Samuel P. Goddard Interview -- Shift in the Democratic System


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PS = Pam Stevenson - Agave Productions

SG = Sam Goddard


PS (Interviewer): And Rosie. Did you give them any advice when they became Governor. Did you give them advice about being governor?


SG (S. Goddard): You try (laughing) to give another politician advice, just save your breath. Yeah, I went up and talked to, to uh, Raul and Rosie when they got. But it wasn't mostly, I think. About the major issues like water and, uh, uh, civil rights. You see we were all the ones that I'm close to, we were all Democrats and they were all interested in the same issues. And, uh, the one that I worked on most and am still working on is water. And they, uh, uh, civil rights, uh, propositions all the things that we've been talking about, I talked to the, uh, the others when they became Governor and told them what had happened and how had to find people who could represent you in the legislature and people who could uh, see that if there were troubles coming up would get in touch with you. I don't' like to use the word liberal because it really doesn't mean anything. But a lot of the things that we were working on were delineated as liberal. Because they weren't standard.


If anything, it was breaking the chain of the old, old Democratic system which had it's roots in privilege and, and, uh, pressure from the old types who pressure people. If we broke that up, that's probably the biggest thing we could do. And we at least got people thinking about other things. Like, uh, civil liberties and uh, uh, like trying to get uh a whole, a whole different standard of governance. One man one vote is ultimately the biggest revolution that came that came about. There's absolutely no doubt about that. And, uh, it, it, I was in the break period between the old system, which was mainly of privilege and, and, uh, performance power and where the power got into the hands it belonged in which was the public. Now they can be very much misled but in the long run, if you have enough people observing what's going on - they'll come down pretty well on the right side. And that was the difference.