Calderon Vows to Persist in Effort to Curb Speaker’s Power

Although he lost his bid to become speaker of the California Assembly, Charles M. Calderon (D-Alhambra) says he will persist in efforts to curb the powers of that office and to reform the legislative system, even if it means working for passage of a Republican-sponsored initiative.

Assemblyman Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) won an unprecedented fifth term as speaker on Monday, turning back the challenge of a coalition of Republicans and five dissident Democrats, including Calderon. Brown got 40 votes in the 80-member Assembly while Calderon received 34.

Calderon, a 38-year-old attorney, shook hands with Brown after losing the election but said that act did not signal an end to his challenge to Brown’s leadership. All it meant, he said, is that “I’m not a bad loser.”

Calderon, who lives in Whittier, was reelected to his fourth term in November without Republican opposition. He represents a district that contains Alhambra, Montebello, Monterey Park, Pico Rivera, South El Monte and part of Whittier.

It was nearly a year ago that Calderon and four other Assembly Democrats rebelled against Brown and formed what the press dubbed “The Gang of Five.” They began working with Republicans to pass legislation Brown opposed and called for reforms to weaken the Speaker’s power.

Gained Support

Brown not only survived the challenge but picked up additional allies in November’s elections.

Nevertheless, Calderon said he considers the Gang of Five effort successful because it has brought legislative reform to the forefront.

He noted that even Brown has said he will support changes in the way the Assembly is run and has appointed a committee headed by Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) to make recommendations. Calderon said he is skeptical about Brown’s support for reform and in a letter to Burton termed the committee’s preliminary proposals “a clever and skilled rubber-stamping procedure that in reality further concentrates power in the Speaker and his friends.”

Calderon said he is optimistic about the prospects for legislative reform, however, because Democrats apart from the Gang of Five are demanding it.

If the Legislature does not produce meaningful reform, he said, he will support Assembly Minority Leader Ross Johnson’s proposal to reform the Legislature through the initiative process.

In an interview in his Montebello office last month, Calderon said that by putting legislative reform at the top of his agenda, he is responding to the desires of voters in his district.

“Everyone says, ‘Don’t give up. Keep fighting.’ That’s what people want. They don’t want to elect people to go up to Sacramento to lay down for an office. They want people to go up and raise hell for the right reasons.”

Calderon compared the way the Assembly works now to what he saw of the Communist Party when he visited the Soviet Union in a cultural exchange program in 1985.

“The way the Speaker runs the Assembly has many similarities to how the Communist Party works,” Calderon said.

Soviet System

“In the Soviet Union, the only means of upward mobility is through participation and advancement in the Communist Party,” he said. Those who are loyal, do as they are told and don’t challenge those above them move up, he said.

“That’s exactly the way the Assembly works. If you don’t challenge the Speaker, don’t vote against him, don’t embarrass him and do as you’re told, why, then you’ll move up in the Assembly hierarchy.”

Susan Jetton, Speaker Brown’s press secretary, dismissed Calderon’s assertion that the Assembly operates like Soviet politics. Brown, she said, “has never, never said that people have to agree with him.” But Jetton added, Brown has told lawmakers that if they want to chair committees they should support his direction “on procedural matters.”

For example, she said, in the last legislative session Brown appointed Republican Assemblyman Larry Stirling of San Diego as chairman of the Public Safety Committee, even though the liberal Brown often disagreed with the conservative Stirling.

When told that Calderon is continuing to assail Brown’s policies, she said: “I’m sorry Chuck is doing this. The Speaker began the day after the election and has continued . . . to bury the hatchet and say ‘let’s work together.’ ”

Calderon rose to the post of majority whip under Brown and was a member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. He authored major bills opening California to interstate banking, requiring environmental testing near landfills, and regulating firms that help consumers obtain credit.

Calderon said that even before he joined the Gang of Five, Brown “perceived me as a threat to him and constantly attempted to co-opt me by handing me more titles and assignments, more public praise and that kind of thing. When he realized he wasn’t making any difference, he took the opposite tack and tried to take everything away.”

Fall From Power

Calderon’s allies in the Gang of Five, Gerald Eaves of Rialto, Rusty Areieas of Los Banos, Steve Peace of Chula Vista and Gary Condit of Ceres, all held leadership positions or seats on influential committees before they began challenging Brown’s leadership. Last spring Brown referred to them as “just the most outrageous collection of ungrateful people I’ve ever met.”

All five lost their leadership positions and choice committee assignments.

In addition, Brown dismissed six members of Calderon’s staff and moved him to a smaller office earlier this year. Calderon no longer has any committee assignments, and said he sometimes has been denied the customary legislative per diem of $87 for attending legislative hearings and reimbursement for travel to Sacramento.

Calderon said Brown “arbitrarily approves or denies legislative per diem depending on the way he feels.” A spokeswoman for Brown said he rejects claims that fail to comply with Assembly rules, but does not act arbitrarily.

Calderon said Brown and other Democratic leaders have increasingly focused on a liberal agenda that excludes moderates such as himself.

“If ‘60s liberalism continues to dominate the leadership of the Democratic Party, then I think the party is doomed,” Calderon said.

“It used to be there was room for everybody in the Democratic Party. The reality is that there is no room for you if you are a moderate or a middle-of-the-road Democrat.”

However Calderon said he does not intend to leave the party. “I have been a Democrat all my life,” he said. “I will always be a Democrat. My mother was a Democrat . . . my father . . . my grandparents, and I will die a Democrat but I won’t sit back and be a silent Democrat.”

Some critics have questioned whether Calderon is moderate and a reformer, or is just maneuvering for power.

Critical Memo

Before Monday’s vote on the speakership, Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne), a Brown loyalist, circulated a 28-page memo titled “The Two Faces of Charles Calderon.” The memo accused Calderon of ducking issues, saying he has one of the highest rates of not voting in the Assembly. The memo also accused Calderon of hypocrisy in advocating a ban on transfer of campaign funds, and then transferring thousands of dollars to political allies. It also noted that he has urged a limit on the number of bills a legislator can introduce but has introduced more than most of his colleagues, although he has had a low percentage enacted.

Calderon said he does not know whether the charge that he votes on fewer bills than other members is true, but he sometimes abstains when he approves the general thrust of a bill but dislikes specific provisions. As to his position on transfer of funds, Calderon said he has supported reform of campaign financing, including Prop. 68 last June, but until reforms take effect he will operate within existing rules, helping allies when that is permitted.

The assemblyman said he does not regard the number of bills introduced and passed to be a measure of effectiveness.

Diffusing Power

Calderon has called for a number of reforms in the Assembly, many of them aimed at sharing power now concentrated with the Speaker. For example, in place of the present system in which the Speaker controls committee assignments, Calderon would have the entire Assembly elect the Rules Committee, which would make other committee assignments. He also would give each member a budget allotment, outside the control of the Speaker.

“We’ve got to diffuse the power of the Speaker by setting up a checks and balances system in the House and by taking away the Speaker’s power to punish members in a personal and political way.

“We need to do away with this punishment and reward system,” he said. “As long as there is this punishment and reward system, members are going to be either seduced or intimidated from representing their own districts.”

One Brown ally, Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) said he hopes Calderon will make peace with the Democratic leadership.

“I’m hopeful he’ll return as a fully functioning member of the Democratic caucus and leave behind the alliance with Republicans,” he said.

Margolin said he has repeatedly stressed the following point in conversations with Calderon during the past year:

“Whatever our internal differences, they are best resolved within the Democratic caucus and when you invite Republicans into the discussion what follows is not in the best interest of the Democratic Party . . . because they (the Republicans) clearly have a focused self-interest.”

In an interview on Tuesday, Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) said that Calderon’s future remains bright, despite Monday’s vote.

“I think he’s got a good future here,” Mountjoy said. “I just don’t believe Willie will be around here a long time. I’m not sure if he will become Speaker. That’s not out of the realm of possibility. But even if he’s not Speaker, certainly he will have a key position in the house once Willie moves on and I don’t think Willie will be here forever.”

Times Staff Writer Mark Gladstone in Sacramento contributed to this story.