Rattigan passing is end of an era

The passing of Joseph A. Rattigan of Santa Rosa a couple of weeks ago marked the end of a political and legal era in Sonoma County which opened half a century ago.
In the fall of 1957, young attorney Rattigan, a graduate of Stanford Law School and Navy veteran who had commanded a PT boat in the same South Pacific area as John F. Kennedy, was urged to challenge the Republican incumbent state senator the following year.
Tall, rather dignified for a man in his 30s, he had already established a reputation as an accomplished attorney with a humanitarian outlook.
But Rattigan had some doubts about running for office, particularly since he and his wife Betty had a family of six young children. However, Rattigan’s greatest fan and promoter was Harold McGrath, former executive secretary of the California Democratic Party who had moved to Santa Rosa as manager of a stock brokerage firm.
McGrath laid out a campaign and convinced Joe that he was a natural leader, had the capacity and outlook which would make him an excellent public official and, most importantly, that he could get elected. McGrath, humorous epitome of an old Irish pol, even wrote a campaign song, to the tune of “Harrigan” with the lyrics “R-A-double T-I-GAN spells Rattigan,” which McGrath would sing at the slightest provocation.
Nineteen-fifty-eight was a banner year for the California Democrats. Attorney general Pat Brown won the governorship, congressman Clair Engle from Red Bluff was elected U. S. Senator, Clem Miller of Corte Madera took the congressional seat in the First District, which ran from Sausalito up the coast to the Oregon border, and Alan Cranston, who would eventually be elected to the U.S. Senate, won for state controller.
Joe Rattigan did his share by winning the state senate spot for Sonoma County. He was part of a wave of bright, attractive, progressive attorneys who led the Democratic Party in this part of the state, including Joseph P. Murphy of Santa Rosa and John Dunlap, great grandson of the founder of the city of Napa. Murphy served many years as a distinguished Superior Court Judge for the county, and Dunlap was elected first as a state assemblyman and then to the state senate. Interestingly, all of them – Rattigan, Miller, Murphy and Dunlap – had households bulging with young children.
Rattigan’s most memorable local accomplishment was carrying the legislation that created Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park in 1960. Easily re-elected in 1962, he established a reputation as a courageous and skillful legislator. He carried the bill that created the Department of Rehabilitation for assistance to the disabled.
In a demonstration of gutsy maneuvering, he saved the proposed fair housing law from burial in committee, winning passage by a single vote. That measure, bitterly opposed by many in the real estate business, outlawed discrimination on the basis of race in the sales, advertising, and rentals of housing. Elimination of de facto segregation was a deep concern of Rattigan, who had spent his childhood in Washington, D. C., a city of southern prejudices and practices.
In a calm, deep voice Rattigan displayed precise logic and obvious passion in speeches on the floor of the Senate and at public events. He was an outspoken opponent of the death penalty, appearing at vigils outside the San Quentin execution chamber. A devout Catholic, he was a leader in the development of St. Eugene’s church in Santa Rosa.
In 1964, in the case of Reynolds v. Sims the United States Supreme Court ruled that the equal rights provision of the 14th Amendment required that state legislative districts had to be approximately of the same population (within one percent) of each other, in a “one-man-one-vote” decision. Before that decision most of the 40 state senate districts were of only a single county. Thus, Sonoma County was a senate district, and gigantic Los Angeles County also had only one senator. The inequality between district representation was as much as 40-to-1. In legislation carried by Senator Rattigan he and another state senator were both in a newly drawn balanced district. Joe announced he would not run in a contested primary, avoiding an intra-party contest.
Governor Pat Brown appointed Rattigan to the State Court of Appeals, in recognition of his legal talent and intellectual accomplishments. In clearly written language he wrote more than a 1,000 decisions on appeals from trial courts. With carefully crafted logic, he was noted for dissecting complex legal issues. Local lawyers would see him working quietly in the law library in the Sonoma County Hall of Justice, surrounded by a stack of books pulled from the shelves. A strong believer in the separation of church and state, he did not allow his religion to interfere with a ruling that the state government could not give employees free time off on Good Friday.
After retirement from the Court of Appeals, Joe was appointed to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission in 1984. The California State Building on “D” Street in Santa Rosa is named the Joseph A. Rattigan building.
I have known Joe Rattigan since I first became a lawyer and, like most people who knew him, enjoyed and admired this remarkable gentleman. He was one of the finest in the history of Sonoma County. The world needs more like him.