Claudia Peschiutta
LOS ANGELES -- Lyn Shaw and Jim Hilfenhaus are spending their
honeymoon among friends -- about 5,000 of them.
Instead of sipping champagne over candlelit dinners or taking walks at
sunset on some secluded beach, the 42-year-old Burbank woman and her
husband, a union organizer, are celebrating their recent nuptials amid
the bright fluorescent lights and noisy crowds at the Staples Center this
week. Though the appeal of honeymooning at the 2000 Democratic National
Convention might be lost on most other couples, Shaw and Hilfenhaus
consider it the natural thing to do, seeing as their involvement in party
politics brought them together.
"It's what we do," Shaw said. "We do politics."
Shaw, the California Democratic Party's chairwoman for the 43rd
Assembly District and a state delegate at the convention, said she has
been working for the party since she helped her father campaign for
presidential hopeful George McGovern at 13. Over the years, Shaw has
worked to support several other of Democratic candidates and causes, an
effort that led her to Hilfenhaus.
It was at a 1992 fund-raiser held by several Democratic clubs where
Shaw and Hilfenhaus first met. Shaw was working on a state Senate
campaign and a friend told her to ask Hilfenhaus, then a regional
director for the California Democratic Party, for help. It was more than
just political interest that attracted Shaw to him.
"I thought he was really, really cute," she said.
Hilfenhaus doesn't remember that first meeting.
"It was pretty much a zoo there," he said.
But they both remember running into each other in Burbank the
following year at a forum on the North American Free Trade Agreement.
They both agree the real sparks started flying soon afterward, when
they were working on the Los Angeles City Council campaign of Laura
Chick.
When asked if they worked late a lot, Hilfenhaus slyly responded: "It
might have been working."
Both have been married before and both vowed Saturday's wedding
ceremony would turn out to be their last. They made sure these nuptials
would be remembered. State Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) married them at
the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles -- the temporary home for the
California delegates -- and Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Burbank) was
there to read a passage from the Bible.
