Rains, Omer L.

Omer Rains, b. 1941 in Missouri, began his political career by serving in the Ventura County, Calif., District Attorney's Office from 1966-1969. He served in the California State Senate 1974-1982. His primary interests were legal and ethical issues. Rains was also active on issues of education financing, nuclear waste disposal, property tax legislation, and social issues.

Biography

[Much of the following biographical information is drawn from Oral History Interview with Omer L. Rains: California State Senator, 1974-1982 (Sacramento, California: California State Archives, State Government Oral History Program, 1990)].

Senator Omer L. Rains (OLR) was born in the state of Missouri on September 25, 1941. His father had played professional baseball with the San Francisco Seals in the late twenties and early thirties. Following World War II, he relocated his family to Bakersfield, California where he worked as a salesman. Rains attended elementary school and high school in Bakersfield. In 1959 he received his B.A. from the University of California where he majored in political science. He earned his law degree at Boalt Hall, the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 1966. During his time in law school Rains began his interest in the areas of political ethics and civil rights. These would remain focal points throughout his career. He was active in the California Democratic Council, the strongest grass roots Democratic organization in the country in the late fifties. Rains was also involved in the civil rights movement during the early sixties, travelling to the South on several occasions. In 1960 he participated in voter registration efforts on behalf of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign.

Rains began his own political career with the Ventura County District Attorney's office in 1966. In 1969 he entered private practice and subsequently chaired the Ventura County Bar Association Ethics Commission and the Ventura Planning Commission. Rains has attributed his service in the former organization to his earlier interest in ethics and to a sense of inequity that he perceived within the system of American jurisprudence. Rains was involved in a wide array of community activities centered in Ventura. He estimates that he served on fifteen different city, regional, or state commissions or committees, of which he chaired twelve. In 1974 he entered electoral politics. Following the reapportionment mandated by the California Supreme Court in 1974, Rains was elected to the California State Senate in a special election held on July 2 of that year. This election was necessary to fill a vacancy in what eventually was to become the Eighteenth District. Due in part to the district reapportionment, Rains faced four separate elections that year. He was elected to a full four-year term in November to represent the newly constituted senatorial district. He served there from 1974 to 1982.

During his career in the Senate, Rains served on numerous committees. These involved the areas of education, finance, nuclear waste disposal, property tax legislation, and social and welfare issues. He headed the Consumer Fraud Unit and chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. Other legislative committees on which he served included: chairman, Senate Committee on Elections and Reapportionment; chairman, Senate Subcommittee on Political reform; chairman, Joint Committee on Legal Equality; vice chairman, Joint Committee on Revision of the Elections Code.

Following an unsuccessful attempt to win the Democratic nomination for the office of California Attorney General in 1982, Rains left politics. He returned to his private legal practice where he has specialized in international law and finance.