Dignitaries praise late congresswoman
Hillary Clinton lauds efforts of Ellen Tauscher at celebration of her tunnel bore naming event
DANVILLE >> Speaking to a crowd at Blackhawk Country Club on Monday, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton quoted German sociologist Max Weber to describe the work ethic of her friend, the late Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher.
“He said, ‘politics is the slow, hard, boring of hard boards,’” Clinton told the gathering of Tauscher’s family and friends, as well as numerous Bay Area politicians. “It takes passion and perspective, and when I think of our dear, dear friend Ellen, she herself was an instrument of boring hard boards against very difficult odds time and time again.”
Clinton was speaking at a celebration marking the naming of the fourth bore of the Caldecott Tunnel after Tauscher, who was instrumental in securing funding to make the project happen before she died in April 2019 after battling pneumonia.
The fourth bore was the first expansion since 1964 of the highway gateway between Contra Costa and Alameda counties. A sign proclaiming “Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher Memorial Bore” greets drivers at the east side entrance to the tunnel from Orinda.
Tauscher was first elected to Congress in 1996 to represent what was then the 10th District, which extended through much of Contra Costa and the TriValley.
Those who worked with her and knew her said Monday that improving transportation for working people was a mission she was passionate about, given that her district included major transportation corridors like Highway 24, the stretch of Interstate 680 through Danville to Dublin, part of Interstate 580 from Pleasanton through Livermore, and Highway 4 through Antioch.
Clinton recalled an event early in Tauscher’s congressional career in 1998 that stuck with her.
“The only two things she wanted to talk about were transportation and child care and how they were connected,” Clinton said. “She was so taken with this and started talking about the need to improve the transportation and improve the opportunities for child care.”
During her career in Congress, Tauscher secured federal funding for transportation projects like the BART expansions to SFO, Warm Springs and stations in the East Bay, as well as funds to widen Highway 4.
After the 2008 recession stalled funding for the expansion of the Caldecott Tunnel, a project she had long lobbied for, Tauscher pushed for it to be included in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The bill ultimately included $197 million for the project — one of the largest investments of the stimulus bill at the time.
“Only a handful of politicians have public buildings or roadways named in their memory,” state Senator Steve Glazer wrote in a recent op-ed for this newspaper. Glazer authored the resolution dedicating the fourth bore to Tauscher, as did state senators Nancy Skinner and Bill Dodd and assembly members Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and Tim Grayson.
“The location is appropriate because, like the tunnel connecting Contra Costa to Oakland and San Francisco, Tauscher was a trailblazer who dedicated her life and career to building connections among people,” Glazer added.
“She was so much a part of this community,” Rep. Mark DeSaulnier said at the event.
Tauscher left Congress in 2009 to join the U.S. State Department as an undersecretary in the Obama administration under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton recalled Monday that Tauscher was her top choice when she was considering who would help lead lead negotiations with Russia over the 2010 New START treaty, which cut U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
“I kept thinking, ‘Hmm, Vladimir Putin — who do I know who could possibly persuade him to do something we wanted for a change?’ She was the obvious pick,” Clinton said.
It was the first major arms control agreement between the powers in almost two decades.
“Suffice it to say, if it had not been for Ellen it would never have happened,” Clinton said, adding that Tauscher’s tenacity and perseverance were on full display after she was diagnosed with esophogeal cancer yet continued calling to share advice and support on ratifying the arms agreement from her hospital bed.
She was declared cancer free in 2011, later serving as a University of California regent, chairing governing boards at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national labs, and other work.
“Ellen was a one-off,” U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said. “They don’t make others like Ellen Tauscher.”