One reason Stockton slogs along the way it does is lack of leadership. Voters mix strong leaders with a clown car of empty suits, posers, even grifters. P.T. Barnum could get elected mayor here.
So too bad State Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman is terming out. Eggman, 63, who represents Senate District 5, which is mostly San Joaquin County, has served an effective term in the state Senate and two before that in the Assembly. She mixed moderate progressive politics, army discipline, social worker skills, and values instilled on her parents’ farm.
“I inherently understand what it is like to make a living off the ground, your back, your brain, and your hustle,” Eggman said in an interview. “So when I went in (to politics) it was just kind of a natural evolution. It surprised some people because I’m also LGBT, Latina, fairly progressive. But it was incredibly good for our district.”
By “incredibly good” Eggman seemed to mean she was very well-suited for a purple district. And she was.
“As much as I am concerned about the environment and greenhouse gas, we’re all pickups and tractors in this area, too. So I am more in the middle than my colleagues in the coastal areas,” Eggman said.
Coming out as lesbian, teenage Eggman went from farm to U.S. Army, “because I messed up most of high school. I was always a bright kid, but my mouth got ahead of me.”
The Army nuked that trait. “I learned my smart mouth got me doing a lot of low crawling and sit-ups,” Eggman recalled. “Since then, I’ve developed a very good sense of discipline. I learned to time when you can move toward the goal.”
After the Army, Eggman earned a Ph.D in social work, and went to work as a drug counselor and teacher. But when President George W. Bush launched the Iraq War and instituted welfare reforms — “really going after the most vulnerable,” as Eggman puts it — she decided to run for the next office that came open.
That was Stockton’s City Council. Eggman ran for District 5, the downtown district. Bigwigs endorsed her rival. Others warned her an out lesbian could not win. Eggman didn’t hide who she was. “How could people trust me if I lie about who I am at the core?”
She paid a price. One church she visited while campaigning asked her to leave. “I don’t lose my stuff easily. But I stayed it the house that day.” Eggman won office in 2006, just in time to see her agenda—literacy, take back the parks, general municipal upgrades — blown out of the water by the Great Recession and Stockton’s 2012-15 bankruptcy.
“The bottom came out, then we’re cutting. Cutting libraries, cutting police, oh, my God, it was so incredibly painful.”
Furious public employees spoiled by exorbitant benefits such as free lifetime retiree medical care for themselves and spouses thronged City Council chambers and whipped up a political hurricane. Tempestuous council meetings saw, “Workers ripping their city shirts open, ‘This is what you’re doing to me!!’”
She drew strength from something she learned about Abraham Lincoln: to get from his Washington home to the White House, he had to travel daily through camps of wounded and dying men and see firsthand the pain and suffering caused by the Civil War. “The strength of leadership that took was helpful to me.”
Slashing pricey benefits and entering Chapter 9 was hyper-contentious. But it snapped Stockton out of its fiscal dreamworld and set a sustainable course.
Eggman resigned in 2012 to run for state Assembly. She won and served two terms. The political winds were at her back: Democrats enjoyed supermajorities in both houses and had the Governor’s Office.
Still, some battles were uphill. Such as the campaign to land the City of Stockton a much needed California State University, Stockton.
Eggman tried many avenues to redress California’s lopsided geographic distribution of state universities, which favors the Southland and ignores the state’s 11th-largest city. Some worked better than others. But she planted Stockton’s flag.
Now what it takes to land a state university — the closest thing, in my opinion, to a silver bullet for Stockton — is better understood. “I think the next 10 years we need to build local enrollment. The more enrollment we build the closer we will be.”
Because the system’s leaders look at the number of a city’s college-bound students. Stockton has too few. That’s both true and a maddingly circular argument.
“It’s blaming us for being the victim,” Eggman said. “They don’t invest in us because we don’t have a lot of college-bound people — of course!”
Eggman did secure $54 million for an administration building and classrooms at the CSU Stanislaus satellite in Stockton — on the condition that the university cannot retreat from Stockton if the economy goes south as it did before.
The ulterior motive: When the student population increases to 5,000, “That’ll tip us into a stand-alone” Stockton State University, Eggman said.
Another tough fight is the Delta Tunnel. Eggman wrote numerous bills to kill the beast. “They never make it all the way to the governor’s desk for signature. But continuing that conversation, continuing that drumbeat … has been important.”
She added, “I’m proud, 12 years in, no tunnels on my watch.”
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, lauded Eggman in a statement: “Senator Susan Eggman was a great ally in efforts to save, protect, and restore the Delta. She and her team were essential in moving forward the state audit of the twin tunnels project. They have been guardians against bad legislation, and advocates for positive change like flood protection and needed climate bonds. Senator Eggman will be missed …”
Sadly, though, Eggman said of the tunnel, “It’s getting closer. If we continue to fight to get the best possible outcome, it will be, at some point, our best option.”
On water, among other issues, Stockton is politically overmatched, and sometimes steamrolled, by more populous and moneyed regions of the state. Did Eggman ever want to give up?
“Nope. Never. Never. I always felt like, “What is the path? How do you pick up people here and there to move forward?”
Eggman hit her stride in the Senate. Perhaps her biggest accomplishment is SB43, an overhaul of an outdated law regulating involuntary conservatorship of people suffering mental health problems. They are a big component of California’s homelessness crisis. Yet being too impaired to provide oneself a home — being homeless year after year, never getting well, at risk of dying on the street — didn’t rise to the level of state intervention until Eggman revised the law. In doing so, she gave mental health professionals a tool for helping mental health clients and gave the state significant power to reduce homelessness. As laws go, SB43 is a grand slam.
Eggman also co-authored Senate Bill 1338, establishing CARE Courts in California.
A psychiatrists’ lobbyist named Randall Hagar had this to say to Capitol Weekly at the time: “She’s risen to meet every challenge no matter how daunting. There’s no pretense or calculation with Susan. She has profound lived experience, lending her great credibility. And she’s a straight shooter, able to inspire others to see and believe in her vision.”
Eggman also strengthened Laura’s Law, named for Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old college student gunned down in 2001 by a mentally ill man whose family’s pleas for help were ignored by officials.
Capitol Weekly said Eggman was, “Widely regarded as the most knowledgeable and effective state legislator on mental health issues in the Legislature.”
She also authored the End of Life Option Act.
Her Right to Repair Act compelled Apple and other companies to allow consumers to repair their phones. A policy Apple is reportedly taking nationwide.
Read more about Eggman’s accomplishments here.
Locally, “One of the best things I feel I did for our district is the Challenge Academy,” the National Guard’s Discovery Challenge Academy in Lathrop, Eggman said.
Run in conjunction with the county Office of Education, the Academy offers a free “quasi-military” program to help kids earn their high school diploma and teaches life skills — trades, good citizenship, community service — which turns lives around.
Since 2017, the Academy has mentored around 2,000 youths. “One of my favorite things is to go to their graduation every year,” she said.
One of Eggman’s wiliest endgame moves involves Assemblymember Carlos Villapudua, D-Stockton, when he announced last December that he would switch races with his wife, Edith.
Carlos, one of Stockton’s so-so leaders, probably engineered the switch when internal polling showed Edith, a newcomer, likely to lose to Rhodesia Ransom, a rival candidate for Eggman’s State Senate seat. They probably calculated that Edith had a better shot at the assembly seat. So Carlos switched to the Senate race and Edith to Assembly.
Carlos probably would have won had he stayed in the Assembly race, but he got greedy and brought his wife in.
Eggman: “I didn’t think the Villapuduas should be representing two houses in the state legislature. I had not been impressed.”
So Eggman recruited former Congressman Jerry McNerney to run for her seat. McNerney immediately became the frontrunner. Rodesia Ransom switched races to the Assembly where she’s the favorite against Edith again.
“I had worked real hard to put Stockton on the map with strong representation and statewide respect,” Eggman said. “It didn’t seem like my job would be done if I left Stockton with weaker leadership.”
Not everyone is pro-Eggman. Lodi’s Jim Shoemaker, former vice president of the state California Republican Assembly, and former longtime head of the Republican Central Committee of San Joaquin County said he is glad Eggman is terming out.
“She was very consistent being with the Dem’s progressive side of the party,” Shoemaker said, “Really on social issues that she seemed to focus on. That we’re not happy with. I think she’s taken the state down the wrong path.”
But Shoemaker conceded, “She had great staff. They were very in touch with the community. I’ll give ’em that.”
What next? Eggman formed a committee in March to run for state treasurer.
“I thought if I’m going to do something it’s probably treasurer. They do a lot of the funding of the health, education, and housing programs I’m interested in.”
She’s going home to Renee, her spouse and partner for more than 30 years, and Stockton, where they are raising their daughter, Eme.
“I don’t feel sad,” Eggman said. “It’s one of the greatest opportunities of your life if you like to help people and do office for good. And at the state level, that’s good. I’ve been happy to have the opportunity to do that.”
Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com
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