Dr. Suzanne Savary, “Sue” to her friends, died on July 16 of an aggressive pancreatic cancer. She had just celebrated her birthday on July 5 and I’m not asking how old she was. I will tell you that she was retired from a professorship at USC and was an ardent feminist in a district where that was not much of an advantage.
She has a bigger footnote in history than most political candidates achieve: she was the last candidate to lose a general election to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, which she did twice, in 2014 and 2016 — and she ran about as good of a protest campaign as could be hoped. Rohrabacher lost in 2018 to Harley Rouda and disappeared into a puff of smoke. (I mean, I’m sure he was in there, but I’m sure that smoke cloud was dense. And dank.)
Her daughter announced her death this past Monday in a comment on her Facebook page, which read:
Hello, this post is by Suzanne’s daughter, Jennifer.
It is with the heaviest of hearts that I share the news that my Mom, Suzanne Savary, has passed away. In the beginning of July she was diagnosed with an incredibly aggressive form of Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer. She spent her final weeks surrounded by family-my brother Scott and I, our spouses, and her six beloved grandchildren. She passed peacefully in her sleep late at night on July 16th.
Mom was an amazing person: a teacher, a leader, a fighter, a businesswoman, an intellectual, and most of all, a loving mother and grandmother.
She is survived by her two children, Scott Savary and Jennifer Savary Danilowitz, her four siblings in New York, and six grandchildren.
Rest in Peace Mom. You will be missed.
I feel pretty confident in saying that the family would appreciate donations in her name for the cause of defeating pancreatic cancer. This post is for anyone who would like to remember her, her campaigns, or anything about what she stood for.
I had tried to defeat Dana since the turn of the century, especially when he voted to back Bush/Cheney’s illegal invasion of Iraq based on things I knew he knew were lies. He responded to my letter tearing apart those lies with a couple paragraphs of BS that made it clear he hadn’t bothered to read my letter. So I declared war myself.
I remember everyone who ran against him this century, I don’t even need to look it up.
In 2000 and 2 it was some butch lady from Long Beach named Gerri Schipske. I could never get a hold of her team and gave up.
In 2004 and 6 it was some nice but awkward military guy called Jim Brandt, also from Long Beach, and we became friends and I helped him as much as I could.
We REALLY thought we had the ticket in 2008 with the great Debbie Cook. Her defeat was devastating, and I became resigned to ridiculing Dana from the sidelines.
Ken Arnold in 2010 and Ron Varasteh in 2012 were my friends, and hopeless sacrificial lambs.
Then there was Susan Savary in 14 and 16 whom I never even met, RIP.
THEN FINALLY in 2018…
I give Dana credit for the yeoman’s work he did on marijuana decriminalization, which was the only reasonable rationale for his being in Congress. His bill preventing the federal government from interfering with state approval of medical marijuana use passed in 2014.
A look at his Wikipedia page shows that he was (and probably still is) the quintessential Trumpian — and was in the running to become Trump’s Secretary of State — and he proves useful yet again for his having supported U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has really, really, really loved Vladimir Putin, which says something about both men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Rohrabacher
Supposedly he was moving to Maine to write scripts, but that’s a cold trail.
I did have his cell number toward the end, not sure if he ever read anything I wrote about him, we had some interesting conversations.
Once I called his cell and he whispered “Vern, I’m on the floor right now.” At first I pictured him trying to fix a sink with a dog crawling on him before I realized he was at Congress.
He famously arm wrestled Putin and drooled over the dictator’s strength. Once in 2015 at Skosh Monahan’s, sitting across from him, I tried to get him to arm wrestle ME, so I could compute my strength relative to Putin. But no go.