Architect of Adams' win knows underdog role

Marin Independent Journal, November 2002, By Richard Halstead

For Dotty LeMieux, who managed Susan Adams' successful campaign for supervisor last week over experienced politician Paul Cohen, it was a familiar scenari a run-off election against a better-financed opponent for supervisor with development connections. There were two notable differences this time around. This time LeMieux was not the candidate, and this time, she was on the winning side.

In 1992, this feisty environmental lawyer, who lives in Bolinas, pushed Marin political patriarch Gary Giacomini to the brink before losing to him in a run-off election for supervisor by fewer than 3,000 votes. Giacomini spent $186,248 on his campaign, while LeMieux spent $58,659.

Four years later, Giacomini decided to retire after six terms on the Board of Supervisors. This time, LeMieux ended up in a run-off against Steve Kinsey, whom Giacomini had tabbed as his successor. Kinsey raised about $125,000 to LeMieux's $95,000. She lost that race by 1,382 votes.

"It feels really good to be on the winning side," LeMieux said. "It's a very different experience not being the candidate. When you're the candidate, it's hard not to take it personally."

Taking nothing away from Adams - Marin Mnicipal Water Board member Jack Gibson said LeMieux made some vital contributions to her candidacy.

"What Dotty brought was the experience," Gibson said, "the ability to put together the organization, particularly the grass roots organization. I look at that campaign, and I'm very, very impressed."

"Dotty LeMieux is an amazing woman with a lot of energy," Adams said. "She has a very clear idea of what a campaign needs in order to win, and she is able to do it on a very conservative budget. She listens to the candidate and works with the candidate to bring their personality and agenda forward in a very articulate way."

"There are two things that distinguish Dotty from conventional campaign consultants," said San Rafael lawyer Faye D'Opal. "One is that she always focuses on the grass roots and door-to-door outreach to voters. The other is that she sticks to the issues and avoids hit pieces and negative campaigning. I like both of those attributes."

Doris Elaine "Dotty" LeMieux, 54, grew up on the outskirts of Kalamazoo, Mich. Her father, a private detective and a Republican, once ran for sheriff.

"I was 11 and worked on his campaign, " LeMieux said. "He really wanted to be in politics." Her mother was a Kennedy Democrat.

When LeMieux was 16, her parents divorced and she moved with her mother to Massachusetts, where the kids at her high school gave her the nickname Dotty.

"It just stuck," she said.

Although she attended classes at Gordon College and the University of Massachusetts, LeMieux never earned a college degree. She was politically active, however, assisting draft resisters during the Vietnam War.

But when LeMieux moved to Berkeley in 1971, she was more interested in poetry than politics. She started visiting Bolinas because she knew several poets who lived there.

"I kind of fell in love with the place," she said. "It was a time when you could live there very cheaply."

She lives there still with her husband, Ray Moritz, an arborist. LeMieux and Moritz have lived together for 17 years but got married only four years ago.

LeMieux's shift toward politics began in 1981 when she ran successfully for a seat on the Bolinas Community Public Utility District board. At the time, she listed her occupation as writer, editor and truckdriver. She was driving a produce truck for the Bolinas People's Store, while writing for Bolinas' community newspaper, the Hearsay News; and editing the Turkey Buzzard Review, a small literary magazine.

LeMieux became interested in the law when she and the other members of the utility board were sued by landowners who objected to the district's moratorium on new water hookups.

"We won ultimately but it took 10 years," she said.

So in 1983 at age 35, LeMieux ransferred out of New College's poetics program into its law school. Working in the county counsel's office as a clerk to help support herself, she received her law degree four years later. She specialized initially in land use cases.

LeMieux ran against Giacomini in 1992, which would be dubbed the "Year of the Woman" in California, following the election of Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to the United States Senate. It was also the year that Lynn Woolsey was elected to the United States House of Representatives and Annette Rose was elected supervisor.

Giacomini had backed LeMieux in her two unsuccessful bids for a seat on the Marin Community College District and appointed her to the supervisor's adult criminal justice commission.

It was while serving on the criminal justice commission that she became involved in a successful lawsuit to prevent building a new county jail at San Quentin. Giacomini's support of the jail proposaland construction of the Buck Center for Research on Aging would later become issues in the campaign.

Regarding Giacomini's work for various developers since leaving office, LeMieux said, "I think it is very sad. I'm sorry he didn't use his abilities to work with the environmental community. He could have done a lot statewide."

Neither Giacomini nor Kinsey, both of whom supported Cohen's candidacy, could be reached for comment.

It was during her two campaigns for supervisor that LeMieux learned the mechanics of running a campaign and how much she enjoyed the process.

Within the last five years, LeMieux has worked as a campaign consultant on several campaigns - Gibson's bid for the State

Assembly, D'Opal's candidacy for Marin Superior Court Judge, and Ray Peterson's run for supervisor in Sonoma county. She worked for Peterson, a Republican, against a Democratic incumbent because of Peterson's environmental credentials.

On the Gibson campaign, she worked with Don Organ, who would later manage Cohen's campaign.

But before last week, LeMieux was on the winning side only once - when she helped Alex Forman get elected to the Marin Municipal Water Board in 2000. Political observers have likened that race - Forman's upset victory over Morrow Cater - to the Adams victory.

LeMieux says in both campaigns there was one dominant issue. In the water board race, it was whether or not to build a new pipeline to import more Russian River water. In the supervisorial race, it was the proposal to develop the land owned by St. Vincent's School for Boys and the traffic the project would generate.

The magic of the Adams campaign resided in its focus on a single issue, said local political commentator Richard Spotswood said.

"Dotty learned the lesson," Spotswood said. "A, pick an issue and B, pick a popular one."

"The Cohen campaign didn't focus on any one issue; it was more like the national Democrats," he said.

LeMieux, a member of the Marin Democratic Central Committee and co-chairwoman of the Sierra Club, Marin Group, can understand why some voters have deserted the Democrats to join the Green Party.

"I see the Democrats drifting to the right," LeMieux said. "But I don't think the Green Party is ready for prime time. I think it was big mistake to keep Nader in the race."

She's a member of the Democratic Party's state caucus on the environment. Instead of joining the Greens, LeMieux is doing everything she can to refocus the Democratic Party on protecting the environment and social issues.

She has named her campaign consulting business: Green Dog Campaign Strategies as in green dog, rather than yellow dog, Democrats.

"I've even got a green dog license plate," she said.

November, 2002