Susan Davis: “I am honored to be here this evening and to have a chance to talk about my friend and my colleague, Ellen Tauscher.…”

“I am honored to be here this evening and to have a chance to talk about my friend and my colleague, Ellen Tauscher. Ellen, as we are all hearing, was really a trailblazer. She was a trailblazer, a businesswoman. She was a single mom, a philanthropist, a diplomat, a mentor, and for so many of us, a dear friend. If you were a woman in California politics in the last three decades, Ellen probably had a significant impact on your life. She showed us all that kindness and charity can go with strength and wit. We all have personal experience with Ellen. I actually met Ellen about 1996, I think it was. We happened to be at a National Women's Political Caucus meeting. What was funny about that is that we kind of caught one another's eye. We have heard people talk about no-nonsense Ellen. Something was going on. We were a little impatient, and we kind of both looked at each other like: Is this really what we came for? That was the start of a friendship. When she learned later that I was considering running for Congress, she got in touch with me. She said: If you are coming to D.C., then I have a place for you to stay. Please stay at my house, and let's have a chance to talk, sit down and really get to know one another. That was pretty cool because, as I said, it had just been a small encounter that we had had sometime before. So we sat at her dinner table, and I remember asking her about what she was doing and what she was learning in Congress.…”