How pool helped Laura Friedman earn a seat in the Capitol.

By Michael P. Geffner

This was Manhattan back in the late 1980s, when pool was sexy again on the heels of The Color of Money and rooms were popping up all over the city.

Action central was Chelsea Billiards, a 24-hour, two-level joint on 21st street between 5th and 6th Avenues, right around the corner from the notorious, drug-raided nightclub, The Limelight. Despite its charm - floor-to-floor carpeting, over 30 Brunswick tables, smack in the center of the post-midnight club scene - Chelesa was a tough, survival-of-the-fittest, treacherous room, the training ground for the likes of George “Ginky” San Souci and Frankie Hernandez and Jeanette Lee, the home of old-time legends Johnny Ervolino and George Mikula, and a ruthless den of nicknamed hustlers straight out of Guys and Dolls.

One rare woman, a late-night regular, especially on weekends, didn't quite fit in. She was a tall, lean, smile-less 20-something with glasses and long stringy black hair, who seemed to have lost her way heading to the library. Her name: Laura Friedman, who lived in a tiny apartment on the Lower East Side and was pursuing a career in the movie industry as a script reader for a production company, later for HBO.

Friedman, 58 now, breast cancer survivor, former semi-pro pool player, former antique dealer, former high-level movie executive, became one of the country's most powerful politicians this past November, elected to Congress in California's coveted 30th Congressional District and succeeding the high-profile Adam Schiff, who won a seat in the Senate.

“Little did I know back then that I was preparing for the life I have now,” Friedman says from her Glendale, California, home, where she lives with her husband Guillaume of 20 years, a landscape architect and former film editor, and adopted 11-year-old daughter Rachel. “Being a pool player made me a better politician.

“In pool matches, you can lose a match before ever hitting a ball,” she explains. “Players psyche each other out. They negotiate bad games. I use the skills I learned in the pool room to be a better legislator – to think under pressure, to out-psyche my opponents, to play mind games to get what I want. And like in the poolroom, you need to appear strong and unintimidated to get respect.”


(Photos by Damon Bowe)

After all these decades, Friedman's ties to pool continue to be so strong that her leading campaign ad when running for Congress was a 30-second video clip of her in a poolroom firing balls in. It was mocked by her political critics and opponents, but it resonated with the voters. The video ultimately received 30K views on YouTube and she pinned it to her X account.

On X, Friedman's prelude introducing the video read: “I'm excited to share our first digital ad! I'm also a bit nervous because it highlights a part of my life that not many people know about. If you like it, do us a favor and share! And yes, I will play anyone for their vote (just kidding!).”

In the video, Friedman looks into the camera several times after making shot after shot, says with bravado: “I worked my way through college in a poolroom. Sometimes, people would underestimate me – but only once. I learned some folks talk a good game, but you have to have the skills to back it up. And that's why as a member of the State Assembly, I've been able to do the hard work. Building affordable housing, defending choice, and fighting climate change. And that's what I'll do in Congress because we could all use a ringer on our side.”

She grew up in the older suburb of Plantation, Florida, just outside Fort Lauderdale. Her father was a stockbroker, her mom a political activist who did odd jobs; her parents divorced when she was 12. “I had an unstable childhood,” she says.

As a little kid, Laura rode horses in a swamp riddled with alligators, traipsed around barefoot in snake-filled woods, skateboarded, watched old gangster movies and Hitchcock films late at night, and with her mom, Carole, went to NOW (National Organization for Women) rallies fighting for abortion/women's rights; they both wore NOW buttons on their shirts. She was definitely her mother's daughter.

She discovered pool at 17 working the front desk in the student union rec room at the University of Rochester, where she majored in film and philosophy and became a debate champion. She remembers Rochester native and legend Irving Crane visiting the room once to give tips. “He was a bit of a grouch,” she recalls. “But he was very encouraging to me. He said: 'There's no reason why a woman can't play as well as a man. None.' I never forgot that.” Her first time playing in an actual poolroom came during a summer visit around a year later to see her mom in Boston. “It was a very cool place in the bowels of Fenway Park,” she says. “Unfortunately, it's no longer there.”

She moved to New York City after she graduated from college and immediately found herself at the infamous Chelsea Billiards, not far from where she lived. “I loved the characters, the incredible personalities,” she says. “There were people from all around the world and from all walks of life that were, for the most part, equals in that setting. And I loved watching the matching up for big money games. It was thrilling.” She eventually became just one of the guys and was staked into action by a tall, rangy old Black hustler ominously nicknamed Blood, who could at times assume a fierce glare and look like an angry Morgan Freeman. She built friendships with top veteran NYC pros Billie Billing and Fran Crimi, who groomed her, and she began entering WPBA events as a semi-pro in the early 1990's.


Friedman still plays when time allows and jokingly challenged constituents to a game for votes.

“Looking back, it was a mistake,” she says. “I just wasn't ready to take on those top-ranked pros. I remember Loree Jon (Brown) running five racks in a row on me. I had no chance to beat her. It ended up crushing my confidence.”

Friedman, by her own admission, was never a great player, and despite her awkwardness navigating such a menacing pool room like Chelsea, she loved playing for hours on end, ceaselessly craved action, reveled in the shrewdness of making good games, and most of all getting in the arena and competing hard. “That girl,” the late pool coach Hal Mix once observed, “will bite your head off.”

Friedman had her moments, of course. Despite struggling with double vision most of her life, she could string together two racks of 9-ball occasionally, maybe a rare three-pack. She beat a young Ginky getting the 7 ball in a 9-ball tournament once; in another, she beat Robin Bell playing even, race to 7. “It was hill-hill. She played me safe. The 9-ball ended up on the 1st diamond (of the short rail), (the cueball) was by the side pocket, and I decided to take the chance and kick. I kicked the 9 right in to win the match before a big crowd.”

Her highlight was traveling to small-town Dighton, Kansas, population around 900, for a free two-week coaching session with Mix, a white-haired man in his 70s who looked like the subject in a Grant Wood painting and worked, most notably, with Hall of Famer Nick Varner. “Hal took a liking to me, liked my tenacity, and wanted to help my game,” she says, adding with a nostalgic laugh: “We would practice to his country music.”

“He got me thinking about mechanics. How to move the cue ball around with English and spin. He had so many systems, so much knowledge.” Mix would say of her, “Laura doesn't want to just beat you, she looks like she wants to kill you.”

She remembers one night playing doubles with Mix as her partner on a bar table at the local drinking hole. “Here I was, in the middle of nowhere, a punk Jewish girl from New York City, with an old man who could hardly see anymore, and we held the table all night. The other players were so angry they couldn't beat us.”

In 1992, Friedman moved to Los Angeles and within a couple of years was the VP of Development for Rysher Entertainment, then the VP of Development for the prestigious Cort/Madden Productions, with a strong link to Paramount Studios, a couple of years after that. She became a rising star in the movie business, overseeing 10 feature films and a slew of TV shows. Four of her producing credits included star-studded feature films released by major studios, all within a three-year period: It Takes Two (1995) with Kirstie Alley, Steve Guttenberg, and the Olsen Twins; Foxfire (1996) with Angelina Jolie; House Arrest (1996) with Jamie Lee Curtis; Zeus and Roxanne (1997), again with Guttenberg.

When she lived in the Hollywood Hills, she owned her own pool table – a triple shimmed Diamond – and played at rooms like Hard Times in Bellflower and House of Billiards in Santa Monica.


Working in the movie industry in '96, Friedman was featured in a Banana Republic ad campaign.

It was around this time that she wrote a story for Los Angeles Magazine about her unusual, if not weird existence – movie executive by day, pool player at night. It was titled, “Fast Laura,” and ran across several pages and included hot fashion pics of her holding a cue wearing an Armani suit and with her black hair slicked back. The story was acknowledged for excellence in the annual anthologies Best American Sports Writing and Best American Essays in 1996 and ultimately led to her being featured in a Banana Republic ad campaign about people who lived double lives. The ads appeared in major newspapers around the country, such as the New York Times, was plastered on the sides of buses and bus kiosks everywhere, and on huge billboards, including one overlooking Hollywood. “My 15 minutes,” she says with a chuckle.

She relocated to Glendale in 2000, and six years later was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. She underwent surgery, did chemotherapy, went bald. It was obviously life changing. She left the film industry (her final project was a reality show about road hustlers that included Scott Frost, but she couldn't find any takers) and decided to run for city council later that year. “I found politics instead of religion,” she says. “I realized that I wasn't immortal and wanted to make a tangible and positive impact on the world. I had thought I might do it in the future, but I realized that if you want to do something, you needed to do it now. I never wanted to live with the regret of not having tried to do something important to me.”

Entering politics for good in her 40s and ultimately hob-knobbing among the Democrat elites (Biden, Kamala, Pelosi), Friedman eventually spent seven years in the Glendale City Council, eight years in the State Assembly, and one year as the Mayor of Glendale. All the while, when she had the time and energy, playing pool at Hard Times in Sacramento, near her assembly district office. “My job as a legislator was a very intense, fast paced life, frustrating at times, not to mention super exhausting going to countless committee hearings and community events. Pool was my one chance to unwind and relax. It was very cleansing for me. When I played, I was so focused on playing that nothing else mattered.”


Friedman dove into politics in the early 2000s, determined to “make a tangible and positive impact.” (Photo courtesy congresswoman Laura Friedman)

Friedman is known among her political peers to be defiantly unafraid to tackle controversial topics, for being willing to walk away from a bad deal, and as an innovative, effective legislator who can push even the biggest bills through. “I don't always listen to the loudest voices, but I get the job done,” she says. Former California Governor Jerry Brown once gave her the best advice: “You don't have to bark at every truck.” Which means, she says, to not try to fix everything – to pick your passions. She did: the environment, housing, transportation, consumer protection and medical access. Using her power of negotiation that she honed making games in poolrooms, she prides herself on reaching across the aisle and luring Republicans over to her side on issues.

“I think the world of her,” Anthony Rendon, the Former Speaker of the California State Assembly said of her. “As interesting as anyone I've ever met in politics.” Rendon, who endorsed Friedman for Congress, particularly remembers Friedman's relentlessness working on policy for three to four nights in a row until 3 a.m. – the same time she would be in a poolroom during her younger years.

She decided to run for Congress when Adam Schiff gave up his seat to run for the Senate. She ended up winning by a huge margin – over 68% of the vote.

At the moment, she is sitting in her district office in Burbank, been there since six in the morning, but for three weeks this month, she'll be in Washington, D.C. It's a decidedly different, far more hectic life – her assembly job on steroids. Non-stop meetings, roll calls to cast votes, receptions with constituents, event after event. Lots of long days, lots of rushing around through the halls of Congress with her binder of memos, lots of time away from home and family.

Amid the whirlwind that is her life now, pool remains on her mind. In particular, cues. More specifically carrying cues on planes instead of checking them in at the gate. It's become a common rant of hers. “I don't understand why you can't carry a cue on a plane,” says Friedman, who owns a beautiful custom cue – black ebony, redwood, with purple, green and blue inlays – made by Sacramento's Tom Coker. “Makes no sense. I have yet to hear a good reason why you shouldn't be able to do it. My goal is to change that, to change the laws. It's been something I've thought about for a long time, and now I'm in a position to make it happen. It's one of my missions in Congress.” She pauses. “It'll be my gift to my pool players.”

Friedman, like her campaign video promised, is the ringer to get it done. The late-night pool player turned movie executive turned big-time politician. The cancer survivor relentlessly following her passions. With the bite-your-head-off killer instinct and a particular set of skills. Underestimate her? Good luck. It's always been a bad bet.

 

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