Gay lawmaker's agenda includes environment, health care

Last updated Saturday, May 12, 2007 10:44 PM CDT in News

By Jason Wiest
The Morning News

After 12 years in an elected executive position in New York with the National Organization for Women, Webb began mixing her political and restaurant careers, jumping to upper management with two large chains before starting Lilly's, the Asian restaurant she owns with her partner, Nancy Tesmer. In between, she volunteered for political work locally and nationally.

"I love public policy," she says, her eyes now beaming. "I've always been interested since I was in, like, the sixth grade."

Reluctant to grant interviews before and during the session to avoid distractions, her ambition glowed as she recently discussed her goals during the interim and the next session, "if I'm re-elected," she keeps saying, modest for a woman who won 57 percent of the vote against three other Democrats the first go-around.

She hopes to be appointed to the global warming commission established by legislation she sponsored this year, eager to start work on environmental legislation for the next session.

She wants to master the state budget. Despite rarely missing a budget committee meeting since her election even though she was not on the committee, she plans to talk to former House speaker Bill Stovall, who she deems a budget authority, because "I've got, like, five pages of questions."

She's appalled by Arkansas' hunger problem, which her restaurant works to help end through donations. An agricultural state like Arkansas could do more, she says. And the Legislature also needs to work toward more affordable and accessible health care, two of her highest priorities.

Webb keeps rattling off priorities and plans, spewing facts and figures on education, economic development and tax cuts, sounding no differently than any other politician.

Not once does Webb, who has been in a relationship with Tesmer for eight years, mention gay marriage, domestic partnerships or civil unions.

Not a word about passing laws to protect gays and lesbians from hate crimes or adding sexual orientation to the list of prohibited discrimination in private employment.

Nothing on the showdown between the House Judiciary Committee, of which she was a member, and Sen. Shawn Womack, R-Mountain Home, over Womack's bill to ban gays and unmarried couples who live together from fostering or adopting children. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House committee.

"One of the things that is frustrating is when you hear somebody talk about the gay agenda," Webb says. "I'm passionate about the environment, I'm passionate about health care, just like a lot of people are. That's my agenda."

Of course, she favors equal rights for gay people -- years ago, the 57-year-old says, she was fired from a job and evicted from an apartment only because she was gay.

The Legislature had the chance to prohibit such discrimination two years ago, but Webb well knows the bill died for lack of a motion for a recommendation in committee.

She says she has no plans to run a similar bill or to offer any other pieces of "gay" legislation.

"I saw where that bill went two years ago, and I would have to say at this point, you know, I'll fight bad bills, but that's probably what my best role is right now, to fight bad bills," she said.

She was stressed before Womack's "hurtful" bill was defeated in her committee, "but it wasn't like I dropped all my other stuff and focused on that, because I think that I had six or eight bills right at that time that I was really working on," she says.

Of course, Webb wants change, and she thinks the state has seen some positive changes in people's attitudes toward gay people.

"I think being there and being a gay legislator made a lot of people think about things that they have never had to think about in the past," she says, like when her invitation to an early-in-the-session party for freshmen legislators and their spouses included Tesmer's name.

"There were some people who came up and told me they were glad they met my partner and how nice she was," Webb says. "I think something like that helps people overcome, maybe a preconceived notion that they had."

Laws can't erase stereotypes, but Webb says she hopes she dispelled some on her own during the session.

"I hope (the session) did raise some awareness among legislators who maybe hadn't had the opportunity to work with somebody who was an openly gay person and see that I wasn't, you know, some horrible person," she said.

Webb forged working relationships with some of the staunchest conservatives.

Rep. Mark Martin, R-Prairie Grove, spoke in support of her bill to keep lightbulbs with certain levels of mercury out of landfills. She worked closely with Rep. Pam Adcock, D-Little Rock, who voted against the Equal Rights Amendment, on establishing the global warming commission. She co-sponsored legislation by Rep. Jon Woods, R-Springdale, on stem cell research. Woods supported Womack's proposed gay parenting ban.

"I have a lot of respect for her and I think she's a great legislator," Woods said. "Extremely nice, caring, good person. Kathy and I are, you know, from different parties and different backgrounds, but yet we have a lot of similar views on issues."

Even Womack, who declared he was "proudly heterosexual" during Senate debate on his bill, mentioned working together with Webb in 2009 to pass her polystyrene foam recycling bill, which failed this year.

"There are a whole lot more similarities, I think, between me and most of the legislators than there are differences," Webb said, "and, you know, I want people to focus on the similarities."

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