Helen Sommers: An Oral History

Vito Chiechi
Former Chief Clerk vito Chiechi
Talks about Rep. Helen Sommers’
Oral History
Chief Clerk Vito Chiechi: I first got to know Helen
Sommers when she came to
the House of Representatives
in 1973.
In the 1972 election, Leonard
Sawyer was one of the
Democratic leaders who helped
‘mastermind’ the win that
gave the Democrats a 57-41
seat majority. Leonard had
been a member of the House
since 1955, so he had been
there a long time. Leonard was elected Speaker of
the House in 1973. And what Leonard did was he
brought the Legislature into the 21st Vito Chiechi
Century. That’s
when you got computers and full-time staff. That’s
how I became very close to Leonard Sawyer.
Early on, I was working for the Boeing Company
in government relations, and I had a friend who
was knowledgeable about computers. I had been
keeping precinct voting data by hand, so I give
him all my hand written data. A few days later, he
comes back with a stack of cards. He takes me to
the machine and he puts the stack of cards in the
computer; and out came this report on voting by
precinct. I couldn’t believe it!
So with ‘redistricting’ in the works, Leonard
had all this information of voters by precinct he’d
done by hand. I showed him what I had learned
to create redistricting files by computer. Leonard
brought in Senator August “Augie” Mardesich, who
had his Senate redistricting plan, to show him the
machine. Augie couldn’t believe it.
Of course, up to the 1972 election, the House
had 99 members and the Senate had 49. But in
1972, the courts ruled that each district had to have
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one Senator and two House Representatives, so it
established a redistricting plan based on 98 House
members and 49 Senators. In 1974, Leonard hired
me to be his Administrative Assistant, even though
he knew I was a Republican.
So in my role as Administrative Assistant to
the Speaker of the House with the Democrat’s
new majority, I got to know Helen Sommers well.
Helen is a straight shooter. She was never playing
with anybody; always right straight down the line.
She was the person who, if she said “No” to you,
she meant “No!” Or, if she said “Yes, I’ll do it” you
could take it to the bank! There aren’t many people
like that in politics anymore.
All through Helen’s 36 years in the House, politics
changed dramatically, but Helen continued to be
able to work with both parties. She was a Democrat,
but she also worked well with Republicans because
she always tried to be friends with the people who
were on her committees. She knew that in order to
get things done in the legislative process, you had
to reach across the aisle at a certain point in time.
So she always became friends with people on both
sides of the aisle.
Now, she looked a little cold at times; and could
stare you in the eye and cut your head off with her
look! But she was always the one who was trying
to get a consensus. Even thought she almost always
had a majority on her committees, she was always
working to get that consensus between the parties
in order to make the Legislature work. Her purpose
was knowing full well that she had to make
the process work.
In 1975, the Democrats had a super majority of
62 to 36 in the House, the largest majority in about
15 years. It was a difficult session, and there was a
group of new members who were “dissidents” toward
Sawyer. What they were complaining about was that
Leonard didn’t have any program on how they were
going to pass legislation, and that he wasn’t paying
attention to them. So, in 1976, the group of dissidents
grew to 32 members who called on Leonard
to step down as Speaker. They had the votes, so
Leonard resigned as Speaker, went on a business
trip to New Guinea and didn’t run for reelection in
November. They finished the session with Speaker