Tomorrow is the one-month anniversary of Sebastian Ridley-Thomas’s smashing victory in a special election for the state Assembly, and even though veteran legislators have been resting comfortably using their hands as seats, young Mr. Ridley-Thomas has not found time to mop his perspiring brow or even sleep.
[img]2366|exact|||no_popup[/img]
Assembly Speaker John Perez, right, administers oath of office to Mr. Ridley-Thomas less than 48 hours after his election.
As he promised ignored voters of Culver City and southwest Los Angeles, he will aggressively pursue a tight, clear agenda of priorities on behalf of a garden variety of constituents until his last day in office.
Even over the telephone this morning, the 27-year-old Mr. Ridley-Thomas sounded like someone who has just undergone the harshest boot training ever endured.
When the Legislature convenes on Monday morning, new colleagues soon will get used to hearing his resonant voice. It is so richly deep that a skydive almost is required to span and measure the fullness of it.
“I have spent a considerable amount of time in Sacramento, going through the basics of office set-up,” he said, a task that sounds colorlessly rudimentary until he begins to delineate what it endures.
Roaring into office on the wings of more golden optimism than anyone can recall for decades, he is undergoing close to 60 hours of training. “I have spent the last 15 days in Sacramento just doing that,” said the former deputy who also has spent the previous five years in the capital.
“This is a full range of management training. I have taken some of it because of my work before – everything from violence prevention, sexual harassment, all the stuff that is mandated in state law. It applies to public and private sector managers and employers, discrimination, campaign finance, ethics, H.R., IT, the operating rules of the house (not required by law but by practice). There are new ethics laws going into effect this year.
“I have completed nearly all of that,” Mr. Ridley-Thomas said.
And by the way, Gov. Brown signed a whopping 800 bills into law this week –a load more homework for the new Assemblyman to catalogue.
(To be continued)
