Profiles of Commitment: A Review of Politicians for the People: Six Who Stand for Change

An American flag motif dominates the dust jacket of this collection of political biographies, but change—not tradition—shapes the matter inside. In a period when mass media convey a sense of cynicism about electoral politics as well as foster a mood of privatism in our personal lives, Elizabeth and Mara Miller have produced this book (published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1979), featuring people whose personal commitment to social change motivated them to run for political office. The two women and four men—one black, two Chicano, three white, from various parts of the country—are described as "risk-takers who speak frankly about a life in politics and have chosen to put themselves on the line."

The spirit of the 1960s pervades the book. Levy and Miller, who "grew up politically in the Sixties," experienced directly the political openings, concrete gains, and defeats of that time. Their desire seems to be to demonstrate by means of these biographies that activism did not end with the apparent decline of mass movements or with the quietude of the 1970s. Passing the E.R.A., ending capital punishment, legalizing abortion and making it available to all who choose it, abolishing poverty—examples the authors give in their introduction—are all efforts that are still contested in this country. Quoting Tom Hayden, their model of the politician they wanted to profile, that "the full impact of the Sixties will not be felt until the Eighties or Nineties," the authors give the young reader or adult short presentations of people who came out of the 1960s to "infiltrate" the present situation and carry on the work from positions of "greater influence." Like a latter-day Profiles in Courage, this book is designed to teach young people some of that important political history and to inspire them with activist role models.

Although the collection suffers from its limitation to electoral politics, the individuals in each of the six chapters comprise a sample that is various and stimulating. Certainly, Moises Morales, the first presented, immediately breaks from the model of the typical U.S. politician. At nineteen he was involved with the militant Chicano movement in New Mexico, where in 1967 he participated in the Alianza de los Pueblos Libres raid on the Rio Arriba County courthouse to make a citizens' arrest of the district attorney; he was the bodyguard and driver for the Alianza's leader, Reies Tijerina. Since then Morales himself has been a leader of the La Raza Unida party, fighting for political freedom and economic and social justice with his people in New Mexico. At thirty-one he ran for sheriff in the same Rio Arriba county on the La Raza ticket. As Levy and Miller emphasize, Morales is not "a Sixties radical turned Seventies-in-the-system politician." In Morales' political biography we get the connection between social movements, electoral politics, and the severity of the break with the U.S. political norm which the authors try to develop throughout the book.

The emphasis and mood, however, change with the second biography, that of Nancy Stevenson, a white, middle-class, liberal Democrat who at age fifty was elected lieutenant-governor of South Carolina. With family wealth, roots in colonial Carolina, a brother in advertising to do her media work, and a traditional life style going for her, Stevenson was able to get into office and practice her mainstream liberal politics. At this point the radical political vision of the book appears to change, but the authors demonstrate the significance of a liberal woman running for office in the South by carefully summing up the history of politics in South Carolina since the Civil War. Consequently, they demonstrate the challenge to the system that such an apparently mainstream politician represents.

Arthur Eve, a black assemblyman from Buffalo, provides a second image of minority politics. Eve's entry into the Democratic party, his development of a black political movement within and without the party, and his key role in the negotiations with the prisoners at Attica State Prison...