As one enters Sen. Norma Samuel's inner sanctum, at first you wonder: Where is she?
Behind a large desk, the petite and attractive Samuel is enveloped by a high-back leather chair flanked on each side by the Virgin Islands and U.S. flags. But as she stands to greet a visitor with a big smile and begins to express herself , the pretty girl image rapidly vanishes in favor of a that of a polished, if junior, politician.
Samuel, by her own admission, is opinionated, and she is nobody's puppet.
She instantly dispels the perception that she is Sen. Celestino White's protege. "I'm no one's protege. I learned from very young to think for myself," she said. "Ask anybody."
Samuel, a native Crucian, said she grew up in politics. "My grandmother was first vice-chairman of the Democratic Party," she said. Former senator Mary Ann Pickard is Samuel's stepmother.
Her two personas — politician and beauty queen — got an early start when she was simultaneously Miss St. Croix and vice president of the St. Croix Central High School student body. How does this work? "You can't have beauty and brains, too? I think they go together quite well," Samuel said, but conceded she would opt for brains.
With the many hats she will be wearing in the 24th Legislature, she will need those brains along with a lot of fortitude. "I don't think I've taken on more than I can handle," Samuel said, pushing any negative notions away with a wave of her hands. "I'm very energetic, and I have a good staff put together."
Samuel heads the important Labor and Veterans Affairs Committee, is a member of three other committees, and is the Legislature's secretary for Intergovernmental and Territorial Affairs, a heavy slate for anyone, let alone a freshman senator.
She said she has a staff of "five or six, including one college student."
"I went to UVI to recruit," she said. Political science instructor Malik Sekou is her chief researcher. Samuel said she has a $300,000 allotment for her office, including staffing, travel and all expenses. The amount also includes her committee budget.
With this week's news of the audit of the V.I. Labor Department's Unemployment Insurance Division, Samuel will have her hands full. The audit revealed more than $7 million in improper, and in some cases illegal, unemployment tax refunds and credits, and, according to the V.I. Office of the Inspector General, "the appearance of . . . abuse of government funds through a former labor official."
"It broke yesterday, but we've known about it from the time we took office. It's not a secret. People have known for a long time that something was wrong," Samuel said.
She said she was taking a different approach to the problem. "We've been working closely with acting Commissioner (John) Sheen. We don't want to be confrontational," Samuel said. "That's what creates half the problems around here." However, she said if she had trouble obtaining information or documents, she would have no qualms about calling anyone in to testify.
Samuel said her office is working at resolving problems in the unemployment office as well as in the troubled Workers Compensation Division. "It's been difficult as there's no access to the director's office — it's been sealed off because of the audit," she said.
How about talking with Sen. Roosevelt David, former committee chairman? Do they have a good working relationship? "I've written him requesting documents," Samuel said.
As to the high-profile majority and minority senator rift, "I stay out of that. If there's a discontent with the people about the majority, they should write to their senators," Samuel said. She noted the majority/minority situation has been around for a long time.
"It didn't just happen overnight," she stressed, leaning forward and gesturing. "We have a different agenda," she said. "If the community doesn't like it, maybe we could put legislation in place that the 25th Legislature won't have a majority."
The telephone interrupts, and Samuel reaches for it. "No, you need to talk to my chief of staff," she says, and frowns at the instrument.
"These phones don't work right yet, they're all different," she said. Though Samuel has glasses hanging around her neck, amongst lots of handsome gold jewelry, they seem ornamental; she doesn't use them in conversation.
The senator defended her recent trip to Washington, D.C., for President George W. Bush's inaugural festivities. "I make no apologies for the trip. I know how Washington works, and I know the way you open things up to get things done." She said she accomplished a lot meeting with "movers and shakers."
"You have to let them know who you are, that you care," she said. "Believe me, I didn't want to be up there in that cold and snow and rain."
Samuel declined to comment on specifics until Monday, when the majority will hold a press conference at 10 a.m. in the Senate chambers.
"I don't want to preempt that," she said. How about the expense? Samuel's expenses were made public in the press last week. "Why me?" she asked. She said she had not even seen the breakdown of her expenses, including the $450 mentioned for ground travel. "It was a worthwhile trip," she maintains, "and you know some minority senators went too."
Samuel had said in a pre-election profile that she thought the WAPA governing board "should be fired." "That's right," she said, her big gold earrings bobbing as she warmed to her subject. "Why should you have a bunch of people who know nothing about the utility industry telling the professionals what to do? It makes no sense. What do these people know about water and power?"
To illustrate her point, Samuel cited a subject dear to her heart — her husband, Gilbert Samuel, a retired U.S. Navy senior chief engineer. "He's my best friend," she said. "I don't know what it is about him: He likes everybody, and everybody likes him."
Along with her 23-year-old son, Wilbur Francis, and her 7-year-old, DeShawn, a student at J. Antonio Jarvis Elementary School, Samuel said, "we're a team." Along with being general manager at the Paul M. Pearson Gardens housing facility, Gilbert is a full-time father. He attends PTA meetings where, Samuel said, "You don't see enough fathers."
Samuel applied for a job at WAPA when the family moved back to the islands eight years ago, after spending several years with the Navy in the states.
"They told him he was overqualified," Samuel said. "Here we were with WAPA in crisis, and they said he was overqualified. That's when I started to get agitated," she said. "He had been offered jobs all over the world, but we wanted to come home, and he can't get a job."
That ignited Samuel's interest in pursuing a political career. "These are my islands, I thought, and I'm going to stay here and do something," her hands punctuating her determination.
Her campaign took a lot of determination. "I went house to house. People were surprised I was there. 'Oh, she's here, too?' they'd say. It was a lot of work."
Before entering politics, Samuel was sales manager for WSVI -TV Channel 8 and worked at the Virgin Islands Daily News as a media consultant.
As for her first piece of legislation, Samuel said she has drawn up a veterans' bill of rights. "I've been going through all veterans matters with a fine-tooth comb," she said. "I wish we had a hospital here, because it's so expensive going to the hospital in San Juan."
She said she is intimate with veterans' pr
oblems from her husband's naval experience as well as her own. She worked as an ombudsman for several years and received training from the U.S. Naval Training Academy. Definitely not a beauty queen sort of thing to do.
Neither is playing softball. Samuel is an outfielder on the Senate's team, and she must have learned the fundamentals from Charlie Brown of the "Peanuts" comic strip.
"I don't want them to throw the ball at me," she said. "It should drop alongside so it won't hit me."
No matter, her legislative duties should keep her off the ballfield long enough for the team to win a few games.
