Politics Over Policy

They are rewriting the book in Sacramento on political reformers. The old book had heroes. We can’t find any in the new one.

Something called the “Gang of Five,” all registered Democrats, has it in mind to reform the Assembly by getting rid of Speaker Willie L. Brown (D-San Francisco). One of the gang, Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-Los Banos), says the Speaker’s demise would actually be a by-product of a much loftier goal, “meaningful campaign reform and institutional reform.”

That would be most welcome if it meant more time for policy and less for politics, but the odds seem heavily against that. For one thing, all five were allies of Brown not long ago, with big offices, big staffs and other badges of power. When the relationship went sour, the Speaker’s office made the staffs shrink and assignments to important committees vanish. They were assigned to tiny new offices, and the other day someone in authority was measuring one office for a partition that could cut it in half. No heroes on that side, either.

The arithmetic raises serious questions about how much altruism lies behind the ruckus. For example, why is there a gang of five and not four or 17? Well, five just happens to be the number of Democratic votes that, added to the 36 Republican votes, takes away the Speaker’s majority on any given issue.

The case of Assemblyman Charles M. Calderon (D-Alhambra) is also instructive on the question of how much pure reform drives the gang of five. As a Brown ally, Calderon had his eye on the chairmanship of the Finance and Insurance Committee. Brown passed him over twice when the chair became vacant. That’s not hard to understand. As Times writer Leo Wolinksy reported this week, Calderon helped kill a major insurance-reform bill last year. And a list released last month showed Calderon among the top 12 recipients of insurance-industry campaign funds. Not a hero in sight.