Robinson Called Fiery, Shrewd Legislator

Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) recalls one of the “first lessons” he learned from Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) when he came to the Legislature in 1982.

He and Robinson were assigned to a two-house conference committee designed to iron out compromises on a transportation bill. A key provision of the measure, Seymour said recently, was one that cleared a legal hurdle and eased the appointment of Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande to the California Transportation Commission.

But Seymour, who arrived late at a conference committee meeting and never read the 15-page bill, said he did not realize until he “woke up with egg on my face . . . weeks later” that the same bill also set priorities for new Amtrak stations that virtually eliminated Buena Park, which is in his district. Seymour said Robinson had led him to believe there was nothing controversial in the measure.

It was a tough lesson in the realities of Sacramento politics from one of the toughest teachers in the Legislature.

Robinson says his recollection of the Seymour incident is vague, but that he is certain he did not intentionally deceive the freshman legislator. Still, he said, Anaheim and Santa Ana, “which just happen to have been in my district,” were certainly more important Amtrak stops than Buena Park.

After six terms in the Assembly, Robinson is leaving the Legislature to challenge Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) in the 38th Congressional District race.

Quick-tempered, abrasive--some say arrogant--Robinson, 43, so far has had a perfect win-loss record in a political career that spans two decades. He has won nine contested elections--with only one close call among them--and has been unopposed in four primaries.

Time and again in Sacramento, he has scored unlikely legislative victories that have left others marveling at his shrewdness. Stories abound of those who have underestimated the fiery Garden Grove Democrat and have come to regret it.

In Orange County, Democratic leaders insist publicly that there is no animosity between Robinson and those who supported his defeated Democratic Party primary opponent, Superior Court Judge David O. Carter. But privately, some speculate aloud that “heads may roll” if Robinson wins his congressional race and becomes the titular head of the party organization in the county.

The temperamental former Marine corporal has been known to argue loudly in Capitol-area bars and to insult high government officials. Profanity often is sprinkled throughout his conversations.

Robinson’s own chief of staff, Anne Kelly, recalls that when they first met he yelled at her about an already-discarded local government-funding proposal that never went past the staff level. Kelly, then on the staff of the budget-writing Ways and Means Committee, said she had brought Robinson the computer printouts he had angrily demanded and thought he would be pleased to see that funding to Orange County was intact.

“But he told me, ‘Young lady, if you ever think about (messing) with Orange County again, you check with me first’. . . I knew then that all the things I had heard about him were true. . . . I never thought I’d be working for him,” Kelly said.

It is generally acknowledged that he is a master of parliamentary maneuvering and legislative craftsmanship, and, no matter how popular a particular piece of legislation may be, Robinson gets his colleagues’ full attention whenever he declares, as he often does: “That bill is dead!”

Such prognostications make him an insufferable braggart in the minds of many here. To Robinson, it is a badge of honor not to “blind-side” colleagues with unexpected opposition, even if he often surprises them with his tactics.

“The guy is a very smart politician,” said David Takashima, a veteran legislative aide who has worked during the past 10 years for several moderate and conservative Democrats but never for Robinson. “Some people don’t like a person who is a fighter and who goes all out. But hey, on my football team, I want that kind of guy. . . . I’d hate to have him against me.”

“You can love him and hate him at the same time,” said state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who has had numerous run-ins with Robinson since coming to Sacramento in 1978--four years after Robinson.

“He understands the system. He knows how to make it work. He plays hardball, which can be intimidating at times. . . ,” Bergeson said. “But he is very successful at getting . . . legislation through and . . . coming up with solutions to problems. That’s important to constituents you represent.”

Earlier this year, Bergeson was so angered at Robinson for publicly scolding a committee consultant for supposed errors in an analysis of one of his bills, that Bergeson sent word to him, through a lobbyist, that she was demanding an apology.

“Dick’s response,” recalled the lobbyist, who asked not to be identified, “was . . . that consultants are professionals and they should expect harsh criticisms when their work is sub-par. And, secondly, any legislator who wanted him to apologize for something had to come to him directly.”

Said Bergeson: “We just don’t pay any attention to that. I just say, ‘Now, Richard . . .’ I think he likes to show that he has the upper hand in most situations. He doesn’t always. But that’s just typically Dick.”

Few people believe that they fully understand Robinson. Even close associates and longtime acquaintances concede that he is hard to figure out.

One of five children in a working-class Alabama family, Robinson was a telephone company technician and secretary-treasurer of the Orange County local of the Communications Workers of America before entering politics.

He is driven, he admits, by an intense desire to win--some say “at any cost”--and a conviction that the mere appearance of strength in any type of battle is a major competitive advantage.

But he dislikes frequent suggestions that he is “a little Napoleon.”

“Anybody who is under 5-10 and ever achieved anything has been called a Napoleon,” said Robinson, who says he five 5 feet, 9 inches tall.

He frequently begins comments, both on the Assembly floor and in committees, by saying, “Now, I’m not a lawyer.”

Among Capitol veterans, it is an inside joke: Robinson, a member of the Judiciary Committee during most of his years in Sacramento, is generally regarded as having one of the Legislature’s shrewdest lawyer-like minds.

Some say his competitiveness, his gruffness and even his self-effacing comments about not being a lawyer are all part of a facade to cover feelings of inadequacy for not having graduated from college. Robinson, who says he would have had ample opportunity to complete his last six hours toward a degree if it really bothered him, scoffs at that idea.

Despite their rocky beginning, Seymour said he has had a generally good relationship with Robinson, although “he can be as abrasive with me as he is with everybody else.”

“I guess the bottom line is when we work together, we work very, very well together. But when we are at each other’s throat, we are really at each other’s throat,” Seymour said.

One instance in which Seymour and Robinson worked in tandem was in engineering a legislative ban against using state money for a new county jail at a site in Anaheim selected by the Board of Supervisors. Both Seymour and Robinson have been vocal opponents of the site near Anaheim Stadium, and have accused the board’s majority of making a “back-room deal” to take advantage of Supervisor Ralph Clark, who represents the area and is retiring from the board.

From the outset of that squabble, Robinson was at his persuasive and manipulative best. Never once did he lose the upper hand. Gov. George Deukmejian, although expressing displeasure at the Legislature for meddling in a local affair, last month signed into law the $495-million jail bond allocation bill, to which the Robinson measure was attached.

In June, Robinson defended the measure to members of the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee, telling them at a hearing that it “makes good sense” to ban a jail near Anaheim Stadium and Disneyland because the two facilities draw 32 million visitors every year.

“If there is a jail break, the first place the escapee is going to be drawn to is a place where he or she can disappear into a crowd, creating a tremendous law enforcement problem,” Robinson said. “The amendments are drafted not to be specific to Orange County, but to apply to any other county in the state that in the future ever tried to make this kind of ludicrous decision.”

None of those statements is an out-and-out untruth. But in reality, neither Disneyland nor the stadium is easily accessible from the proposed jail site.

And although the language of the measure may not have mentioned Orange County, the description of the areas to which it applied was pretty tightly drawn. Legislators could search a long time for another jail site in California that is in a chartered city and within the prescribed distances from an amusement park and an all-purpose stadium where major league baseball and football teams play.

In fact, there is no other site like the one described. Robinson admitted he went to great lengths to determine that before he settled on the final wording of his amendment.

In another fine point of wording that went unnoticed until after the 6-0 committee vote on the measure, Robinson made the restriction apply to any state money appropriated to Orange County in the past and any that the county might get in the future. County officials, aware of Robinson’s intentions, had played down the significance of his legislation before the hearing, saying that they never intended to finance the proposed $141-million Anaheim jail with money from the 1986 bonds measure.

Some say a key to Robinson’s success in the Legislature was that he sometimes was the only one who fully understood the finer points of legislation he carried, particularly on complex measures regarding Medi-Cal reform, budget and insurance issues and the state’s $8.3-billion bond debt.

No one challenged Robinson, for example, when he declared on the Assembly floor last August that federal tax reform would eliminate the tax advantages of state revenue bonds used to finance nonprofit hospitals. The tax-reform bill that President Reagan signed last week doesn’t do that at all. But 71 Assembly members joined Robinson in supporting a bill that added nearly $1 billion to the state debt ceiling for health facilities.

“I’m sure he thought that was true when he said it,” remarked an aide to state Treasurer Jesse Unruh. “But on financial matters . . . a lot of them (legislators) rely on his expertise.”

Said Robinson: “No one is going to tell you that I misrepresent things.”

He readily admits, however, that he has learned over the years to pay close attention to detail and to legislative and parliamentary rules. Robinson says he “uses the rules to my advantage” but never unfairly, and he resents frequent charges that he manipulates them.

Robinson attributes his successes in the Legislature to “tenacity and hard work.”

“It sounds self-serving,” he said, “but you just can’t keep someone who works hard and is somewhat stubborn from having their way most of the time. . . . Besides, I have the common sense to know when to reach an accommodation with other legislators.”

Friends and critics alike acknowledge that he has worked hard to take care of the county’s interests in Sacramento. But he has been careful never to do so to the detriment of Los Angeles, which has the most powerful legislative delegation in the state, with 44 members, or San Francisco, which has powerful Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown in its corner.

Robinson also has benefited from his alliances. He resents the suggestion that he works for or against any special interests. But his bills, votes and actions rarely displease trial lawyers, and he also has managed to maintain a good relationship with the insurance industry. However, doctors generally regard him as public enemy No. 1, and private hospitals place him somewhere in the top 10.

Those who remember his 1974 race against Rams football star Marlin McKeever recall the then-obscure labor official as a personable, charming glad-hander. “In that race, he was a very nice guy,” recalls Orange County rancher-businessman Richard J. O’Neill, a former state Democratic Party chairman.

Some wonder now where all that personal charm went. But others say that Robinson still can be charming when he wants to be.

Said Mark Rosen, the Democratic candidate in the 71st Assembly District: “Earlier this year, I was in Richard O’Neill’s office with my mother-in-law, Beverly Singer, when Richard Robinson walked in with O’Neill and Howard Adler. My mother-in-law went over to him and said, ‘I remember you from your first campaign when you came by my house.’ He was flattered. But he was also so nice and warm to her. She’s voted for him in that (1974) election and every one since. And she’ll continue doing it.”

But few see that Robinson warmth these days. In recent years, he has done most of his politicking by mail, and even some close associates say that is best for his own interests. Robinson, however, scoffs at the notion that he no longer likes to press the flesh, however.

“I consider myself as charming as any other politician when I’m in my district,” he said. “I admit to being somewhat blunt at times with my colleagues and members of the lobbying profession. . . . I just find it difficult sometimes to be charming with a lobbyist or one of my colleagues when he is trying to do something to my district.”