Capitol Ink: body art under the dome

Franklin Porter admits he did not put a lot of thought into his first bit of body ink.

“I just wanted a tattoo,” laughs Porter, Legislative Director for Assemblymember Pilar Schiavo (D-Chatsworth), pointing to the image of a turtle on his right forearm.

He is sitting at his desk in Schiavo’s Swing Space office, a work area as ubiquitous and unremarkable as most others in the building. The only truly noteworthy thing here is the plethora of colorful images that adorn much of his visible skin.

Porter estimates he now has approximately 20 tattoos covering much of his body. This includes sleeves, i.e. an image or collection of images that collectively covers most or all a person’s arms and, in his case, the wrists and fingers. All of them, he says, have much more intent and meaning behind them than that first one.

They also all came long before he set foot in the California Capitol. While Porter is hardly the only Capitol staffer with tattoos, he is one of the very few we approached for this story – and the only one currently working inside the Capitol itself – willing to speak on the record to Capitol Weekly about his body art.

One might say the first rule of Tattoo Club is you do not talk about Tattoo Club.

There is perhaps good reason for that. Assembly Rules Committee Chief Administrative Officer Lia Lopez says that while there is a codified policy on proper attire in the Capitol workspace and the Assembly and Senate chambers in particular, there is no official policy on body art.

Franklin Porter. Image by Joha Harrison, Capitol Weekly

But that does not mean anything goes, even in a place with a well-deserved reputation as a bastion of progressive politics. Policy is one thing – the unwritten rules of sausage making under the Capitol dome can still be as traditionally conservative as anywhere in the country.

“I’d have a really hard time taking someone with facial tattoos seriously interviewing for a public service professional position,” one long-time chief of staff, who was allowed to remain anonymous to speak freely, tells Capitol Weekly. “We work for a representative of the people and our constituents need to feel comfortable with the person they’re working with from our office.”

There are other concerns beyond potential hiring issues. For one, being tattooed is not for those with low pain tolerance. Arms, shoulders and calves are bad enough, but more sensitive areas – ribs, stomach and…other… areas – can be worse by an order of magnitude. Tattoos can also be very pricey, from hundreds of dollars for a small one to thousands for larger or more intricate pieces.

Which begs the question: with all these possible problems associated with them, why does anyone seeking a career in the political realm still find it worth the risk to get inked up?

For the tattooed, it often comes down to the simple desire to be true to who they are and how they want to present themselves to the world.

“Some people put their artwork on their wall; I have mine on my arms. It’s what I’ve chosen to do,” says Niesha Fritz, a vice president with Lucas Public Affairs and a former communications director for then-Senate pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego).

Fritz speaks from experience, having long had a full sleeve (sans the wrist or fingers) on her right arm. For her, body art should convey something beyond the image to also say something profound about the person wearing it.

“I just want to be able to show up authentically as who I am, and this is a part and parcel of that. And society’s becoming more welcoming and blessedly more inclusive about it and a whole host of things.”

Fritz notes there is also a generational component to having body art, a feeling borne out by data.

“I just want to be able to show up authentically as who I am, and this is a part and parcel of that. And society’s becoming more welcoming and blessedly more inclusive about it and a whole host of things.”

There is also a growing acceptance of tattoos in broader society, particularly among younger people. A YouGov poll from last spring showed almost a quarter of all Americans have at least one tattoo. That figure climbed to one-third for adults between the ages of 30 and 44. Women (30 percent) are more likely than men (19 percent) to have at least one bit of body art.

Those numbers can also vary. A Pew Research poll from 2023 showed 32 percent of all Americans having at least one tattoo, with 22 percent having more than one. Thirty-eight percent of women reported having at least one, a figure that rose to 56 percent for women ages 18-29.

It is also far more common now for employers to be okay with body art, with obvious caveats for images that are offensive or sexually suggestive or explicit. Tattooed faces, necks, wrists and fingers are also generally frowned upon, though there are exceptions in some cases. The executive recruiting company Oggi notes that some body art “with religious or cultural significance may be protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act” and require employers to provide reasonable accommodation, such as allowing the employee to cover the image or be granted an exemption from company policy.

It is anybody’s guess as to exactly how many staff or even elected members in the Capitol have tattoos, but it is a safe bet there are many more now than even a decade ago. Even so, most body art around the building is confined to smaller pieces that are easily covered during the workday. Porter is in fact actually one of only a handful of staffers with at least some body art that is always visible.

“Tattoos and body art have certainly become more mainstream in society and in professional settings,” Fritz says. “But I think there still is also a little bit of healthy editing happening with when and how we show our tattoos, or even if we show them at all.”

She is keenly aware that for some people, body art will always convey something negative. And throughout her time in the building, she opted to keep hers covered under a long-sleeved shirt or jacket to avoid having them become a distraction from the work she takes very seriously.

“I just choose personally to cover them up most of the time because I don’t want there to be a knee-jerk reaction, or for somebody to see a tattoo and have it somehow create a perception in somebody’s mind before they have a chance to get to know me,” she says.

Alex Torres knows that concern well.

Alex Torres. Image by Rich Ehisen, Capitol Weekly

Now the vice president and co-founder of Golden Bear Strategies, Torres is a veteran lobbyist who has previously been with Capitol heavyweights like KP Public Affairs and Strategies 360 as well as serving as the Director of State Government Relations for the Bay Area Council. He remembers early in his career asking colleagues he saw as mentors about his interest in body art.

“I remember when I was at KP asking Ed Manning about it and he kind of scoffed and said, ‘don’t do that,’ Torres says. “I explained to him what I wanted to do on a few things and he was just like, ‘yeah, cool idea. But no.’”

Torres was clearly not discouraged enough to bag the idea. He now has several large tattoos around his body, all of which he says have distinct meaning to him. Many are rooted in his deep Catholic faith.

He attended a series of Catholic education institutions, from Jesuit high school to Loyola Marymount University, and as such he says, “the maxim of being a man or a woman for others was something was really ingrained for me, the notion of service.”

That belief in service – he also comes from a family where his mother worked for three governors and his father was an advocate for a host of Latino issues – inspired him to make his first ink something in line with those traditions.

“My first tattoo has the most meaning,” he says, pointing to the large cross on his right shoulder with the letters AMDG around it. “The maxim of the Jesuits is ‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam,’ which in Latin means ‘for the greater glory of God.’”

Right below that one is the Immaculate Heart of Mary (a Catholic devotion honoring the Virgin Mary) with the Latin words “Ite inflammate omnia” through the middle.

“That is an Ignatius of Loyola quote: ‘go forth, set the world on fire.’ Not in a literal sense, but more of the notion of a fire and a passion, a love for the fellow man, a love for Jesus or for whatever deity you believe in.”

Franklin Porter has his own particularly meaningful tattoo based in religious faith, though it also has a deep connection to his career field at the time he got it.

Franklin Porter. Photo by Joha Harrison. Capitol Weekly

He was in New Orleans, where he had just relocated from his hometown of San Diego to work as a commercial diver. It is not easy or safe work, and his brother gave him a pendant of Saint Brendan the Navigator, the patron saint of watermen (and interestingly enough, of the U.S. Navy), as a good luck charm.

“And of course I promptly lost it,” he says. Rather than get a replacement, he opted for something less likely to be misplaced.

“I thought, ‘I’ll just get a tattoo. I can’t ever lose that,’” he says, showing off the multi-colored image of the saint that runs from the top of his left shoulder all the way down to his elbow.

If his brother was upset that Porter had lost his gift, he didn’t show it. In fact, just the opposite.

“Now he has his own giant tattoo of St. Brendan on his side,” Porter says.

Fritz’s tattoos are neither nautical nor traditionally religious, but she says they still hold a deeply spiritual meaning for her based in family and the rural lifestyle she enjoys with her children.

“One is a blackbird over my shoulder because that was the name of my first ranch with the kids,” she says. “It’s where we rescued a bunch of animals and it was just a really, really incredible time for us. I also have a horseshoe that says Huckleberry as a tribute to my granddad because his favorite movie was Tombstone, and he used to always say to me, ‘I’ll be your Huckleberry.’ He loved that movie.”

Torres says he has not closed the door on getting more art in the future, putting the odds at 50/50. He has some ideas, but says any future ink will be something very meaningful to him.

Porter is more ready to call it good.

“Nah, they hurt,” he says to the idea of dealing with the physical pain of being inked, adding that the cost also factors in. “I got most of mine in New Orleans, where they don’t cost as much as they do here.”

Fritz thinks the growing pervasiveness of body art, especially among younger people, is slowly eradicating the hesitation that so many in her Gen X cohort grew up thinking about tattoos.

“I think it’s just going to be very interesting to see where this all goes,” she says. “Will this become the new normal? Maybe a generation or two from now there won’t be this this need or desire to put on a suit coat. Maybe they will feel a little bit more empowered to just say, ‘Yeah, I’ve got tattoos on my arm.’”

Capitol Weekly editor Rich Ehisen has several large tattoos of his own. He also keeps them covered up most of the time.