Leading Men in the State Legislature

Theoretically, California’s government seems designed to break down. A powerful Speaker of the Assembly is pitted against a powerful governor. The Legislature’s rules are complex and subject to manipulation. The governor has a selective veto of the Legislature’s budget. A minority of legislators in either house has the power to bring the machinery of government to a halt. In practice, nevertheless, compromise usually emerges out of conflict.

Gov. George Deukmejian’s lack of visibility and the low-key approach of David A. Roberti, Senate president pro tem, have left a spotlight on Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Though the Speaker’s powers are unusually broad, they are in part the tools required for coping with a set of rules that exacerbate the difficulties of passing legislation.

Both houses operate on the principle of absolute majority: In the 80-member Assembly, 41 votes are required to pass a bill; in the 40-member Senate, 21 votes. The budget, as well as all bills containing an appropriation or an urgency clause, need a two-thirds majority for passage: 54 votes in the Assembly and 27 in the Senate. Since the minority party seldom holds fewer than one-third of the seats--the Republicans currently occupy 14 in the Senate and 33 in the Assembly--all such items require bipartisan support.

Furthermore, although the Legislature proposes, the governor disposes. Unlike the President of the United States, who has to sign or veto a whole budget, the governor has a line-item veto enabling him to excise specific appropriations. Again, since a two-thirds vote is required to override the veto, the minority is a force to be reckoned with.

With so many checks to go along with the balances, it is not surprising that the players sometimes checkmate each other--as happened during the notorious budget deadlock of 1983--or that they occasionally throw the process into turmoil, as Republicans did during the 1983-1984 session to express unhappiness over reapportionment. What is of greater note is that most of the time they are able to resolve their differences.

Much of the credit should go to Brown. Though Republicans in general consider him anathema, one need only see him dance a jig with Pat Nolan of Glendale at the Republican minority leader’s Saint Patrick’s Day fund-raiser to recognize how assiduously he cultivates the support of all Assembly members. “I’m a member’s Speaker, first and foremost,” Brown said emphatically. “Those 79 people are my constituents.”

First elected in 1965, Brown, 54, is the dean of the Assembly. Representing an 86% white district--it would take more than another San Francisco earthquake to dislodge him--he has an envied freedom of action. Having seen the meager returns earned by principles, he is a consummate pragmatist. Money, of course, is necessary to travel the road of power in style--earlier in a Porsche Carrera, now in a Ferrari--and to acquire the accouterments of elegance that give him self-esteem. Legislators, juggling political ethics like high-wire artists over an abyss of suspicion, have traditionally turned their positions to profitable accounts. And Brown is a firm believer in tradition.

But money serves merely as a means. Willie Brown is the most powerful state legislator in the nation’s most powerful state--and one of the most powerful black men in the land. If he hasn’t sought higher office it is because he realizes the difficulties of softening his image and broadening his appeal. That does not mean that he lacks an agenda.

Although the Assembly has long had an electronic voting system, Brown is the man who pushed the Assembly, and to a certain extent the Senate with it, into the computer age. At the front of the Assembly is an electronic billboard indicating what item is under consideration. Another board carries the name of every assemblyman. A chime announces that the roll for a vote is opened. As members activate switches at their desks, the board takes on the appearance of a Christmas tree--green stars for yes votes, red stars for no votes. Atop the columns of names a digital display presents a running tally of ayes and nays.

Even though a bill may have an overwhelming majority of votes--say, 38 to 15--bringing the total up to the 41 needed for passage often requires coaxing. The presiding officer--normally a legislator designated by the Speaker--then takes on the role of an auctioneer pleading with patrons to raise the ante. “Come on, members, we need three more.” Another green star appears. “Mr. Bradley, you’re holding up the show.” Bill Bradley (R-San Marcos) reluctantly votes yes. The scoreboard is up to 40. “All right, now. Who’s going to put us over the top?” When it appears that a bill lacks sufficient votes for passage, a legislator may place a “call.” This suspends action and enables the authors to try to round up the necessary votes. It is one of the more peculiar rules of the California Legislature--helping offset the stringent requirements for enaction--but it has been criticized for promoting arm-twisting. A notorious example was a 1985 bill opening optometry to mass marketing. With only 30 votes in favor and 43 against, the measure seemed headed for certain defeat until Brown worked a near-miracle in garnering the additional 11 votes needed. Rules Committee Chairman Louis J. Papan (D-Millbrae), a leader of opposition to the bill, explained laconically how he wound up switching his vote: “When the Speaker asks you for your vote, you give it to him.”

An assemblyman is inclined to placate the Speaker because the Speaker has sole power to make committee assignments and appoint chairmen; the Speaker can smooth or inhibit the passage of a member’s bill, and the Speaker is the single largest source of campaign funding.

Brown has occasionally been accused of replacing members on committees in order to obtain a favorable vote, a charge he vehemently denies:

“You’ve got to understand something about the leadership. I protect my membership,” he said, punctuating his words. “If you were running for office in a law- and-order district and you were serving on a committee where your philosophy was inconsistent with the district’s, you may come to me and say: ‘I vote my conscience every day in that damn committee and I’m getting killed. I’m going to lose my election. If I find somebody that wants to change with me who is not exposed, will you make the change?’ And that is the only basis on which I’ll make the change.

“If I removed you from a committee,” he went on, “you would become an enemy. I would soon have people organizing against me. There is none of that in this house. None of it. ‘Cause that’s not Willie Brown’s style and never has been.” The charge against Brown is impossible to verify. Whatever evidence there is, is circumstantial. What is clear is that Brown’s relationship to the Assembly transcends politics--he is emotionally involved. One of the longest-serving members, he stands to set a new longevity record for speakers during the next session. Moving about the floor or dropping in on key committees, he seems part proprietor, part host, part mother hen, anxious to see that operations run smoothly, that visitors are greeted properly and that the Assembly is presented in a favorable image.

“I love this institution,” claims the Speaker. “I really think it’s a career opportunity, unparallelled in most aspects of life. I want it to be a place that talent aspires to, people who really want to serve. My goal is to change the image of the institution.”

As a pragmatist, Brown does what’s necessary to get results. As a reformer, he would like to see things improve. As a wielder of power, he has the potential to move the institution in the direction he seeks.

It’s a conflict of character more than it is casuistry when he sponsors legislation for public campaign financing while collecting about $1.5 million a year in political contributions. He’d like to see legislators insulated from the necessity of raising money because it’s bad both for their efficiency and their political image. In an election year some assemblymen spend half their time drumming up money--and the press and the public naturally speculate on what that money is buying. “I want to change that perception,” he says.

In the meantime, Brown, as a personality and power, serves as a financial magnet. He can collect more money than half a dozen other lawmakers combined. Traditionally, a Speaker is judged by his party cohorts on how well they fare at the polls--a losing election is likely to be followed by a change in leadership. The accumulation of a huge campaign chest is as much a necessity for staying in power as a device for enhancing the Speaker’s influence over the members.

No one is more aware of these facts of political life than David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), Brown’s counterpart as president pro tem of the Senate. A rotund, Pickwickian figure without great oratorical gifts, Roberti offers a deceptively inviting target. Yet his substantial intellect, political instinct and self-control (he seethes, but seldom boils), have enabled him to repel sporadic efforts to change leadership. Unlike the Assembly’s autocratic speakership, the leadership of the Senate is lodged in its Rules Committee, where Roberti operates as first among equals.

Clinging to tradition and rejecting modernization, the California Senate in some ways resembles the U.S. Senate more than it does the Assembly. Not until 1976, decades after the U.S. Senate admitted its first woman member, was Rose Ann Vuich (D-Dinuba) elected to the state’s upper chamber. To break colleagues of their sexist ways, she places a sprig of flowers on her desk daily and whenever they make such remarks as “brother senators,” she rings a small bell.

It would be difficult for the flamboyant Brown to be accepted as a leader by the Senate, just as the low-key Roberti would be hard-pressed to manage the Assembly. The leaders to a substantial extent reflect their constituencies, constituencies composed not only of Republicans and Democrats, but of shifting coalitions based upon issues and beliefs.

During the 1970s, political writers characterized the California Legislature of the 1960s, professionalized under Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh, as setting the standard for deliberative bodies on the state level. Willie Brown and a number of forward-looking legislators of both parties intend to raise performance to an even higher plane. Next year the internal computerization that now instantly prints out the vote on every bill in the Assembly, and enables legislators to check on bills via their office machines, will be expanded to connect lawmakers’ district offices with the capitol. Constituents will be able to communicate with their representatives via computer and have access to information they previously would not have been able to obtain for days.

The view of Paul Gann, perennial promoter of initiatives, is that government and governmental salaries are suspect, needing tight constraints. Brown argues that the Legislature should be placed above suspicion by eliminating money as a subject of contention. Campaigns should be publicly financed and legislators should be rewarded on the basis of their responsibilities and qualifications--eliminating the need to flesh out $33,732 salaries with outside work. Asked what the pay should be, Brown answered, “An equitable salary could not be less than $75,000 a year.”

That may shock voters. Yet Gann and Brown offer clear alternatives: Gann proposes a cut-rate government; Brown insists that quality has its price--worth it in the long run.