Governor’s Chief of Staff Says She’s Tired of Partisanship

Over the course of her career, Susan Kennedy, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new chief of staff, moved from a Democratic Party partisan and abortion rights advocate to a pragmatic dealmaker with a trust in the free market and limited tolerance for stridently liberal approaches to government.

“I can’t believe how conservative, even right wing, I’ve become on these issues,” she said last year about her efforts on the Public Utilities Commission, where she has been reviled by consumer activists for her pro-business positions.

An Irish Catholic from New Jersey, Kennedy, 45, who is a lesbian, showcased a fierce intelligence and tactical talent in the early 1990s as head of the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, and later with the state Democratic Party.

In an ironic twist, she was appointed executive director by then-party Chairman Phil Angelides, who now is campaigning to unseat Schwarzenegger in 2006.

In 1992, she organized a vigorous get-out-the-vote effort that helped elect Bill Clinton president and Dianne Feinstein to the United States Senate.

People who have worked with her say Kennedy rose to the top of Gov. Gray Davis’ administration through her intense work ethic, an ability to leap into complex subjects and a skill at crafting compromises on dozens of issues, including farm labor conditions, environmental protection and energy regulation.

“She was in the middle of every tough issue, none of which she knew about before,” said John Burton, the former Senate Democratic leader. “She immersed herself in them and learned everything about them and became the point person.”

Often in those efforts, said one former senior Davis administration official, Kennedy was frustrated with what she saw as the inflexible demands of ideological Democrats and unions -- something that Schwarzenegger has repeatedly complained about during his two years in office.

As Davis’ cabinet secretary, Kennedy was formally in charge of state agencies, but Davis aides said she ended up eclipsing the former governor’s chief of staff.

Kennedy oversaw virtually every aspect of the governor’s office, from negotiating legislation with lawmakers to deciding how to announce Davis’ actions so they would get the most attention. “Smart” and “tough” are invariably the first adjectives offered by former colleagues.

“She’s a lot like he [Davis] was, a moderate incrementalist,” said Steve Maviglio, Davis’ former spokesman who is now an advisor to Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles). “She knew what it took to move things forward one inch at a time.”

In early 2003, Davis appointed Kennedy to the PUC, where she repeatedly sided with major telecommunications firms such as Verizon Communications.

She favored limiting regulation of telecommunications companies as they competed with Internet firms in providing high-speed data and video access.

Kennedy outraged consumer activists in January by blocking the nation’s first telecommunications consumer bill of rights, less than a year after it was approved by the PUC.

The rules would have granted customers 30 days to cancel new products without penalty and mandated clearer disclosures of what they were signing up for.

“She claims to be absolutely convinced that competition will serve everyone’s best interest, but when it came to things like these recent mergers of phone companies consuming each other, that didn’t seem to bother her at all,” said Bob Finkelstein, executive director of TURN, a utility reform network based in San Francisco.

“It seemed to boil down to whatever the utilities asked for, they got.”

Her actions on the commission were usually in line with the Schwarzenegger administration, and the governor said Wednesday that it was through work on these issues that he came to know and respect her.

Although Kennedy and Schwarzenegger share a pro-growth approach on business issues, on social issues the two appear further apart.

In 1999, Kennedy and her partner, Vicki Marti, a psychotherapist, held a commitment ceremony in Maui, Hawaii, attended by high-ranking Davis administration officials. Schwarzenegger this year vetoed a bill legalizing gay marriage.

Kennedy, who lives in Marin County, said Wednesday that the philosophical difference between a moderate Democrat such as herself and a moderate Republican such as Schwarzenegger was small. Results, she said, were what mattered.

“I’m tired of the partisanship,” she said in describing why she was going to work for a Republican.

“I’m tired of the intolerance that has resulted in gridlock and thought it was time for me as a Democrat to put up or shut up.”