Remembering Senator Raggio
The following will also appear in the Nevada Appeal.
REMEMBERING RAGGIO: An Extraordinary Human Being
As a then four year Director of the Nevada Rural Counties RSVP Program in 1983, I was able to pique the interest of Republican Senator Bill Raggio when I asked him for a private meeting to discuss how the state could save millions of dollars on long term care for indigent seniors by funding a plan I had. I was very nervous as I had observed him in action since 1973 when he first came to the State Senate and I formed the impression that he might be difficult to approach. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I found him to be a no-nonsense, get to the point legislator while at the same time quite courteous, and listened very attentively to my proposal. I advised the Senator that my research of low-income seniors in the rural counties of Nevada showed that this population was growing so rapidly that there would never ne enough beds or funds to institutionalize all the indigent seniors when they could no longer drive or maintain themselves at home. My proposal was to train RSVP volunteers to provide the everyday basic needs these seniors needed to stay in their own homes and at no charge; thus saving the state millions in long term care in an institution. While volunteer’s services are free, there is a cost of doing business and that is what I needed from Senator Raggio.
He liked the idea, and after much discussion as to how it would all work, promised me he would try to get it funded, and he did. He was able to get an appropriation of $64,000 for the biennium and as they say, the rest is history. That one caring and supportive gesture from Senator Raggio for seniors to remain at home was the catalyst for all the programs RSVP has been able to generate since to help seniors. He was our hero and benefactor.
These programs to help seniors remain at home as long as possible and out of institutions have now, nearly 30 years later, become a priority at all levels, national, state and locally. It makes fiscal sense and allows seniors to remain at home, but it all began in 1983 because a man called Bill Raggio took the time to talk to the Director of a small non-profit rural volunteer program and fight for the funding to begin keeping seniors at home.
I thought this story needed to be told because most of the reports in the media have been about Raggio’s political successes and how tough he could be; yet all I kept remembering was how kind and generous he always was to the ‘little people’ he encountered such as myself. In all of his 38 years in the State Legislature, he always put Nevada first and his party second, and his support of Harry Reid’s reelection in 2009 was typical of that. He said that while he didn’t always agree with Reid’s politics, it didn’t make sense to lose his clout in Washington at such a bad time that Nevadans were going through.
I was shocked and saddened when after 38 years of leadership and accomplishments; the Republicans in the Nevada State Senate shunned him and stripped him of his position as Minority Leader because he endorsed Harry Reid. But because he cared more about Nevadans than he did about politics, he voted for Middle America. While Raggio cited mobility problems for resigning from the Senate, we all know he was too much of a gentleman to cite the real reason, and that was the humiliation of their actions.
Senator Raggio’s death leaves a void that will never again be filled, both as a brilliant legislator and as an extraordinary human being. Stay Tuned!