnected from it.”

Some Adjustments Must Be Made

O’Donnell calls capital life “incredibly invigorating,” though he says it has been hard adjusting from “spending all day working with kids to spending all day working with adults.”

A Long Beach resident, he landed in the office of his hometown assemblyman, Democrat Alan Lowenthal. He likes Lowenthal’s consensus-building style, and the fact that the staff is relatively small, meaning there is room for a fellow to do more meaningful work.

O’Donnell prepares bill analyses for the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee, which Lowenthal heads, and was given responsibility for three of the assemblyman’s bills.

As a mid-career person, O’Donnell thinks he brings some real world savvy to the job. He also believes his age helps in another key way: “I know when to keep my mouth shut.”

Although he loves “the rush of the place,” O’Donnell will be back in the classroom in September. But others hope to stay on.

Pamela Rasada, 35, is a nurse from Chico whose background also includes marketing and ownership of a small computer company. She viewed the fellowship as an exploratory move, but now hopes to remain with Green Party Assemblywoman Audie Bock when the program ends in September.

“I love the pace of the place, the negotiations, the fact that you’re working to make California a better place,” Rasada said. “Just because I have a degree in nursing, that doesn’t mean I can’t put it to use in this environment.”

Ashcraft, too, hopes to keep working under the Capitol dome--”if they’ll have me.” He does, however, miss his patients, so he works one Saturday a month at a Veterans Administration clinic.