Recalling Reagan's support for California's right to choose
For many years, San Rafael's Bill Bagley represented Marin and Sonoma in the state Assembly. An oldschool North Bay Republican, Bagley backed fair housing legislation, the emerging “conservation” movement, prudent state spending and fostering the University of California.
Like many of his colleagues, Bagley regularly crossed the Assembly aisle to vote without regard to party. That's why his biography is entitled, “California's Golden Years: When Government Worked and Why.”
Bagley — who is very much “alive and kicking” and now registered as a no-party-preference independent — sent me copies of documents demonstrating that Gov. Ronald Reagan, with whom Bagley collaborated, would find himself outside of today's GOP mainstream.
It's a timely recollection given the U.S. Supreme Court's leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Five Republican-appointed justices are tentatively lined up to jettison a woman's right to choose. The three Democrat-appointed justices and the court's emerging sole independent, Chief Justice John Roberts, are opposed.
In a 1972 press release heralding Reagan's support for the breakthrough law legalizing Golden
State abortions, the future president stated, “I'm fully sympathetic with attempts to liberalize the outdated abortion law now on the law books. … I am confident that the people of California recognize that need and will support the humanitarian goals of this measure. … Because of my belief that a liberalization of the abortions laws is necessary, I will sign the bill even though it does not meet each and every objection that I and others in California have to it.”
Reagan supported women's rights. In a Jan. 13, 1972 letter on the governor's stationery, Reagan wrote to the president of Theta Sigma Phi, a women's sorority in Los Angeles. “I am in full support of the Equal Rights Amendment and will be pleased if you are able to find a use of my name in attracting additional support.”
This isn't to sanctify Reagan. His presidential years' political strategy brought evangelical Christians
into the GOP. It was part of the party's successful “Southern Strategy” to shift White nationalists from their historic Democratic home toward becoming Republicans.
Once, positions on abortion and individual rights were matters of personal conscience, not partisan wedge issues. The political divide then was based on economics. Democrats pushed for organized labor with a heavy hand on regulation and expanding the social safety net. The GOP advocated fiscal restraint, big business and a light hand on government rule making.
***
Driving by long-established mobile home parks in Larkspur and Novato is a reminder that the idea of “tiny homes” isn't new. Compare a well-managed “manufactured” home facility with the chaotic stretch of Binford Road leading to Gnoss Field, Novato's airport.
It's lined with about 50 occupied semi-permanent parked trucks, RVs and house trailers, many of which aren't very mobile.
Compare this linear slum with well-managed trailer parks complete with sewage, water, electricity and trash collection. Marin County government should acquire a large fenced parcel, manage it and invite Binford Road dwellers to move their vehicles to the cluster.
Then enact and enforce a “no parking” zone along Binford and similar out-ofsight roads.
Those in trailers and dilapidated recreational vehicles on Binford and similar stretches of isolated roads aren't the mentally ill men and women living in squalor under freeways. Many Binford dwellers are simply working poor folks.
Provide those residents with long-term parking, as well as sewage, water and electricity, plus jobplacement counseling. Not every unhoused person needs permanent supportive housing costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit.
Consider well-managed trailer courts as an option for those who are simply eager for lower-cost housing. State government should simultaneously encourage the private sector to open new mobile home communities on appropriate sites around California.