Quick Take

State Sen. John Laird remembers Mike Rotkin, who died last week from complications from leukemia.

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Words are hard to find to describe the loss of my friend and longtime Santa Cruz public servant Mike Rotkin. It’s difficult to remember a time in my life when I didn’t know him. 

For decades, Mike was a volunteer at gay pride – in his day-glo vest at the corner where the parade kicked off. When he wasn’t there a few weeks ago, it was a signal. 

We served seven years together on the Santa Cruz City Council in the 1980s, beginning with Mike’s six terms on the council and five terms as mayor. We formed a new majority on the city council at the time and it was a period of change for Santa Cruz. We won a court case to preserve greenbelts, expanded support for human services, fought offshore oil drilling, did the first pay equity and domestic partners programs, turned city attention to the neighborhoods, worked closely with labor organizations, fostered hundreds of units of new affordable housing and brought a new generation into city government. 

We brought different life experiences and points of view to the table. In all that work, the relationships were close. Mike became like a brother. As with all family members, we learned to appreciate each other’s idiosyncrasies. 

Mike used to give council speeches as if he were a professor, repeating a second time the major points for impact. He and I would mix it up in public over this, because he would begin those talks saying “I’ll be brief …”  I frequently told him, “if you were going to be brief, you would just BE brief.”

The night he left the council the first time, he said, “I’ll be brief,” and then turned to me and said, “Those are code words for John to jump out the window …”

Once Mike was speaking about a fellow city councilmember in a council meeting and he said, “He’s being disingenuous, and if you don’t know what that means, it means he’s full of s–t.” Mike apologized immediately. In the years following, if you wanted to irritate a colleague, you just told them they were being disingenuous. 

Mike, Mardi Wormhoudt and I participated in a student all-night sleep-in against apartheid – held in the lobby of UC Santa Cruz’s McHenry Library. Mike’s task was to bring the “air mattresses” and imagine our surprise when they were 3 feet long and we were sleeping on the hard cement all night. We teased him for a while about that one. 

He was a colorful character, once responding to a fire and helping fight it. He was late for an early public meeting because he hit a deer with his motorcycle coming off campus. He was always recognizable on his motorcycle by his old-fashioned helmet and his trench coat. And there was a period when tie-dye was his go-to shirt style.

He was a true public servant – mentoring hundreds, if not thousands, of UCSC Community Studies students. The legacy is reflected by his students’ public service involvement around the state and country. It took Mike a couple of decades to finish his doctorate, and I recall the celebration we all attended when it (finally) happened. 

One of the more interesting things was the perception of Mike’s political evolution.  From his first campaign, Mike identified as a “socialist-feminist.” He used to wear a T-shirt with Groucho Marx to make fun of the attacks on his “Marxism.”

By the time he was done serving his six council terms, he arguably was one of the chamber of commerce’s go-to councilmembers. He didn’t abandon his commitment to progressive principles, he would just work to get to solutions – and he would try to talk to parties across the spectrum. He worked for years as his union representative on campus, and yet he could frustrate his labor allies in working for the viability of the agencies where he served. He served on the transit board until the end. 

He leaves a rich public policy legacy in our community, one that is recognized in the outpouring of tributes we are experiencing right now. 

Mike was the definition of the word mensch. He was my political partner for almost 50 years. I will miss him every day, and will adjourn the state senate in his memory when it can be scheduled. My heart goes out to Madelyn and his entire family.

State Sen. John Laird represents California’s Central Coast and is former secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency.