State Sen. Curren D. Price Jr. (D-Culver City) probably earned his year’s salary of $95,000 in just the last two Fridays.
One week after hosting a broad-based, well-attended all-day forum at the California Science Center that illumined little-known health issues for non-white communities, he returned to the Westside, shifting to West Los Angeles College.
For three intense hours last Friday, Sen. Price was the impresario, the masterful master of ceremonies and organizer of a “Small Business Access to Capital and International Trade Forum.”
Across the generations, ladies and gentlemen turned out to learn how to sustain and expand their small commercial ventures and convert their enterprising spirit into handsome, reliable livings.
A sample of the panelists: Constance Anderson, director of the Small Business Development Center, Pacific region; Meski Tadesse, a former Fortune 500 corporate executive in Detroit who owns a strategic and financial management consulting firm serving small businesses run by women and minorities; Jim MacLellan, director of trade development at the Port of Los Angeles; and Maurice Kogon, a 33-year Washington veteran of the Commerce Dept., director of the Center for International Trade Development at El Camino College.
Business owners were shown that much of the globe can be a target marketfor them, and they were presented with road maps for attaining such an ambitious objective.
Sen. Price is promoting heavyweight attractions — with ladies and gentlemen in the upper strata of their professions offering expert analyses and insights to audiences, to community members, starved for difficult-to-track information.
These are not hollow showcases for self-promotion, although the senator did not just emerge yesterday from the woods.
The other day he hosted a fundraiser in Culver City, no doubt eager to precede the rush. He is up for re-election, drum roll, in ’14.
Democrats, historically and temporarily, hold a sturdier grip on both chambers of the Legislature than the notorious Hillside Strangler — but a guy hankering for another term can’t start too early.
His office asks, Isn’t this what a state legislator is supposed to do:
Scan the fabric of your community, identify the cracks where people are tumbling through, and then help them seal the gap that separates them from the successful.
Here is what is impressive about the tall, straight-backed, authoritative legislator:
The strong, self-assured, inerrant command he assumes when he enters one of these conferences with a couple hundred people in the room.
The crowds wait for Sen. Price to establish the tone and the routine — they are ready to be led, and he eagerly obliges.
Although he makes a striking, almost dashing, figure as he glides through a room, he is merely confident not flamboyant. So there isn’t anything offputting about the way he carries and presents himself.
To the contrary.
He has grown swiftly in two partial terms, so far.
