Cornell Sun Interview with Gabby

An interesting and fairly brief interview with Gabby’s Alma Mater The Cornell Daily Sun you probably wouldn’t otherwise come across…

The Sun: You were the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona
State Senate and the third woman in Arizona’s history to be elected to
Congress.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords: I also think I’m the youngest woman in Congress right now.

Sun: What took so long?

Giffords: It’s interesting. Arizona is a pretty unique state. We’re
the first state to have an elected woman governor. We also have one of
the highest percentages of women in our state legislature, and in my
home city of Tucson, we have a majority-women city council. So women
have certainly been making great strides in getting elected to local
and state positions, but it’s more difficult on a federal level.

Sun: How do you think the increasing number and visibility of female
politicians — from your election to Nancy Pelosi’s recent election as
the first female Speaker of the House — is changing politics on a
federal level?

Giffords: What I’ve noticed as a generalization — this is not 100
percent accurate — is that women as policymakers come to office for two
reasons. One, there’s a great need that’s not being met. Or because
people have encouraged them to run, and they’ve done it. Women are also
more concerned with areas such as children’s education, healthcare,
budgeting — because oftentimes, not always, it’s women that have
traditionally taken a larger role in terms of family matters and
dealing with the healthcare issues. So again, it’s a great
generalization, [but] oftentimes women are more interested in getting
the job done and not getting credit for it, whereas our male
counterparts are more interested in getting credit.

Sun: On that note, a little about current issues in Washington. As a
Fulbright scholar, you spent time living in Mexico and are proposing
employment reforms to help Mexico create new jobs. Can you elaborate on
your plans?

Giffords: We can’t just have an open border with people coming in
and out. We need to know where people are coming from, where they’re
going, what they want. Hopefully within the next couple of months we’re
going to vote on comprehensive immigration reform. The President talked
about it in the State of the Union and he talked about it in last
year’s State of the Union. That would entail a couple of areas. One
would be to punish employers who are knowingly hiring [illegal
immigrants] — because it’s a two-sided coin; there’s a supply side, and
there’s a demand side. So far we’ve only been looking at the supply
side. The second area is a guest worker program, where people could
come in and work legally, safely, seasonally and then go back to their
home country. Right now, that kind of visa doesn’t exist. It’s really
important for our economy in terms of agricultural work, construction
work, work in the tourism industry — we don’t have the labor force for
it right now. So a worker program would be part of the solution as
well.

Sun: You’ve criticized President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law,
emphasizing that American students are competing on a global level. How
can the government improve public education to better equip American
students to compete internationally?

Giffords: Well, there’s lots of things. We have to have a vision. In
the 1960’s … we were afraid of the Russians, we’d thought they’d
launched Sputnik and that we were falling behind. And that vision drove
a whole generation of scientists, engineers, mathematicians and
academic programs — and we led. And now we need to have a new mission.
… I believe that the next generation of our scientists, mathematicians,
engineers — our kids — will be inspired to look at the way we move
around the planet, look at our vehicles and the way that we heat our
homes and our offices. And frankly, with the issues of global warming
and climate change, we need to get on this. And we need to do it with
vision and leadership.

Sun: As a member of the Arizona legislature, you were very involved
in health coverage for low-income families, and you were named 2004’s
Legislator of the Year by the Mental Health Association of Arizona. Now
that you’re working on a national level, how do you plan to expand your
involvement in healthcare issues?

Giffords: I would like to see national mental healthcare — every
person that goes to see a doctor should have their whole body insured,
not just illnesses from the neck down. When the leading cause of sick
days in the workplace are psychologically caused — depression, stress,
anxiety — it makes sense for us to be requiring insurance companies to
cover your entire body. And not just parts of your body. So the reason
why I was awarded that is for my work for mental health care, and it’s
something we have to continue to push towards.

Sun: Can you tell us about your role on the Committee on Science and
Technology? What is it that you do, and what is the committee planning
for the upcoming year?

Giffords: [The committee] just passed legislation on Wednesday that
dealt with methamphetamine cleanup — that is now considered the number
one crime problem in Arizona. In some areas, 60 or 70 percent of people
that are being incarcerated right now have meth in their system. Meth
is unlike any other drug: it’s cheap, it’s highly addictive and it’s
devastating. So the committee is pretty broad, it covers everything
from meth to alternative energy. I’m on the subcommittee on energy and
environment; we’re looking at alternative energy sources. Voting
machines are another area the committee is going to look at, because
it’s federally required technology and the Science and Technology
committee will address it. It’s critical for our nation and for
democracy for people to know that every single vote is counted
correctly. And that we have a verifiable paper trail that is sure and
will prove in a recount that we know how people voted.

Sun: That’s interesting — I’m not sure many people know that the Committee on Science and Technology deals with voting machines.

Giffords: It’s interesting. When the Republicans took the committee
over, they changed the name to just Science. Frankly, a lot of our
federal leadership has pulled away from science, you know, and I’m
excited to be a part of this. There should be separation of church and
state—we need to be teaching science in schools, and there should be a
separation when it comes to teaching students about religion. It’s
important, but not in science class.

Sun: You graduated from Cornell with a Master’s degree in Regional
Planning in 1996. Did you have political aspirations at the time?

Giffords: No, not at all. You know, actually, I left [Cornell] and
went to go work briefly on a project for Price Waterhouse in New York
City, then was asked to come back and run my family’s tire and
automotive business, which I did, in 1996. My friends in the Planning
department laughed at me, of course — the tire business was very far
removed from planning. The way I became involved with the public sector
was, you can have the best planners in the world but the policy, the
people that are making the decisions, are the politicians. Also, you
know a lot of the industry leaders. So I thought that being an industry
leader and running a business would be good skills to have for the
future. And I ran the business for about four years, and then just fell
into politics. Once I got reestablished back in my hometown of Tucson,
serving on a variety of community boards … I realized that the state of
Arizona was usually at the very bottom of all of our states in terms of
education, of healthcare and environmental and mental health funding.
And I wanted to do something about it, so I started to run for office.
But [while I was at Cornell] I had no inkling or inclination of doing
that.

Sun: So you weren’t involved with any political organizations while you were at Cornell?

Giffords: Not at all.

Sun: One last question. Did you go to Harvard for your undergraduate degree?

Giffords: No, I went to Scripps College. I went to Harvard for one of their executive programs.

Sun: So you’ve spent time at Harvard for an executive program and
spent time at Cornell getting your master’s degree. Who would you root
for in a Cornell-Harvard hockey game?

Giffords: Oh, Cornell! My heart’s with Cornell, for sure.