Unruh, First Among Co-Equals

As the Speaker of the California Assembly in 1964, Jesse Unruh proposed a resolution calling for a halt to the use of bonds to finance major state projects, claiming that long-term debt was placing an unreasonable burden on future generations.

As state treasurer 11 years later, Unruh took exactly the opposite position, promoting the use of bonds for every conceivable purpose.

His explanation for abandoning the 1964 resolution: “I was wrong.”

Also in 1964, Unruh launched the campaign for a full-time Legislature with a large staff of “professionals” charged with developing creative solutions to the state’s problems. At the time, the Speaker was engaged in a bitter internecine battle with Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown. The attack on bonds was designed to give Brown budget headaches, and the full-time Legislature was aimed at giving lawmakers “co-equal” power with the executive.

Unruh, who died Tuesday at the age of 64, succeeded through Proposition 1A in 1966 in getting a full-time Legislature, one of the many innovations that he carved into California’s political system. Indeed, the creative Unruh ranks with Progressive Gov. Hiram Johnson as those who engineered the biggest changes in the California political system in the 20th Century.

However, as with the bond resolution, the Unruh “reforms” haven’t turned out the way he expected. For example, Unruh established a principle that legislative committees, deciding major issues of the day, would be staffed by nonpartisan specialists who would keep their jobs regardless of the ideological makeup of the committees. Politics would be left to those holding political jobs.

What happened? The Legislature itself became filled with former staff members who learned how to win elections as an indirect result of the 1966 reforms. There is no longer a visible line separating professional and political staff members in the Capitol. Politics has submerged substance.

Unruh himself may have planted the seeds for the destruction of his professionalization plan. Some of his own staff members, notably former state Controller Ken Cory, led the charge into the elective ranks. Perhaps more important, the skyrocketing cost of California campaigns came about partly as a result of Unruh’s use of paid political operatives.

Unruh himself was a major player in the fund-raising activities that upped the stakes in California legislative elections to obscene levels. As it has turned out, the 1966 reforms also made legislative jobs more powerful and more lucrative, luring political technocrats into campaigns and tending to make it more difficult for workaday Californians to win election.

As a result, there has been increasing public dissatisfaction with both the Legislature and the conduct of elections in California. The various political-reform initiatives seeking spots on next year’s ballots are attempts to change the House that Jesse Built, somewhat unintentionally, two decades ago.

Unruh was a complex and paradoxical personality. Despite a public image to the contrary, he was a clever consensus builder in the Legislature, sharing power with respected colleagues in both parties. His weakness was in the political arena--especially in the advancement of his own political career.

Unruh blew his opportunity to succeed Brown as governor by splitting the party. He ran a dreadful race for mayor of Los Angeles, and took on the treasurer’s job as a booby prize. Ironically, his best campaign is the one that is rarely mentioned--his cannon-fodder race against Ronald Reagan in 1970. Running on a shoestring, he cut Reagan’s 1966 margin in half and gave the future President the closest election of his life.

What’s most remarkable about Unruh’s career is that he left deep hoofprints on California’s political landscape without benefit of truly high office. Before him, no one had ever used the Speakership or the treasurer’s office as a source of significant power. Speakers had been ruled by governors and lobbyists, and treasurers had been invisible except when scandalized.

Some of Unruh’s principles are well known through his colorful pronouncements about “mother’s milk” and his ability to take wine, women and cash from lobbyists and still vote against them. But he launched his wholesale revision of California’s political system with a more subtle move.

A former Rupublican assemblyman, Bruce Sumner of Orange County, once explained that before Unruh was elected Speaker the top advocates in Sacramento essentially told the leadership what had to happen for the wining, dining and campaign cash to keep flowing.

“But Jesse turned the tables,” Sumner said. “He told the lobbyists what they had to do to get what they wanted from the Legislature.” The Assembly members in effect started running their own house.

If there is a lesson to be learned from Unruh’s remarkable career, it may be that the governmental system is not nearly so important as the leadership skills of those who are running it. There is evidence galore that the engine that Unruh built has backfired with other drivers at the wheel.

At least publicly, that didn’t seem to bother Unruh, who wasn’t exactly shy about his unique role in the history of California. As he once said, in reference to himself: “Humility in the face of ability is hypocrisy.”