One of my proudest accomplishments was being the mayor of Los Gatos and constructing route 85.

I was on surveying as one of the five counsel members of Los Gatos. The mayor was Al Smith. He owned Orchard Supply. He was a businessman and a farmer. Whenever he made a public pronouncement, at the end he would always say “And someday, I hope to see route 85 in.”

He said that we really needed the highway, but they just keep putting it off. He said that everybody tried to get it through, but nobody was able to do that. He told me that many people had tried to get the highway past but no one had been able to do it. So, I said “aha, a challenge!”

So, when I was elected mayor, in my acceptance speech I said that I wanted to do three things: save Forbes Mill, make the mayor’s office very accessible to the community, and I would like to try to get route 85 on track.

So I was able to do all three of them. I started having local art in the chambers, the arts commission. And I appointed more women in my commission than any other women had appointed. I was really pleased that we were able to get highway 85 off the drawing boards. We went to Sacramento and lobbied everyone there. At that time, Willie Brown was in charge in Sacramento. Once I saw him walking down the hallway and I lobbied him there and then for route 85. I had a lot of wonderful experiences. I was mayor in 78 and 79.

To get 85 in, I started the ball rolling by creating a lobbying committee. And I started by picking about five people from every city along the way. We had a twenty or 25 people on this committee. We met in Villa Feliz. They would allow us to come in at seven in the morning on Tuesday morning. Everyone could do it because they didn’t have to get to work until eight. And we had people there from the transportation committee and had newspaper articles about why are we getting 85. It was finished in 94. I was one of the first cars to drive on highway 85.

When I was out of politics, there were a lot of people in San Jose who thought it was really, really good idea. People like Zoe Lofgren were working on it. We started the idea of taxing ourselves to get the money for the highway because we weren’t getting any money from the state. We were the very first county to tax ourselves so that we could get the money to do this.

This was pretty innovative. We had to get permission from the state legislature to be able to do this.

I ran for the assembly after I was mayor and didn’t make it. Because we needed money desperately, I opened a consulting business. It was for community affairs with a big portion of it in the historical preservation part. I knew that in the 80s we were going to have our hundredth year anniversary in the city of Los Gatos. So, I decided to have pre-celebration celebrations. I did on in 84 and 85. One was a small business celebration. I went around to the merchants in the area and asked for a $200 donation.

I have a deep satisfaction from putting all of this together. I think it is mostly ego because there is a certain satisfaction that comes from having an idea that you think will be good and then working really hard to make it work.

No wonder I am smiling. Almost everything I tried to do, except get to the state assembly, I was able to do. The reason I didn’t get that was because I was a woman, not a Republican, did not share the Lincoln day dinner. I was out there doing stuff and I didn’t have time to be a Republican woman. So the republican women didn’t like me and they didn’t see a woman of their own sex being in the state legislature.

So, because I had not been a card-carrying Republican and because of a little jealousy, they did not see me as their primary candidate. So they worked against me and that was why I didn’t get it. They ran two candidates. And I had a lot of dirty politics played on me, but it didn’t hurt me because I was hardened. I didn’t take it personally, and I knew that they didn’t like what I stood for.