Councilwoman Makes Sure Everybody's Voice Is Heard

Councilwoman Makes Sure Everybody’s Voice Is Heard

By HOPE HAMASHIGE

Aug. 17, 1997 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

COSTA MESA — Ask her colleagues what makes Libby Cowan a good government official, and they’ll tell you that she listens.

The Costa Mesa councilwoman spends hours on the phone and in public hearings, listening. And she listens not in spite of those who disagree but because of them.

“She is really, really open-minded,” said fellow Councilman Joe Erickson. “She studies issues with an incredibly broad perspective. You can never pin Libby into a corner.”

It’s not that she lacks opinions of her own or doesn’t trust her instincts. She does. But, she says, the best public policy is created only when everyone has a voice in it.

Cowan herself represents a minority voice in Orange County politics. She is one of the few gay officials ever elected in Orange County, and today, she will be the grand marshal at the Orange County Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade in Irvine.

“If I am affected by my sexuality, I think it has made me better at empathizing with other people, because I know what it’s like to feel like an outsider,” she said.

Members of the county’s gay and lesbian community say there is enormous symbolic value to her status.

“It is incredibly important for people to see her for what she is: bright and intelligent and doing a great job for the city,” said Steve Plesa, who chairs the Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, the charter club within the Orange County Democratic Party that serves gays and lesbians. “I think when people see that, it helps to counter some of the negative thinking about gays and lesbians.”

Cowan, 44, moved to Orange County in 1977, shortly after graduating from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1986, she bought a home in Costa Mesa on a quiet middle-class street, where she lives with her dog, two cats and partner, Rebecca Chadwick.

Chadwick said she is not surprised that the community has seemingly embraced Cowan.

“She is the most moral of people, because of the way she conducts her own life and how she treats her family and her friends and co-workers,” Chadwick said. “That is why people respond to her, even if they don’t agree with her politics.”

Since moving to Orange County, government has become Cowan’s vocation and avocation.

She is a supervisor in Irvine’s Community Services Department and has been involved with community groups the Orange County Human Relations Commission and Orange County Together. Before being elected to the City Council in November, she was a planning commissioner in Costa Mesa for four years.

Recently, Cowan established the city’s first group of teenage advisors, who will help the council with projects of interest to teens, such as the new community center.

“They are the ones who are going to inherit this city, so I want to see them get involved,” she said.

At the first meeting of the 18-member Advisory Committee for Teens, Cowan told the 14- to 18-year-olds, “I want to know what would get you to come and use this place. So, just tell us what you would like to see.”

More than anything, the advisors said, they long for a place where they could socialize for hours without being asked to leave. It should be comfortable and attractive, with outdoor tables, perhaps in a courtyard.

The teenagers, who were chosen to serve for one or two years, were thrilled to finally have their opinions solicited.

“Kids see things differently,” Evelyn Powers, 17, said. “And especially teenagers see things differently.”

As a youth, Cowan was herself a bit of a rebel. She remembers when, 34 years ago, she wrote her father a note telling him she no longer wanted to play cello.

She knew the news would break his heart. He raised his children to share his passion for music and dreamed that, since there were four of them, they would one day form their own string quartet.

“I joke with friends in the gay and lesbian community that coming out to my parents was a lot easier than telling them that I wasn’t going to be a musician,” Cowan said.

She also remembers attending campus demonstrations with her parents, who showed up to make sure no one was injured.

“From those experiences,” Cowan said, “I learned about social justice and the role of government.”