Advertisement

Assembly Democrats go public with battle over next speaker

Share

As the California Assembly closes in on naming a new leader, the question is not whether the next speaker will be a Latino from Los Angeles, it is which one.

But what might have been cause for cultural celebration has instead become a family feud.

The statehouse’s burgeoning Latino caucus -- the largest ethnic group in the Capitol, with more than two dozen lawmakers, 14 of them from Los Angeles County -- has been cleaved into warring factions worthy of Hatfield and McCoy.

Leaked polls, whisper campaigns and preemptive declarations of victory echoed through Capitol hallways. There was talk of double-crosses and political retribution. There have been hurt feelings and shifting allegiances.

Some members of the increasingly influential caucus threw their backing to the heir apparent, a cousin of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Others stuck by the man who holds the mayor’s old Assembly seat. Meanwhile, a third Los Angeles lawmaker elbowed into the fray, vowing to challenge one of the twoin next June’s primary election.

In recent years such collisions, even among bitter political rivals in the caucus hotbed of Los Angeles, have been assiduously avoided, or at least played out in private.

Not this time.

“This has not been fun to watch,” said Fabian Nuñez, a former Assembly speaker from Los Angeles who remains a player in statehouse politics.

“You keep these matters private,” Nuñez said. “. . . Not because you’re being secretive. This is your dirty laundry.”

The state’s collective of Latino politicians has a long and colorful history of war and peace. For decades, longtime City Councilman Richard Alatorre and Richard Polanco, a former state legislative leader, battled County Supervisor Gloria Molina for political control on Los Angeles County’s east side.

But in more recent years, the cast swelled in numbers while growing younger, more ideologically diverse and geographically dispersed, in large part thanks to the 1990 term limits law. Rivalries have mostly been settled in deals made behind doors.

“When you have so many Latinos competing, it’s a sign of the growth,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles.

The new front runner for the Assembly’s top post is freshman John A. Perez (D-Los Angeles). Last year, in his first race for state office, he appeared destined for a showdown with other prominent Latinos. But his two challengers quietly dropped out, coaxed to the sidelines. One won a spot on the city’s Planning Commission from the mayor.

The seeds of the speakership schism were planted Thanksgiving weekend, when word spread among Democrats that Kevin De Leon, an affable and ambitious assemblyman long considered the front runner, was stepping up his recruitment of supporters and asking them to sign a letter of commitment. The Los Angeles Democrat’s rivals appeared to lag far behind, with no path to victory.

Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), who battled rumors of coup attempts as she struggled to steer the lower house through the state’s fiscal crisis, hoped to hang on to the job into next year. She knew that De Leon wanted to be speaker now -- and could force her out if he had enough votes -- and she persuaded other candidates to get behind Perez, a well-liked former labor leader.

Instead of letting the selection process play out largely behind closed doors, Bass took the extraordinary step of holding a press conference Wednesday to declare that the freshman had the votes to win.

“The momentum is such that it’s time for a resolution,” Bass declared.

Perez, who would be California’s first openly gay legislative leader, had surprised the Capitol by entering the contest. For months, he had been insisting that he would leave the Assembly to run for a state Senate opening next year. A week earlier, Villaraigosa, a former speaker himself, had hosted a summit of sorts at his mayoral home to talk about the speakership race. The attendees were Perez, De Leon, Nuñez and the mayor.

Nuñez declined to discuss what happened, and the other three men did not return calls from The Times. But other Capitol officials said an agreement was struck that day over a shared bottle of wine. Perez would seek the Senate seat and De Leon should ascend to the speakership.

Perez strategist Doug Herman said he was unaware of the meeting and noted that his client never formally committed to a Senate run by filing campaign paperwork.

Against that backdrop, Bass’ announcement of Perez as the putative winner stung De Leon. Instead of folding, he fought back.

His allies called an Assembly Latino Legislative Caucus meeting, which Perez and his lieutenants skipped. With barely half the members in attendance, De Leon was declared the preferred choice.

State Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who will be termed out of the Senate next year, stoked the fires further by declaring that he would challenge Perez -- speaker or not -- in the primary election next June. (If Perez had run for Cedillo’s seat as expected, the two would probably have swapped places in a game of political musical chairs.)

Cedillo said he was confident of his political power back home, as his supporters released a poll suggesting he could beat Perez in the Assembly race by a large margin. “I’ve never lost,” Cedillo said. “I don’t plan to lose now.”

Herman dismissed the survey as politically motivated and Cedillo as a “career politician” bent on finding his next job. Some hoped a truce could still be reached to avert full-blown warfare within the Democratic caucus, which outnumbers the GOP in the Assembly 50 to 29. But bitterness lingers.

Assemblywoman Norma Torres (D-Pomona), a De Leon ally, complained that “John has deceived not only me but his friends.” Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes (D-Sylmar), a Perez backer, criticized the caucus’ squabble as “the cannibalizing of its own leadership.”

A vote is expected this week.

shane.goldmacher

@latimes.com

eric.bailey@latimes.com

Advertisement