Lawyer Builds Case for Women’s Issues

When master politician and orator Bill Clinton became president, Trudi Loh actually preferred the more subdued Al Gore. And now, eight years later, she has become an advisor to the vice president on women’s issues and a key organizer at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

“I have supported Gore since 1988,” Loh said. That was when Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, first sought the Democratic nomination for president.

Twelve years ago, Loh found Gore warm and likable and strong on the women’s issues she values. That didn’t change in 1992, when Gore joined Clinton as vice president.

Now, the Westlake Village lawyer and head of the Women’s Leadership Forum of Southern California meets periodically in Nashville and Washington with Gore and his campaign staff members to tell them what issues women care about.

Gore and his staff members want “to know what message is getting out there and if people are hearing us,” Loh said. “You wonder why a person would not like Al Gore. He has been in the public eye for so many years but people weren’t hearing him.”

They heard him but many just thought he was dull, as terms such as “wooden” attached to him like limpets.

Loh can’t imagine why.

To her, Gore embodies Clinton’s policies without carrying the Clinton baggage: Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, Whitewater.

“Gore will wear well on people as the campaign goes on,” she predicted. “A lot of people want to associate him with Clinton. Any vice president has a problem distancing himself from the president but he [Gore] is a very solid, ethical family man who has championed women’s issues.”

As chairwoman of the Women’s Leadership Forum, Loh heads one of the most powerful, politically connected women’s groups in the state. Her district runs from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

“Any prominent female Democrat is a member,” she said. “I’m the contact person with the Democratic National Committee for women’s issues.”

Loh, 44, got the job after working as a consultant for Emily’s List, a group that helps raise campaign funds for women running for office.

“Women care about Social Security, education, gun control and safety issues,” she said. “There is no limit to issues women care about, our perspective is different.”

Before her work with the forum, which began two years ago, Loh had run for county supervisor against Frank Schillo and lost. She also lost a bid for a seat on the Thousand Oaks City Council.

“This is my way of participating in political life,” she said. “Life has a funny way of handing you things you don’t expect.”

This week Loh has been rushing around trying to organize events at the Democratic National Convention. One major task is setting up a concert with singers such as Barbra Streisand.

Her phone has been ringing solidly for weeks.

As she sat in her large, gated home recently, the phone rang seven times within about 30 minutes. One caller phoned just to say how happy she was that Gore had picked Sen. Joseph Lieberman from Connecticut as his running mate.

Loh’s interest in politics began in 1968 when she was 12 and Robert F. Kennedy was running for president. When Clinton was a candidate, Loh would go through the newspaper highlighting positions he held that she agreed with.

She even worked on her husband, Dr. Irv Loh, who runs the Ventura Heart Institute, to switch from being a moderate Republican to a Democrat.

“Politics is mandatory in this family,” she said.

The Lohs, who have four children, have been Democratic Party contributors for years. In politics, presidential appointments sometimes follow donations. Loh, however, said she doesn’t know whether she will be offered a job in the Gore administration if he wins the election.

“My life is pretty much rooted here with my husband’s medical practice, but I will jump in wherever I can help,” she said.

As for Gore’s opponent, Republican George W. Bush, Loh levels some of the same accusations against the Texas governor that Republicans have hurled at Democrats.

“The Republicans have stolen our issues,” she said. “The difference is they are just talking but aren’t moving anywhere. They have done nothing for women and they expect us to think they have changed. Women are a natural for the Democratic Party.”