I served with Professor Alan Heslop as the Rose Institute Legislative Intern to the California State Assembly and was assigned to Assemblyman Robert Naylor in the 1981 California Assembly Reapportionment Committee.  I was eventually hired as a full-time Analyst and worked with staff and legislators in Bob’s office. I’ve promised Alan that I will pay him a visit when I get out to California.

While at the Institute, I worked with Tony Quinn and the Republican Reapportionment team in Sacramento to analyze the Legislature’s redistricting plan. I had the rare opportunity to participate in the development of the nation’s first computerized redistricting system. I observed as Bob Walters and others wrote the code for the HP computer and set up the digitizing table used to combine tabular census, elections, and voter registration data with digitized map data in a unique computer application that allowed political geniuses like Tony to generate detailed, accurate, and predictive redistricting analyses.  I started out there in the map room and worked my way up to work alongside Alan, Tony, and the programmers. After my tour of duty in the California Legislature, I returned to CMC and eventually came back to the Rose Institute to assist Alan and the Institute staff in their analysis of the California Legislature’s reapportionment plan that was eventually submitted by the California Assembly that year.

I count it a great privilege to have had the opportunity to work with Alan and the Rose Institute students and staff. I remember in particular the late Tom Hoffeller who had a sharp wit and a great sense of humor and was a pleasure to work with. Tom was a master of redistricting and used the tools developed by Alan and the Rose Institute to advance the cause of like-minded conservative political advocates as we find at the Claremont Colleges.

While at the Institute and in my Sacramento Internship, I learned a great deal under the tutelage of Alan.  I give him credit for assisting me and believing in me steadfastly during a time when I scarcely believed in myself. I wrote my Senior Thesis on the topic of ethnicity as a factor in redistricting, a tome which, as I recall, reached around two hundred pages in length. I believe that my thesis document resides somewhere amongst the many dusty books in Honnold Library, where I once worked as a student applying the “new” technology of barcoding to the library’s large collection of books.

Eventually, I graduated and served as a USAF military pilot in the B-52 for several years and then worked as an Analyst in the New Mexico State Senate for several more years. Today I am an ordained minister and I oversee Cross-Star Ministries located in Albuquerque, New Mexico as the Director together with my wife, Debbie. We have an online membership of approximately 1250 members in three Christian Meetup Groups. I’m currently working on writing a book on prayer which I hope to complete soon and take to various prison outreach groups in California and up the western coast of the US. I’ll be sure and stop by when I get to California and visit.