A photo glimpse of the Davis Oracle Scandal

Susan Kennedy, deputy chief of staff and Cabinet secretary to Gov. Gray Davis, holds up her right hand as she is sworn-in before testifiying at a hearing of the Joint Legilsative Audit Committee held at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, May 21, 2002. The committee is investigating the $95 million contract that state auditors say could cost the state as much as $41 million more then its previous arrangements. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

California Gov. Gray Davis speaks to reporters concerning the Oracle contract in Sacramento, Calif., in this May 6, 2002, file photo. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

Here's a little piece on Susan from 1990:

The San Francisco Chronicle, JUNE 26, 1990
Crusader Behind The Issue
Pro-choice group's determined director
RUTHE STEIN
Champagne bottles were uncorked in the office of the California Abortion Rights Action League last week when the Assembly cleared the way for the first state budget in 12 years that doesn't restrict state-paid abortions for women.
Much of the credit for corralling enough Republican legislators to provide 11 of the 54 votes needed for a two-thirds majority goes to CARAL -- as the abortion rights group is known -- and particularly to Susan Kennedy, its 29-year-old executive director, who increasingly has become a spokesperson for the abortion rights movement.
CARAL has been around since 1978, lobbying in Sacramento for pro-choice candidates and issues, but its role has escalated in the past year with the Supreme Court's Webster decision. That decision upheld part of a Missouri statute that barred abortions in public facilities and the use of public resources. ''Before that, we were a voice crying in the wilderness,'' Kennedy said at CARAL's South of Market office.
The day of the decision, more than 200 people called, wanting to know what they could do. The calls have continued. Membership in CARAL, which is completely membership supported, has nearly tripled in the last year, from 14,000 to 40,000, and chapters have opened throughout the state.
OLDER AND YOUNGER SUPPORTERS
Kennedy said the new members divide into two groups: older women who remember illegal abortions and younger women who took for granted the right to have a safe, legal abortion. The latter were ''much more angry that government would even think of tampering with that right.''
She believes CARAL's success is due to a shift from lobbying in Sacramento to old-fashioned grassroots lobbying by having members and other concerned people write and telephone their legislators.
For that to happen, Kennedy had to convince those who had become cynical about being able to affect the political process that their efforts would pay off.
With glee, she names the conservative legislators who she says voted for every anti-abortion bill ''until we mobilized enough fire under them to turn them around on this issue.''
RIGHT PERSON, RIGHT TIME
Kennedy was the right person at the right time for the job. She was brought in five years ago because of her ''extensive field experience,'' as she calls it, with the National Organization for Women and the League of Conservation Voters.
''I am the kind of person you give a phone number and a suitcase to and send off to Timbucktu to organize.''

...just in case you were wondering.

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