Democrat Loses Post After Voting for Lungren

Applying the ancient political axiom of rewarding your friends and punishing your enemies, Senate Democrats on Thursday fired a veteran colleague as a committee chairman for voting to confirm Republican Rep. Daniel E. Lungren as state treasurer.

The legislator, Sen. Wadie Deddeh of Chula Vista, was replaced as chairman of the Transportation Committee by freshman Sen. Quentin L. Kopp of San Francisco, the Legislature’s only independent, who voted against Lungren.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), who vigorously opposed Gov. George Deukmejian’s nomination of Lungren, announced the long-expected dismissal of Deddeh shortly after the Democratic-dominated Rules Committee took the action at a closed-door session.

“He stood with us and took the heat with us,” Roberti said of Kopp. “We feel we should demonstrate a way of saying we appreciate that. . . . What I am doing (in removing Deddeh) I have to do as a leader to keep some kind of a coordinated Democratic program, policy and action.”

‘Political Payoff’

Deukmejian issued a blistering statement, deploring the reshuffle as “nothing more than a political payoff, pure and simple.”

“It is obvious that deals were made to ensure that Dan would be rejected in the Senate,” Deukmejian charged. “It is also obvious that David Roberti is behaving more like a dictator than a statesman.”

Deddeh, first elected to the Senate in 1982 after 16 years in the Assembly, accepted the punishment philosophically. “He had to do what he had to do,” Deddeh said of Roberti, adding that “I have no bitterness, no anger, no recrimination.”

In one of the highest-stakes political battles yet with Deukmejian, the Democratic-dominated Senate last month refused to confirm the Long Beach congressman to succeed the late Democratic Treasurer Jesse M. Unruh. The vote fell generally along party lines, although three other Democrats joined Deddeh in voting “aye.”

The Assembly, however, voted to confirm Lungren, setting the stage for a legal battle, now pending in the State Supreme Court.

The chairmanship of the Transportation Committee is especially prized in the Senate because transportation is big business in California and industries involved in it are major contributors to election campaigns.

Meteoric Leap

For Kopp, elected in 1986 as an independent unaffiliated with any political party, the promotion to the committee chairmanship represented a meteoric leap. Roberti insisted, however, that no “quid pro quo” deal was cut with Kopp for his vote on Lungren nor was the reward part of a low-profile courtship of Kopp to woo him into registering as a Democrat.

Almost as soon as the Lungren vote was announced, rumors shot through the Senate that Deddeh would lose his chairmanship to Kopp. At the time, Deddeh said he merely “voted my conscience.”

Heading into the vote, Kopp had indicated that he would support Lungren and was counted as an “aye” vote by Deukmejian and just about everybody else. However, half an hour before the vote, he informed the governor that he would cast a negative vote, an action that infuriated Deukmejian.

Senate Republicans, who charged Kopp with breaking his word, in addition, have indicated that they intend to mount a major campaign to defeat him in 1990.

Changed His Mind

Kopp said he changed his mind on Lungren because constituents in his San Francisco and San Mateo County district, many of them Japanese-Americans, vigorously petitioned him. Many Japanese-Americans expressed anger over Lungren’s opposition to a federal bill to grant reparations to Americans of Japanese ancestry who were put in internment camps during World War II.

But the governor asserted Thursday that “no one is going to buy Kopp’s explanation that he flip-flopped on the Lungren confirmation because of concern for his constituents.” He charged that Roberti rewarded Kopp “for blatantly breaking his word.”

Roberti told reporters Thursday that a “great number” of Senate Democrats, angry at Deddeh’s vote for Lungren, asked that Deddeh be fired from his chairmanship. He said Deddeh declared his backing for Lungren shortly after Deukmejian announced the appointment in November and ignored pleas of Roberti and others not to make up his mind before confirmation hearings were held.

Targeted in Maneuvering

“The vast majority of members of the (Democratic) caucus felt that Sen. Deddeh at least should have given us a crack at his ear and we don’t feel we had that,” Roberti said.

Also targeted in early maneuvering, at least, was maverick Sen. Joseph Montoya (D-Whittier), chairman of the Business and Professions Committee and one of the most unpopular members of the Senate.

Montoya, an outspoken opponent of abortion, stunned the upper chamber during the Lungren debate when he declared that the abortion supporters had led the drive against Lungren because he is a “pro-life Catholic.” An anti-abortion Catholic, Roberti assailed Montoya for injecting religion into the debate.

Asked why Montoya escaped punishment, Roberti explained that Montoya was spared because he had not committed himself publicly in advance to Lungren and apparently agreed to stay neutral until after the hearings and listen to opposition Democratic arguments.

‘The Difference’

“That’s the difference,” he said.

In response to questions, Roberti said two other Democratic committee chairmen, Sens. Robert Presley of Riverside and Ruben Ayala of Chino, who also voted for Lungren, would not be punished.

He said neither had publicly committed himself to Lungren in advance and that a vote against Lungren might damage their reelection chances in 1990. Both are conservative Democrats and represent increasingly conservative districts.

Roberti and his Rules Committee last disciplined two senators in February of 1987 when he stripped them of their chairmanships for allegedly conspiring to overthrow him.

He fired Sen. Daniel Boatwright (D-Concord) as chairman of the Appropriations Committee and Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) as chairman of the Select Committee on Substance Abuse. He subsequently restored Seymour’s chairmanship to him and returned Boatwright as a member of the Appropriations Committee.