Sue Wagner - Excerpts 3, 4 & 5 Transcript
(Reno, Nevada; August 15, 2001)

SW: One of the things that became apparent to me, and I really didn't understand it and still don't to this day, is that Jean was not particularly well-liked by members of the Assembly, and I think when one looks at a politician, they have two constituencies, in my mind: one, the people that elected them, the other, the people that you work with. You could be dynamite, smart, the constituents might love you, and never have an opponent, but if you can't get along with those people that you're working with, you might never get a bill passed, and I've asked people what it was about Jean that put her in a different light. I think I know, but I'll tell you what they said. Basically, they said that Jean had a condescending manner, that they felt, and I'm saying "they" in a collective way, it's certainly not all of the assemblymen, but some I've spoken with, because I couldn't understand it, that they felt that she - her perception was that she knew more about something than they did and talked down to them, and I bring it up because Jean ultimately had to put her name, not as the main sponsor but buried it down here somewhere, because if it had her name on it, it probably wasn't going to pass, although it might have been a terrific concept, and that is something that I learned very quickly, because both she and I wanted to get elected to this thing called the Legislative Commission, which kind of runs the Legislature in the interim, and I, of course, was going to bow to Jean - she was older, she was a senior person - but the Republican guys came to me and said, "We're going to support you, she's not going to get it because we're not going to support her," and this is when I got all this information on how they felt, and so ultimately I had to explain that to Jean in a way that I thought was appropriate, and I did get elected, the caucuses do that. In a way, that told me (a) that I had been accepted by my party, even though I didn't agree with them on everything, and the fact that I - that was a constituency, the second one, that I could deal with, but Jean understood that at some point and realized that she - the political process worked in a different way, that she could take an issue, and in fact, (SWagner3) she and I went to this bar one night where a guy named Darryl Dryer, I think he was the Assembly majority leader, Democrat, liked to play the piano in this bar, so we went over there and sat up there and - on barstools, and she got him, because he'd had a few, to be the main sponsor of this bill dealing with lobbyist registration, and so her name was down here and my name was someplace, but he was the main sponsor, I'm not sure - we were laughing about it, you know, saying, "Tomorrow he's not going to remember he even did this," (Swagner3) (laughing), so, I don't know, but that was a - that was a good memory, and I do remember Jean, on this same track, (SWagner4) she testified on something, and I can see the room, I can see the people, and the committee was so awful, treated her so poorly, she was so upset, and Mary Gojak had a room over in the Ormsby House, which was a place where people lived at that time, and the three of us went over to comfort her, and we decided that, you know, we were going to somehow take over the Assembly and run it and do it the right way because, you know, we were not appreciated,(SWagner4) she was treated - and I don't want to get into the issue or anything, it's not relevant, but it just points out thematically that you need to deal with things somehow differently. I don't believe Jean was like that, although I do understand what they're saying, because Mary and I - we taught a class together, the three of us, down at UNLV, and then Mary and I did one up here, which got a lot of women involved, it was a terrific experience, and I remember Mary saying to me one day, "You know, we just have to step up, because Jean's going to take over the whole thing," so evidently that was something that other people -(SWagner5) I just felt that Jean knew more, she was smarter than everybody else, and maybe that's why she appeared condescending, because Jean was ahead of her time in many ways in terms of the legislative reform thing I was discussing and many other issues and, you know, two or three sessions later people caught up with her,(SWagner5) but I just - I got along very well with Jean, I consider her one of my best friends in the legislative process, we both had children at the time - so did Mary, as a matter of fact - growing up in this period, and I know we both had thoughts about - we both, I think, felt an obligation, once we got involved in the process, to continue to do this because we hoped to make changes for other women, and we questioned, did it affect our own families in some ways, and I think probably it did, and my - my daughter particularly was labeled everywhere, even when she went away to college, "Oh, I'm sure you're going to be the congresswoman from Nevada," and - and, you know, she didn't - it wasn't something she really wanted to hear all the time, she was her own person, too, and I think both my kids would be terrific candidates in different ways, but I don't think either one of them will run for office, although my son, as I say, is an attorney. If he had lived here - and he was at one time with a law firm in Reno, after he got out of law school in Arizona - I think that if he had lived here, I think he might have wound up in politics, because he had been offered a couple of jobs with large firms, and I think, particularly after I got on the Gaming Commission, and of course I would not be able to vote on anything that he had anything to do with, and I'm sure people understood that, but he did tell me that he had all these offers and, you know, having a mother who had been there, he might have been, you know, encouraged to do that by the firm, because sometimes that happens. Anyway, Jean and I did talk about that, maybe later in life, not at the time, because I don't know if we really understood what we both were doing, in the sense of trying to make a difference, not only for ourselves but for everyone who came after us, and kind of stepping out, because we did have many women that resented the fact that the role they had as a housewife was somehow not perceived to be a good thing anymore. We had to be very careful with that because clearly that's not the case, but I think now we've gone through this evolution, that women feel very comfortable in working or not working, and there isn't any black mark against them if they don't choose to go into the workforce, but there was a period of time where - where I do believe they felt second - like second-class citizens as women, which is really a shame, but I think the whole Equal Rights Amendment somehow, you know, focused on that. Jean and I were very involved in those issues, and of course we had national people that came in on both sides of the Equal Rights Amendment and, you know, Ms. Magazine and we were - we would've been like - you had to get 38 states to ratify an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, we would've been like 36th or 37th, so the whole nation, really, was focused on Nevada and, of course, we didn't do that, there were a lot of political things that went on.