If awards for Best Supporting Actress were handed out in public policy, Loranne Ausley might have been a past nominee. From the time she left college in 1986 through 2000, she held numerous behind-the-scenes positions in politics and government-- aide to Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), work on the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1992 and subsequently in the Clinton commerce and housing departments, and chief of staff to former Florida Lt. Gov. Buddy McKay. Between those stints, she earned a law degree and worked in private practice.
But it wasn't until Ausley participated in a Democratic Leadership Council training session in February 1999 that she began seeing herself as a political leader. "I had always been on the staff side and had never envisioned myself on the other," she says. "We had just come out of a bad election cycle for Democrats in Florida and the session helped me realize how I might just do this myself one day."
A few months later, the state House seat for her home district in Tallahassee unexpectedly became open. "That rarely ever happens," Ausley says. "It was an unmatched opportunity to serve in a public capacity and give something back to my hometown and the community I love." Ausley ran for the seat in 2000 and won, and voters re-elected her in 2002.
Almost immediately after taking office, Ausley learned a hard lesson about the difficulty of moving legislation through a political environment dominated by the opposition. Her task was made even more difficult by the partisan ill-will engendered by Florida's role in deciding the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. "In my first term, not one of my bills was heard in committee," Ausley recalls. She and her fellow Democrats resigned themselves to fighting a rear-guard action against Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's "irresponsible cuts in state government" and in making his proposed civil service reforms "more reasonable," she says.
In her second term in office and with the state facing a budget crisis, Ausley reached out to Republicans to support cost-sensitive bills she introduced, addressing her long-standing concerns about families, children, and education. "It was matter of finding ways around roadblocks instead of just fighting," she says. The legislature passed and Bush signed measures Ausley introduced requiring training for early-childhood education providers, allowing state employees to take courses at state universities for free on a space-available basis, and designating April 6 as Parent's and Children's Day. Republicans, however, scuttled her major legislative initiative, a bill that would have required the state to provide disabled students with extra help while taking the states high-stakes exam required for high school graduation. Ausley resubmitted the bill in the session that began in March.
Florida Democrats "have a fine line to walk," Ausley says. "We have to continue serving our constituents, and that means building relationships across the aisle if we are to accomplish things from the minority. At the same time, we have to point out where the major holes are and where the majority is not following the will of the people." As an example, she cites Republican moves to undercut a constitutional amendment approved by voters last fall that requires the state to provide money to reduce class sizes in public schools by 2010. "They are blaming all our budget woes on this amendment and using it as a scapegoat for their financial mismanagement," Ausley says. "If Democrats are ever to get back in the majority, this is the type of thing we need to point out in ways that average citizens can understand."
