Assembly’s First Green Tests Life as a Party of 1

On Day 1, she rode to work on an Amtrak train, escorted by a giddy throng of loyalists who waved sunflowers and cheered like drunken baseball fans when she was sworn in as the Legislature’s first Green Party member.

On Day 2, the merry mob was gone, the hype had ebbed and Assemblywoman Audie Elizabeth Bock was alone, left to figure out how to do a job she never, ever expected to get in a world where she doesn’t really fit in.

It won’t be easy.

The Capitol is a place that runs on power and leverage and connections and I’ll-help-you-today-if-you-help-me-tomorrow currency. Bock, 53, hasn’t got much to use.

She’s bright, articulate, charming, poised and a quick study--qualities that could make her a good legislator.

But as the lone member of a fringe party, she’s a political nobody. She has no automatic allies here, no weight to throw around. And while she shares some values with Democrats, they so dominate the Assembly now that they rarely need her vote to pass their bills.

The timing of Bock’s arrival works against her as well. As the surprise winner in a March 30 special election, she came in at the peak of complex policy debates and has had to scramble to catch up.

“It’s overwhelming,” admits Bock, who represents most of Oakland plus a few neighboring communities. “And it never lets up.”

It would be easy if she didn’t really care, if she treated this like a midlife lark, an extended civics camp for adults. But that’s not her. She’s a serious person with serious goals--a noted Asian film scholar who speaks four languages and served as an interpreter for Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa.

Bock is also a beacon, a source of hope for an entire political party. If her term is a joke, it will deflate and discourage hundreds of thousands of Greens who see her election--which marks the first time a Green has won state office anywhere in the nation--as the start of something big.

Not that America is necessarily ready for a Green revolution. Even Green leaders confess that they didn’t expect to elect a state legislator for another decade. Their party--which has become a significant force in Europe with its environmental-protection and social-justice message--is the choice of only 98,000 registered voters in California. But they want--in the worst way--for Bock to show everyone what a Green can do. They want this Green to succeed.

Success, fortunately, can be measured many different ways. Success for Bock will not be charting the state’s course on HMO reform or brokering big-money deals. It will not be passing two dozen bills or dedicating four parks and three libraries in her district.

And success may not--probably will not--mean reelection 18 months from now. Democrats--who dominate Bock’s district in voter registration but somehow allowed their candidate to lose--won’t let the Green win again.

Budget Vote May Give Her Some Power

So for Bock, success might mean proposing provocative reforms that other, more politically vulnerable legislators can only whisper about. Or spreading the Green Party gospel. Or persuading the bureaucracy to give her an environmentally friendly electric car as her official state vehicle.

“What will I be able to accomplish?” Bock wonders. “At this point I suppose it’s anyone’s guess.”

That said, Bock does have one potentially useful weapon: her vote on the state budget. To pass it, Democrats will probably need her support. When they come courting, she, in turn, could get the chance to make some demands.

Beyond that, Bock is, for now, a hot commodity. In her first two weeks, the wavy-haired single mother in the stylish suits was invited to something like 500 events. She’s choosing carefully, symbolically. There was an Earth Day speech in Berkeley, a leadership conference at a women’s college, a reception with black business owners.

No matter where she goes, Bock is magnetic. People want to meet the Greenie, size her up. And she’s not what most of them expect. As Assemblywoman Carole Migden (D-San Francisco) put it, “With the Greens, you could get some wacky person with a tie-dyed T-shirt who hasn’t had a haircut in 10 years.

“But Audie is a grounded, sensible, mature woman who has been thrown into a swirling vortex and is trying to make this life work.”

It’s a life she was never supposed to lead. The last third-party candidate to serve in the California Legislature was William J. Carr, elected from the Progressive Party in 1917. Bock’s win is a miracle in a system where miracles--newly elected Minnesota Gov. Jesse “the Body” Ventura notwithstanding--are few.

So when she agreed to run for the open Assembly seat, Bock had “absolutely no expectation of winning.” The Green Party qualified for the California ballot in 1992, but victories have come only in local races, such as school board and city council elections. Greens who seek state office typically do so merely to get the party’s ideas out there, to stimulate debate.

But in Assembly District 16, the planets aligned to permit a Green triumph. Low turnout and widespread distaste for the Democrat--former Oakland Mayor Elihu M. Harris--allowed Bock to eke out a win despite being outspent about 15 to 1.

Bock turned Green in 1994. Before that, she was a Democrat--not an active one, but one who “sent them a few bucks every time they called, which was often.” After President Clinton’s plan for universal health care fizzled, she gave up on the party and went Green.

The next thing she knew, she was running for the Legislature: “It’s a small party, so it’s easy to get recruited for things.”

Experience Outside the Political Arena

In addition to being Green, Bock is green. Totally. Save for a few runs for class officer in high school, she has logged no miles on political trails.

Instead, she has run her own foreign film distribution company, taught college courses in ethnic studies and written a noted book on Japanese film directors. That’s how she met Kurosawa, who was impressed because she was the first westerner to interview him in Japanese.

Bock went on to translate his autobiography and serve as interpreter during his travels. In 1990, she became the first interpreter to appear on stage at the Academy Awards, joining Kurosawa as he won a lifetime achievement award.

The appearance at the Oscars, Bock says, was “my biggest moment of glory” until April 5, when she was sworn in as a legislator. Greens filled the balconies, exulting that the statehouse had suddenly become a tripartisan place. Also present were her parents, who had switched from Republican to Green to vote for her.

After taking the oath, a beaming Bock settled into her seat as a stream of Assembly members swirled by with congratulations and advice. One showed her how to push the buttons and vote, allowing her to weigh in on her first measure--a resolution supporting the three American soldiers then held captive in the Kosovo conflict.

Later, there was a catered reception with a Green theme--vegan items, such as mushrooms stuffed with wild rice--and more meeting and greeting. By day’s end, Bock was in her office, surrounded by daunting stacks of training manuals and struggling to remember one vital thing--where the Capitol’s elevators and bathrooms are.

The days since have been just as dizzying.

Her office operation is a work in progress, run by a savvy Green chief of staff with experience in the Legislature. Aiding him--for now--are several eager but decidedly unseasoned Green volunteers. One is Ken Adams, who took vacation time from his job as a data processor to help out.

“I’m not used to dealing with the public,” the bearded Adams mused recently between bites of a beet and tofu salad, “so it’s a little hard to be on all the time. But I want to be here for Audie.”

So far, Bock declares life in the Legislature to be a blast. She loves the pace, the ever-changing topics. Her colleagues have been polite, sharing their parties’ analyses of bills, inviting her to coauthor their measures.

But there are struggles as well.

The grueling schedule--she returns home every night, a two-hour trek--has been stressful for her family, which includes a 14-year-old daughter and a lilac-crowned Amazon parrot, a spoiled bird accustomed to meals of pasta and cooked vegetables.

Initially, Bock commuted by rail, a logical choice for a politician whose party promotes “ecological wisdom.” But the last train leaves the capital too early--at 5:30 p.m.--so she’s been forced to go by car. Legislators get an allowance for a leased vehicle, and Bock has requested an electric one. But there are problems.

“It’s a little worrisome, because they’re saying things like, ‘What’s the last hill you have to climb to get home?’ ” Bock says. “I picture myself broken down on the side of the road somewhere.”

More worrisome, Bock says, is the slow, incremental nature of lawmaking in California. Take gun control, for example.

A few days after the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, the Assembly passed a bill to ban the purchase of more than one handgun a month. Bock voted for it, but for her it was far too little far too late.

“One gun a month? It’s ridiculous,” she says. “Even the author agrees it’s a weak bill that won’t do much of anything.”

Key Vote on Assisted-Suicide Bill

Her most wrenching moment came in her third week, over a bill to permit physician-assisted suicide. Lobbying was intense, and initially Bock voted no--swayed by arguments from disabled activists who felt the bill contained inadequate safeguards.

But after more lobbying by its author and others, Bock changed her mind, providing the crucial yes vote to move the bill forward.

“It was extremely difficult and emotional,” she recalls. But in the end, thoughts of her terminally ill grandmother (now dead), “begging and begging to be let go,” prompted her to switch her vote.

Because Bock arrived after the deadline for introducing bills, she has had to scrounge around for legislation to call her own. One Democrat took pity and gave her an innocuous bill dealing with workplace safety for children. She presented it to the Labor Committee and it passed, very quietly.

Other Bock ideas are likely to stir more noise. She’s talking about legalizing marijuana, substantial electoral reform and abolishing the death penalty.

“She’s not beholden to anyone, so she’ll have the luxury of proposing some pretty dramatic ideas,” says her chief of staff, Michael Twombly. Whether they go anywhere, of course, is another matter.

Although colleagues have been impressed by her insightful questions during debates, all of them--Republicans and Democrats alike--agree there’s virtually no chance the Green will survive long in their two-party universe.

Bock’s no dummy--she knows she’s got a bull’s-eye on her back--but she’s not conceding a thing. In fact, friends have already started raising money for the next election. The group’s name: Bock by Popular Demand.