Robinson’s Political Future Clouds : Some Insiders Question Whether This Once-Ascendant Star Will Survive

His cherubic likeness adorned the cover of a California Journal issue on the “rising stars” of state politics.

Richard Robinson, the “clever, shrewd . . . ruthless” Democratic assemblyman from Orange County, could very well be speaker of the Assembly someday, the magazine said.

Or perhaps even a U.S. senator, added Robinson, with enough uncharacteristic modesty to call it a long shot.

But that magazine was published in November, 1982.

Today, when political insiders talk about Robinson’s political future, they question his survival.

Heavy Backing for Longshore

Republican strategists say they’ll spend up to half a million dollars next year to make the third time a charm for Anaheim real estate broker Richard Longshore, who lost to the six-term lawmaker by a mere 256 votes in 1984.

But neither that close call, a contentious divorce that left him heavily in debt nor the taint of having his name linked to former Anaheim fireworks manufacturer W. Patrick Moriarty has changed the diminutive former Marine, whose reputation for abrasiveness and for being the Legislature’s shrewdest tactician are about equal.

Just as he did when there was a Democratic governor, Robinson continues to carry legislation of major statewide significance, sometimes at the behest of the Administration, sometimes not to its liking.

Bills Assisted Deukemjian

A Robinson-sponsored budget bill made possible Gov. George Deukmejian’s frequent boast that he balanced the state budget in 1983 without raising taxes.

During the just-ended legislative session, he authored bills devising the creative financing scheme to launch Deukmejian’s ambitious prison construction program. Another Robinson bill would have required that all California school buses meet federal safety standards, but Deukmejian vetoed it.

And, the very last measure that Deukmejian signed into law before the deadline for acting on this year’s bills was a Robinson measure essentially shifting the costs of operating municipal and superior courts from counties to the state.

Deukmejian had vetoed a similar measure a year earlier.

“He’s (Robinson) the Legislature’s lawyer,” said B. T. Collins, who was chief of staff for former Democratic Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. “I mean he is their best parliamentarian. He knows every rule. . . . He knows all the ways to push things through, he knows how to block them . . . and he knows just when it is time to pull back.”

Collins’ Recollections

Collins, a registered Republican who is now vice president of Kidder Peabody & Co., the large Wall Street investment banking firm, remembers when he first met Robinson in 1976.

New to the governor’s staff, Collins was sent to lobby Robinson for the governor’s plan to create the Native American Heritage Commission and, at the same time, deliver an unwelcome message: Brown, who was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, would renege on a promise to attend a Robinson fund-raiser in Anaheim.

“He screamed and he yelled at me something awful. Then he gave me (pledged) that vote,” recalled Collins. “And, it was crucial. His was the 41st (deciding) vote. . . . I’ll never forget it.”

Robinson, a 42-year-old native of Alabama, is viewed as one of the most complex and paradoxical personalities on the state political scene.

His enemies concede that he is smart. Friends say he is brash and arrogant. Admirers say he can be vindictive. Detractors say he understands and manipulates the legislative machinery better than anyone.

‘Not a Totally Pleasant Person’

“You either like him or you don’t,” said Michael Drake, a longtime friend who worked with Robinson as a telephone company technician before he went into politics. “There is no in between.”

“He’s not a totally pleasant person,” added former Assemblyman Chet (Chester B.) Wray, a Democrat who represented a district adjacent to Robinson’s before losing in 1982. “But you have to respect his ability and his initiative.

“Were he slightly less abrasive, he would definitely be in the leadership, I mean the very top leadership, of the Assembly.”

Among high government officials, legislators and their staffs, stories abound about the wrath they encountered after crossing the feisty, quick-tempered lawmaker from Orange County.

But such stories are rarely heard from parking attendants, bartenders, waiters and waitresses to whom Robinson is notoriously polite.

A Working Class Background

“He knows how not to treat serving people like servants,” said Patricia Brawley, a former Capitol-area bartender and cocktail waitress who now works at the Assembly research office.

“I’m very cognizant of the fact that I come from a working class background,” said Robinson.

“I’ve seen some of my colleagues over my 11 years roll into a restaurant on some kind of pedestal,” added the 5-foot-9 lawmaker to whom many ascribe a Napoleonic complex. “I don’t approve of that. . . .”

Robinson says his displays of temper in the Capitol are becoming “very rare.” During his early days in the Legislature, he admitted, “I would raise my voice,” mainly out of frustration and impatience to solve governmental problems.

Were he afraid to be outspoken and “take chances,” Robinson said, he would not want to be in politics.

Reaction to Edison Appointment

Although a Democrat, Robinson was one of the first elected officials to react angrily when then-Gov. Brown appointed former war prisoner Edison Miller to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in 1979.

“Miller has virtually admitted collaborating with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese while a prisoner of war,” Robinson, who had lobbied behind the scenes against the appointment, said immediately afterward.

Robinson, who was later co-chairman of his friend Bruce Nestande’s successful campaign to oust Miller, blamed the unpopular appointment on Brown’s presidential ambitions and on the influence of liberals Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

Robinson said he had warned Brown before the appointment that he would publicly denounce it and even provided the governor with an advance copy of his press statement.

Robinson has tendencies, say close confidants, that border on being suicidal in a political sense. But he has also repeatedly demonstrated an uncanny knack for rising like a phoenix when his demise looks imminent.

Emerged Virtually Unscathed

After he was first elected, nine of his campaign workers were convicted of listing Robinson’s campaign office as their home address on voter registration certificates, a violation of state election law. But Robinson emerged virtually unscathed after those voter fraud convictions. He later married one of those convicted campaign workers. Another is a key political adviser and Capitol staff employee.

In 1980, he helped plot the overthrow of then-Speaker Leo McCarthy, backing Los Angeles Assemblyman Howard L. Berman in a bitter power struggle. But after compromise candidate Willie Brown put together a coalition of McCarthy forces and Republicans to emerge victorious, Robinson was appointed Democratic Caucus chairman, one of the speaker’s chief lieutenants.

He was ousted from that post early last year, after Democrats complained that Robinson was becoming too cozy with the Republican governor.

With the post, Robinson also lost his large fifth-floor office, which overlooks the Capitol courtyard and has a back exit from the inner chamber.

But in a symbolic resurgence, he was reassigned to that office a few months later. Robinson, who admits he has “a significant ego,” had boasted at the time of his “involuntary resignation” that he would get those quarters back.

Charge of Campaign Sabotage

And, in a celebrated temper tantrum the day after last year’s election, Robinson charged at a Democratic Caucus meeting that farm labor leader Cesar Chavez had been sent to Orange County in a deliberate attempt to sabotage his campaign. Some who witnessed the tantrum viewed it as an attack on Assembly Speaker Brown and his political lieutenants. But Robinson said that interpretation is incorrect.

Regardless, Robinson was appointed by Brown weeks later to chair the new Committee on Public Investments, Finance and Bonded Indebtedness. The new panel passes on all legislation dealing with California’s $7.7 billion in bond debts, all bond issues by local governments and agencies and the state retirement systems’ $35-billion investment portfolios.

Robinson, who is often at his Capitol office late at night, says tenacity has been the secret of his resilience.

“If you work at your job and know . . . the issues,” explained Robinson, “you will always be utilized, whether it is by political enemies or by the loyal opposition.”

Robinson says he definitely intends to run again. But he does little to quell speculation that his next race might be for Congress or the state Senate, instead of re-election to the Assembly seat he has held since 1974.

Expects a ‘Dirty Campaign’

Robinson says only that he has “lots of options. . . . You can say that Richard Robinson’s name will appear on the ballot.”

Should he run for reelection, Robinson said he expects his opponent will run “a dirty campaign.”

Moriarty associate Richard Raymond Keith has said he told investigators that Robinson and other politicians engaged in sex with prostitutes paid for by Moriarty. Moriarty has pleaded guilty to seven counts of mail fraud relating to bribery and illegal campaign contributions and is scheduled for sentencing in federal court next month.

Robinson has called Keith’s statements “ludicrous” but says he expects that the campaign against him will include such “specious charges.”

Such a campaign would backfire in his favor, Robinson predicted.

But Orange County political activists close to Robinson say there are clear signs that the allegations are eroding his support.

No Big Names Came

Attendance at a $200-a-plate Robinson fund-raising dinner in Newport Beach last September was much lower than expected, and several lawyers who had long been Robinson supporters alluded to those charges when they called to say they would not attend, those politicos said.

“It was real depressing,” said one campaign worker, who asked not to be identified. “It used to be that anybody who is important showed up at Dick’s dinners . . . judges, lawyers, Indian chiefs. Everybody. But not this time.”

“He did not introduce one dignitary,” the campaign worker added.

Fellow Orange County Assemblyman John R. Lewis (R-Orange), a key Republican strategist, said he could not publicly detail how Robinson might be attacked. But he said Longshore, who has already been endorsed by the Assembly Republican Caucus, is more in tune with voters in Robinson’s district.

Nearly 52% of the district’s voters are Democrats, but Lewis said “it is a very conservative district.”