I enjoyed the administrative work because it involved working with Congress, city council, and the mayor. I had never been a politician so it was fun - learning political maneuvering.
Rather than hearing from the city council president, you'd hear from sources all across the country.
The First Amendment is first for a reason - it cannot be ignored by the D.C. City Council.
I used to be on the Lincoln City Council. You learn that there's never enough money for all of the police officers and fire-fighting apparatus you'd like to have.
Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those - but it's really important who's mayor and who's on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board.
What matters is voting for where you live: Who's your mayor, who's your police chief, who represents you, your city council, your judges. That matters that you vote.
They divided the city into three electoral wards, and in one ward there was 70 percent of the people, the Catholic population, and they elected eight representatives to the city council.
First thing that I put up in my office here at City Hall was a poster from 1971 when my mother ran for city council.
But when my mother ran for City Council, that was the moment when I knew I wanted to be a political reporter. Some reporters asked her about being married to my father - they have an interracial relationship - as if that was somehow a negative thing.
And I would like to have a good, productive relationship with members of the City Council, but I'm not going to allow them to undermine what the people's choice was and what the people want, which is change.
