TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1999

From CSULB to state legislature

By Wes Woods

On-Line Forty-Niner

Alan Lowenthal is a busy man.

The former Cal State Long Beach professor turned Long Beach Democratic assemblyman and chairman of a number of committees has a long to-do list.

Lowenthal was elected in November of 1998 and is on leave from CSULB while he pursues his legislative duties.

A typical week for Lowenthal consists of constant shuttling from Sacramento to Long Beach, with his wife frequently traveling along.

Lowenthal said he spends Monday through Thursday in Sacramento in sessions, flying back Thursday night to Long Beach for more meetings until Sunday. On Sundays, he tries to rest before flying back to Sacramento later that night.

"Sometimes it gets very frustrating, you have a meeting going on with school board people or students in Long Beach on a Thursday evening and you may be still be in session in Sacramento so you miss your plane. I've missed many planes, not because I intended to, but because meetings or sessions just went longer."

Despite the differences between teaching college students and being an assemblyman, Lowenthal sees the similarities as well.

"The ability to look though and identify the key points in an argument or piece of legislature," he said is an example of transferring his teaching skills to politics. "I spent a great deal of my time as a faculty member developing programs in the community. In some sense, this is a natural progression."

A change from teaching, he said, is the amount of time spent working as assemblyman.

"The pace is much faster than at Cal State, the demands are much greater than I had on me at Cal State," he said.

Lowenthal has two schedulers, one for his Long Beach meetings and another for his Sacramento encounters.

He is still a faculty member at CSULB and has been since 1969. He is on a leave of absence and is not sure if he will come back. Lowenthal said that teaching is his life's work.

He said he has managed to introduce 13 bills during his first term, out of a possible 15 allowed per year in office, 30 per two years, ranging from statewide issues to community concerns. How they fare is a different story, going from committee to committee, house to house before being decided up by Gov. Gray Davis.

Lowenthal said he introduced a bill to clean up the Los Angeles River, at a cost of $1 million, a bill to ban the sale of guns in residential homes (which he said he worked on as a faculty and city council member) and a bill for a college mentoring program to high school students.

Lowenthal said he'll probably rerun for 54th State Assembly in the year 2000, but will make the final decision in January.

Lowenthal said he hasn't given much thought to a higher office.

"As long as I have something to say and I really like representing my district and I think it's important to get the kinds of messages that I represent in the State Assembly, then I'll continue to do it.

"It [his campaign victory] was relief and excitement at the end," Lowenthal said. "But I was very drained. It was a long and arduous journey."