As expected, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass announced Wednesday morning her candidacy for the 33rd Congressional District seat of out-going Rep. Diane Watson, who did an unprecedented thing for a Black politician last week by announcing her retirement from Congress — while in good health and without a hint of scandal attached to her name — to make way for a younger person to carry out the work she started when she took her first elective office in 1975.

While acknowledging a plethora of youthful movers and shakers in her district in an interview Monday, Watson endorsed Bass, saying: “I will make way for her to take my place because she deserves it. Her fine work as speaker of the Assembly shows she has the temperament and leadership skills to unite a factious caucus and help move the party’s health reform and jobs creation bills, of which the country is in dire need.”

Also in that interview, Watson said she endorses Holly Mitchell, the executive director of Crystal Stairs, with whom she has worked closely for several years on crucial family and community issues, to replace Bass as Assembly member for the 47th District. 

With all the endorsing done, the 76-year-old former teacher said she will spend the next 10 months addressing the issues of health reform and job development and will not stand for re-election when her present term in the House of Representatives concludes this year, thus ending her 35 years of public service.

Diane Edith Watson has always been a class act — through the turbulent times surrounding school desegregation procedures during which she became the first Black woman elected to the LAUSD Board of Education in 1975, to her vehement opposition — while serving as the first Black woman elected to the state Senate — to the government’s plans to categorize African-Americans as “biracial” or “multiracial” on official documents and statistics, through a nasty, brutal loss to Yvonne Burke for county supervisor in 1992, through the rancorous primary campaign when she supported Sen. Hillary Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama, to the virulent toxicity of the present Congress, which she calls “a vicious place, where racism is alive and well” — Watson has always been a lady.

A Los Angeles native, Watson attended Dorsey High School, obtained a bachelor’s degree in education at UCLA, a master’s degree in school psychology from Cal State L.A. and a doctorate in educational administration from Claremont University. She was an elementary school teacher, school psychologist, university lecturer and health occupation specialist with the state Department of Education’s Bureau of Industrial Education before she was elected to the state Senate in 1978, where she remained until termed out and replaced by Kevin Murray in 1998.

During her 20 years in the Senate, Watson served as chair of the Health and Human Services Committee and gained a reputation as an advocate for health care for the poor and for children. It was there that she launched her campaign to get Americans to understand the health dangers of mercury in prevalent use in dentistry, a campaign she continued when she succeeded Julian Dixon in the House of Representatives in 2001.

Always a popular congresswoman, Watson won all her elections by more than 80 percent of the vote, winning the last one by almost 90 percent. Her 33rd Congressional District is probably one of the most ethnically and financially diverse district in the region. While 75 percent of the population is comprised of African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans, the district contains no ethnic majority. The vast district includes such places as Little Armenia and Koreatown, Windsor Hills and Venice Beach and Hollywood and Culver City, with all the areas’ residents having distinct and passionate interests. “And I’ve had to respond to all of them,” Watson said.

During her 10 years in Congress, she has authored 6,000 bills. “Of course, all of them have not been enacted into law, but we’ve brought the issues forward and got them addressed, and I’m proud of that,” Watson said. The congresswoman said she is particularly proud of the welfare reform measure signed by President Bill Clinton, which she and her staff wrote.
Watson got the Johnny Grant Post Office designated in honor of the late beloved “mayor of Hollywood,” and as chair of the Congressional Entertainment Industries Caucus, she introduced HR 3931, a bill to prevent runaway film and television production by extending tax credits to companies that produce such entertainment here in the United States, in an attempt to keep Americans employed in all areas of entertainment. That bill is in the Ways and Means Committee now.

The 33rd District is home to 160,000 South Koreans, the largest number in one place in country. So naturally she co-chairs the Congressional Korea Caucus through which she is fashioning a balance of trade agreement between South Korea and the United States. She also co-chairs the United States-United Kingdom Caucus, through which she works to keep Americans and Britons on the same side.

Two years ago, Watson introduced a bill to sever U.S. relations with the Cherokee Nation after it voted to remove Black freedmen from their rolls in violation of that 1866 treaty with the U.S. which granted freed blacks citizenship with the tribe. That bill is scheduled for a hearing soon. “It’s been difficult getting a hearing date because of all the critical issues we’ve had to deal with over the past year,” Watson said. She is also expecting action soon on HR 3526, her “Tony Cardenas Gang Prevention Act,” written in conjunction with the Los Angeles city councilman.

There are currently $4.48 million in the U.S. budget today for 33rd District programs, agencies and services appropriated by Rep. Watson. She has proposed $22 million for next year’s budget. This year’s appropriations run the gamut from Los Angeles River ecosystems and wetlands restorations and a USC methanol economy project, to a film career project and a West L.A. College “21st Century” career program, to a Wilshire Boulevard transportation and a bus facility improvement project, and several others, including funding for an advanced diagnostic and therapeutic program for Cal State University.

Watson said she has also appropriated $500,000 for storm drain improvement in Culver City, “but we haven’t gotten it yet and I hope we get it soon,” she said.

As far as her future plans are concerned, Watson said she wants to spend some quality time with her 100-year-old mother and, having served as ambassador to Micronesia from 1999 to 2000, she is amenable to possibly accepting an ambassadorial appointment from President Obama. “I will continue to work on home foreclosures which are devastating large numbers of families in the district even when I’m out of office. And finally, I want my constituents to know that I appreciate the trust and faith they have placed in my hands for these 35 years.”

I repeat: A class act.