San Benito’s First Lady leaves behind a legacy
After 16 years of fighting for better roads, slower growth,
tighter budgets and better opportunities for disadvantaged locals,
the first woman ever elected to the San Benito County Board of
Supervisors will attend her last meeting on Tuesday.
San Benito’s First Lady leaves behind a legacy
After 16 years of fighting for better roads, slower growth, tighter budgets and better opportunities for disadvantaged locals, the first woman ever elected to the San Benito County Board of Supervisors will attend her last meeting on Tuesday.
Supervisor Rita Bowling leaves behind a four-term tenure of no-nonsense county leadership, a 16-year stint few county leaders have accomplished while remaining popular. Though many friends and constituents pleaded with her to run for a fifth term last year, Bowling opted for retirement and endorsed her replacement, Pat Loe, who was Bowling’s planning commissioner.
“I quit for health reasons,” said Bowling. “I’m really going to miss it.”
Bowling, known for her out-spoken “county first” stands, her tough-love with department heads, kindness to staff and pit-bull protection of the county budget, also leaves behind entertaining memories, or “Rita-isms,” for anyone who heard her speak.
“In private, she can be stern and hilarious at the same time,” said County Administrative Officer Gil Solorio. “But its not often seen in that context by the public.”
A few times it was.
At many supervisors’ meeting, Bowling’s frank, even blunt statements to an over-budgeted department head, a whining developer or a complaining citizen-gadfly have caused her fellow supervisors, such as Richard Scagliotti, to stifle their amusement – most often unsuccessfully.
“When she rips into someone, I’m already thinking about doing it,” Scagliotti laughed. “Then she does it and nothing else has to be said. I get a kick out of it because when someone provokes her, I’m thinking, ‘Don’t you guys know not to wave a red flag in front of her?'”
When Hollister Independent Rally Committee members criticized Bowling for publicly admonishing them after they thanked everyone in the county for a successful event – except the sheriff’s department and the CHP, she said: “I wonder how they (HIRC) will feel when I send them the county’s bill for that rally.”
Scagliotti isn’t the only county leader who will miss Bowling’s straight-shooting style. Even Sheriff Curtis Hill, admonished weekly by Bowling during a two-month stint last year for exceeding his budget, will miss her.
“Even though I have tremendous, permanent scars on my back, it was a pleasure working with her, nonetheless,” said Hill, whose department often was the target of Bowling’s barbs over what she felt was excessive departmental spending.
Eventually, Bowling’s jabs at the lawman for “fancy patrol car decals” and “unnecessary hats and sticks” became comic relief during the public meetings, though Bowling continued to carry out the reprimands with an almost perfectly straight face, up to the bittersweet end.
After the SBC Sheriff’s Department won a national contest for its patrol car decal design: “What the hell are we running here? A beauty contest or a sheriff’s department?”
“She was never afraid to say what she felt,” said Hill, “and she’d wear it right on her collar.”
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Bowling was born in Rouyn, Quebec, Canada. Her parents, Carmen and Ada Naccarrato, and older sister, Enes, were born in southern Italy. The family moved to Hollister from Canada in 1946 and the future supervisor stayed in the nation’s hay capital from that point on.
“I’m full-blooded WOP. And anyone who doesn’t like it can lump it.” – One of Bowling’s many “Ritaisms.”
Fellow supervisor Ron Rodrigues remembers the first time he saw young Rita.
“It was in the 1940s when Rita and her sister, Enes, reported to Sacred Heart Elementary School,” said Rodrigues. “I wondered who they were, those two little foxy girls from Canada.”
Supervisor Bob Cruz has vivid memories of the gorgeous teenage Bowling.
“I’ve known her all my life; we were teens in high school,” said Cruz. “She’s a straight shooter, she tells it the way it is and some people may not like that. But a lot of people don’t realize she’s a motorcycle chick!”
Indeed in the 1950s 15-year-old Bowling could often be seen riding on the back of her boyfriend’s motorcycle, much to her parents’ dismay.
“My dad was from the old country,” said Bowling. “He said, ‘If you want to date, you get married.’ So I got married. I was 15-years-old. And I still haven’t dated to this day.”
With Dick Renfrow she had two daughters, Gloria Lomanto and Carol Ann Lenoir. Her second marriage to Linden Bowling is going on its 39th year of bliss.
“I have the most understanding husband ever to be able to put up with this job,” she said.
After attending San Benito High for two years, Bowling dropped out and became an insurance agent after taking home study courses. For the next 30 years she got to know the world of statistics and budgets inside and out, eventually becoming a broker and owning her own successful business.
“I came from the school of hard knocks – and boy, have I had them,” she said.
For more than two decades Bowling shared an insurance office with then-Supervisor Frank Sabbatini, who served the county post for 24 years. After hearing Sabbatini conduct county business in the office during all those years, Bowling said she “pretty much knew what was going on” and felt qualified to tackle the office.
In 1986 Rita was asked to run in District 3 after four-term Supervisor Henry “Hank” Solorio – father to current CAO Gil Solorio — announced he was stepping down.
She’s been a shoe-in ever since, taking not a cent of contributions and hardly campaigning. If people wanted her to serve, she always figured, they’d vote for her. If not, well, that would be fine with her too.
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Many people will remember Bowling for standing up to developers and critics and for doing what she thought was best for the county despite an onslaught of threats from her detractors.
“I’ve always believed that for every home that’s built, the county loses,” Bowling said. “This is God’s country, let’s keep it that way.”
That comment in an interview in her home this week echoes what she said during a board meeting in the fall of 2000 when supervisors denied the Paicines Ranch project that had been in the works for 10 years. It’s one of many times she referred to San Benito County as “God’s Country,” a familiar Ritaism ever since.
In response to the city’s touting of a new, rushed sewage fix: “I don’t know why it took so long for them to wake up to what’s going on. It was like one giant ostrich with its head in the sand that didn’t come up for air. How could they allow all that building to continue? Where did they think all that crap was going to go?”
When asked what accomplishments she is most proud of, Bowling mentioned items one doesn’t normally associate with the supervisor – like equitable pay for county employees, improvements to the Veterans Memorial Park and her long-waged struggle for the San Benito Street road extension between Nash and Union roads. The pay issue, she believes, will contribute to stability in county employment.
“When I first got here we were a training ground, where we trained people and they would leave for Monterey and Santa Cruz for better pay,” she said.
Bowling also campaigned for better wages for county supervisors last year, knowing she wouldn’t benefit from the raise because she was leaving.
“I’d like to see the board of supervisors have the highest quality of people at all times, like they do now,” she said. “This is not a part-time freebie job anymore. It’s a very serious job.”
It’s a job that Bowling will continue to take seriously even after she leaves it. She promises to watch future elections, especially the political futures of the Two Tonys, since rumors exist that Tony Bruscia is contemplating running for supervisor in District 1, a concept Bowling tackles in her inimitable style.
“Lots of luck. I’ll go out against him in a minute,” she said. “He doesn’t belong on the Board of Supervisors. He’s already ruined the City of Hollister, why should we let him damage the county too? I don’t think he could win to be dogcatcher. If he runs in Scagliotti’s district and Scagliotti doesn’t run against him, I will move into that district and run against him.”
Apart from her constant questioning of any county spending when she suspected it wouldn’t substantially benefit residents, Bowling had another hallmark remark that would pop up frequently at supervisors’ meetings. She always reminded department heads applying for a state or federal grants that when the funding ran out, so did the temporary positions for which the money was paying.
She served on dozens of committees, including the Local Agency Formation Committee and the Council of Governments, and volunteered in clubs and non-profits like the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, the Four County Farmworker Housing Task Force and the Disabled American Veterans Auxiliary.
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Bowling has two regrets:
“I’m only sad that my dad didn’t live long enough to see me in this position, because I think he would have been proud,” she said.
She also wishes she could have seen the new library built.
But her associates and county staff maintain that Bowling should regret nothing.
“It’s always been straightforward with her, and that’s not the norm with politicians,” said CAO Solorio. “It worked well for the community. When she responds to a problem, it’s usually with a needle pegged to the red zone. The community has very much benefited from this.”
One of the few county heads with more years than Bowling in public service is Planning Director Rob Mendiola, with 21 years.
“We haven’t always agreed, but I appreciate her blunt honesty,” said Mendiola. “It’s just wonderful.”
In fact, it was hard to find anyone who works with her daily to say anything bad about the outgoing supervisor, making it necessary to delve into The Pinnacle archives.
Throughout his many years in writing “Thoughts While Not Shaving,” former Pinnacle columnist Bob Valenzuela had at times called Bowling “Madame Hussein” and “Queen of the Mafia.” Eventually, however, he came to respect the only politician in town who, in his words, had “canacas the size of bowling balls.”
“I considered him a friend, even though I’d go right into his store and tell him he was full of it,” said Bowling.
Bowling had some words of advice for aspiring politicians.
“For one thing, don’t criticize your elders,” she said. “And don’t criticize what they’re doing on the job when you don’t know what the job is about. Be patient. Your time will come. If you’re going to be belligerent and critical, then how are you going to make a good supervisor? You’ve got to take the good with the bad.”
She also had words of wisdom for the new Hollister City Council.
“For (Pauline) Valdivia, (Robbie) Scattini and (Brian) Conroy, my advice would be stick together. Do what’s right and undo them what the others have done,” she said without hesitating.
Bowling leaves public service with the distinction of having been the first woman in San Benito County to serve as foreperson on the Grand Jury, the first woman to be elected to the Board of Supervisors and the first woman to chair the supervisors four different years.
After a contentious supervisors’ meeting packed with angry residents from Rancho Larios who protested their high property taxes after Aromas Water District declared bankruptcy: “This gavel’s heavy.”
Now, she said, she will take it easy, put more time into her volunteer work and serve on community service boards. She won’t become Loe’s planning commissioner, as the two thought might happen early on if Bowling’s health had been better.
Her family, she said, is happy about her decision to retire.
“My daughters said they won’t have to make an appointment to see me now,” she said.
On Tuesday the county will honor Rita Bowling, the plain-spoken First Lady of San Benito County, at a private luncheon in San Juan Bautista, where guests will be admitted by invitation only because of limited capacity. Other political movers and shakers will honor Bowling during the last meeting she presides over as Board Chair that morning. They will include representatives from the offices of Senator Bruce McPherson, Congressman Sam Farr and Assemblyman Simon Salinas. Presentations will be made in her honor and the meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. at the County Administration Building on the corner of Fourth and West Streets. All are welcome.
