GOP Threatens Recall : Heavy Pressure Is Put on Mojonnier to Vote Against Willie Brown

Angry at the prospect that Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier (R-Encinitas) might vote next week to reelect Democratic Speaker Willie Brown, GOP leaders are going so far as to threaten a recall effort against Mojonnier unless she opposes Brown.

With the newly elected Assembly scheduled to vote Monday on whether Brown will retain the speakership, Mojonnier has been targeted by Republican mailings that urge voters to telephone her office to express their opposition to Brown. As of Thursday, Mojonnier’s office had received about 300 such calls, according to Chris Heiserman, Mojonnier’s administrative assistant.

Two other Republicans who had voiced support for Brown and four Democrats who last month won close elections in conservative districts were also targeted in the direct-mail campaign, orchestrated by Assembly Republican Leader Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) and five dissident Democrats known as the “Gang of Five.”

Out of the Country

Although Mojonnier, who has been out of the country for two weeks, has not stated publicly whom she intends to support for speaker, Johnson has said that Mojonnier told him she backs Brown. According to legislative sources, when Johnson went to meet Brown in his Capitol office last month, he found the speaker already meeting with Mojonnier and Republican Assemblyman Gerald Felando of San Pedro, one of the two other Republicans targeted in the letter-writing campaign.

In a letter sent to Republicans in Mojonnier’s 75th Assembly District this week, North County GOP activist Don Floyd accuses Mojonnier of “selling out to Willie Brown . . . for her own personal benefit.” Because of her cozy relationship with the Speaker, Floyd wrote, Mojonnier has received “special benefits other legislators don’t enjoy”--namely, a larger office and bigger staff.

“By selling out to Willie Brown, Sunny Mojonnier has betrayed you and every other taxpayer in California,” Floyd said in the two-page letter. The letter goes on to encourage voters to contact Mojonnier in an effort to “change her mind” and concludes with a threat of the potential political fallout that Mojonnier could face if she votes for Brown.

Thinking About Recall

“If Assemblywoman Mojonnier won’t listen to reason . . . well, my friends and I are already thinking about organizing a recall campaign against her--that’s how mad we are,” wrote Floyd, who helped lead the successful 1986 campaign to oust then-state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird.

Although some local GOP leaders regard that threat as, as one put it, “more rhetorical than real,” they agree that Mojonnier’s otherwise seemingly secure political future in the heavily Republican district would be seriously endangered if she backs Brown.

“I’m not sure if a recall would ever come off or if it’s something I’d want to be associated with,” said Jan Anton, president of the San Diego Golden Eagles Club, an organization of major Republican donors. “But I can tell you as sure as I’m sitting here that, if she votes for Brown, she’ll have a strong opponent in the ’90 primary.”

Scenarios Reviewed

Anton and about 2 dozen other local Republicans met Wednesday night in a downtown San Diego restaurant to review scenarios for removing Brown as speaker--a subject that overlapped with a discussion of Mojonnier’s potentially pivotal role in that decision.

Political consultant David Lewis, whose firm, Johnston & Lewis, managed Mojonnier’s successful first campaign in 1982, said he left that meeting convinced that the threat of a recall “is more than just idle talk.”

“To me, it was significant to even have a meeting like that to discuss the actions of a single member of the Assembly,” Lewis said. “It was kind of a rarity, showing just how unhappy some people are over what she’s preparing to do.”

Mojonnier in Spain

Another longtime Mojonnier supporter, Solana Beach advertising executive Jim Benedict, said that, when Mojonnier returns to Sacramento this weekend, he hopes to impress upon her the importance of her vote on the speakership. Mojonnier has been in Spain for the past two weeks as part of a Joint Legislative Committee on the 1992 California Quincentennial of the Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

The potential political consequences, Benedict added, hinge in part on how close next week’s vote is.

“If Willie Brown stays speaker by one vote, and that one vote is Sunny’s, a nuclear bomb would be dropped on her office,” Benedict said. “I’m going to tell Sunny that she can’t bolt this time, that this is too visible of a vote to do that. If she doesn’t follow the party line, it’s going to be very, very damaging.”