Speaker Survives Firestorm, Plans to Make Mark in History : Brown Regains Control of Assembly’s Reins

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), who months ago was under fire and hinting that he might give up his speakership, said Wednesday that he has taken “full charge” of the Assembly and has no plans to step down.

“I have no intention of stepping down as Speaker at the end of this session or the next session or the session thereafter. I kind of like the job, and I’m just really beginning to enjoy it,” Brown said during a breakfast interview with The Times’ Sacramento Bureau.

Brown’s political problems last year were created by a series of hostile ballot initiatives and election campaigns mounted against more than half a dozen of his Democratic allies in the Assembly. He became a symbol of everything that was wrong with the Legislature.

The prospect of setbacks by Democrats during the November election sparked speculation that Brown might leave the Speaker’s post and run in 1987 for mayor of San Francisco, a job in which he has expressed interest over the years. Mayor Dianne Feinstein is limited to two successive terms and cannot run for reelection.

Survived Firestorm

But Brown survived the political firestorm of 1984 with just a few scratches. And members of the Assembly elected him by acclamation to his third two-year term as Speaker in December.

Seeming to be as popular as ever within the Assembly, Brown said he likes being Speaker too much to think seriously about the mayor’s job.

He said he finds some prospects of being mayor less than attractive, such as “dealing with the questions of dog manure and street lights and the tenants who raise holy hell because some owner won’t share his profits with them on a full-time basis, cutting ribbons and exposing myself in the manner which mayors have to expose themselves.”

The Speaker said he is thinking instead of making a mark in the state’s political history books.

Took Full Charge

“I was able, by virtue of 1984, to really take full charge of the operation,” Brown said of his position in the Assembly today.

He pointed to a recent shake-up on the budget writing Assembly Ways and Means Committee, where he replaced 15 of 23 members. He called it one of the “most dramatic” committee changes in the recent history of the Legislature.

Brown noted that many of the new members of the committee are young, in their second or third terms, and said he hopes that from the new group will come a generation of leadership that will produce landmark legislation by which his speakership will be remembered.

Conceding that last year “everybody in the world was after my scalp personally,” Brown said he wants to leave a stamp on the Assembly other than that of a legislator in retreat. “I don’t intend to walk away until I’ve got that footnote in history,” he said.