By Karen Ocamb

State Sen. Liz Figueroa emotes an exuberance for life that's positively infectious. Try not to smile when she's around, but don't mistake her passion for lack of attention to public policy. Indeed, she thinks she has the right stuff to be California's lieutenant governor, a heartbeat away from the man who holds the most important job in the state.

While Figueroa has a huge LGBT fan base -- she attends tons of LGBT functions -- she hopes the endorsements from LGBT political friends offset her lack of endorsements from the traditional LGBT Democratic clubs. (Equality California has not endorsed in the race for lieutenant governor, saying that all three candidates have a 100 percent record).

“I'm supporting Liz Figueroa because she stands up for everybody and she fights for equality,” said openly gay Los Angeles City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl. “Liz didn't have it easy growing up, and her background and life experience give her a broad perspective. I know her priority as lieutenant governor will be to fight for all Californians.”

Figueroa was born Feb. 9, 1951, in the predominantly Central American part of San Francisco to non-English-speaking immigrant parents from El Salvador. The family moved to the San Mateo peninsula where, at 18, Figueroa became a Democratic activist and a human relations commissioner. Eventually, she started a small business that helped injured workers find jobs. In 1994, intent on being a role model, she became the first Latina elected to the state Assembly from Northern California.

“I have been a civil rights activist all my life,” Figueroa told IN Los Angeles magazine, “standing up for families and children, the underserved when it comes to health care,” as well as a “standing up for a women's right to chose” as a Latina.

Marriage equality has been “very important to me,” she said, noting that she and labor leader Dolores Huerta, her friend and supporter, stood at the back of the Assembly as the marriage equality bill was being debated.

As a human rights activist, part of her personal mission has been to educate people, including her own family, about LGBT issues. During a National Stonewall Democrats conference in San Diego last year, Figueroa told a story about a conversation with her mother after her mother's friends at a Catholic retreat spotted Figueroa on TV having a “wonderful time” during the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. The friends asked her mother if Figueroa was a lesbian. Her mother replied that she didn't think so because Figueroa had children. “I said to her, well, that's not necessarily a reason to say I'm not a lesbian because lesbian people do have children. But, I'm not,” Figueroa said.

Then her mothers' friends said they couldn't vote for Figueroa because of her clear support for LGBT people. Figueroa recalled that her mother told her friends that “I had to because you were my daughter. I told her that I was very disappointed in her reaction and I said to her, this is part of the human rights. As a Latina, as a young woman who has faced discrimination -- I remember going into the classroom not knowing a word of English -- I still feel sometimes like the outsider -- somebody has got to speak up for what is right. I think you would be proud of me.”

Somebody, Figueroa told IN, has got to “make it more personal. It's not just about politics. It's got to be about giving the human story. And that's really important to me. Gwen Araujo [the transgender teen brutally murdered in 2002] was killed in my district. And that was probably one of the most horrific things that I had to go through as their representative -- representing a family and a community that was going through some very sad, emotional times.”

With a brother-in-law who was known to be gay “from day one,” and a lesbian cousin whose recent coming out was no surprise, Figueroa said she had no “ah ha” moment of accepting gay people. “I tell people that in the purest sense, I still feel like an innocent child. You know how innocent children just accept people as human beings? And that's probably the part I love the most about me is that innocent child part that makes no judgments,” Figueroa told IN. “I don't make judgments on people. It's based on how they treat me and how I feel.”

Figueroa laughs when asked how many gays are on her senate and campaign staffs. “This is really funny because at one point, when I was a legislator, there was some bill that came up -- I can't remember which one it was -- and my staff said, 'You're getting lots of calls. People were saying that you were moving the gay agenda. Your office is becoming headquarters for gay people.' ... They said, 'Liz, do you realize how many gays and lesbians you have on your staff?' I said, I have no clue -- though it seemed like the majority were. I never asked. I didn't know.”

She still doesn't know -- perhaps three or four on her capitol staff, none on her campaign staff. “I really don't know because it's never been a campaign issue for me. People's private life shouldn't be part of my personal agenda or my campaign,” she said.

What she does know is that if she's elected lieutenant governor and the governor is incapacitated when a marriage equality bill hits the governor's desk, she would sign it -- even if powerful national Democrats such as Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean ask her not to. ”I would say, Mr. Dean, with all due respect, you are not the governor of the state of California and I will sign this,” Figueroa told IN. “I will take the stand on what is correct. I'm fine about pressure. When you're a woman of my age -- you've gone through a lot of pressure. I have no difficulty in saying where I stand.”

For more on Figueroa's campaign, go to www.lizfigueroa2006.com.