Cathie Wright, Veteran of Many Political Battles, on the Defensive

Amid the scores of political buttons displayed in Assemblywoman Cathie Wright’s spacious office is one that, until recently, could have been the Simi Valley Republican’s credo: “I don’t get headaches. I give them!”

Wright, 59, has succeeded by tenaciously bird-dogging the interests of her sprawling 37th District--from prying loose state funds for local projects to showing up at myriad community events. But her combativeness--and some say her willingness to put personal interest above all else--has also earned her the enmity of many colleagues, including numerous fellow Republicans.

“She is tough, she can be shrill, she can be rigid and she can be stubborn,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “You love it when she’s on your side, and you hate it for her to be opposite you because it’s hard to find the middle ground.”

Unfamiliar Territory

Now, plagued by a highly publicized investigation by Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury into reports that she used her political clout in a bid to help her daughter avoid penalties for 27 traffic offenses, the lawmaker finds herself on unaccustomed, and uncomfortable, ground.

The eight-year Assembly veteran is afflicted by headaches galore arising from a combustible mixture of the two things she holds dearest. Even as she helps Victoria, 24, her only close family member, endure the glare of the public spotlight, Wright may be battling to save her political career.

“If this is a preview of the rest of the year, I’m certainly going to have fun,” Wright said sarcastically, shortly before she stopped talking to the press last month.

A month before Bradbury opened his inquiry, Wright’s home was burglarized. Before that, she was the focus of a nasty political spat that polarized Assembly Republicans. And, in recent weeks, a troubling question has been raised: Were actions by Wright that precipitated the intra-party controversy and her efforts to aid her daughter somehow linked?

Linked to Brown

The connection is Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), whom Wright often lambastes in her district even though she periodically attends his glitzy campaign fund-raisers. In an improbable twist, he is now one of her leading defenders.

“Tough as nails,” Brown responded earlier this year when asked to describe Wright. “Dutiful, serious, attentive to her business, opinionated, partisan, very conservative but a true member. . . . I have nothing but the highest respect for her.”

They are the unlikeliest of political allies: the black, urban, liberal from San Francisco and the white, suburban, conservative from Simi Valley. Yet, though they differ on most issues, each has something the other needs: He is the font of power and influence in the Assembly and she can be a key vote, as she proved recently.

Wright caused an uproar in December when she refused to oppose Brown’s reelection as Speaker. Most of the Republican caucus lined up behind Assemblyman Charles M. Calderon (D-Whittier), one of five dissident Democrats who had challenged Brown’s reign.

Rules Committee

During discussion of the ouster bid in the GOP caucus, the normally outspoken Wright was silent. At the same time, the Republicans reappointed her to the Assembly Rules Committee, a coveted assignment for party loyalists.

Wright subsequently was the lone abstention on the Speaker vote. She later said she had promised her constituents she would never back a Democrat for Speaker. She had remained silent in the caucus, she said, because she could not make up her mind until the vote.

Irate Republicans, led by Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), a Wright adversary, retaliated by voting to oust Wright from the Rules Committee. But she refused to quit, forcing the issue to the Assembly floor, where a majority vote was needed. Brown and the Democrats stood by her, and she remained on Rules--painfully reminding the GOP minority of its impotence.

Adding salt to Republican wounds, when Brown issued the other committee assignments, Wright won another plum--a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, which handles all revenue measures.

‘Juice Committees’

The Speaker also reappointed her to the Finance and Insurance panel, giving her slots on three much-sought “juice” committees, so-called because members are able to squeeze large campaign contributions from well-heeled special interests.

Wright then cast one of four Republican votes to approve Brown’s committee assignments, drawing the renewed ire of colleagues who lost choice spots after opposing the Speaker. The animosity peaked when Wright angrily told Assemblyman Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos), an eight-year ally and friend, “Don’t ever talk to me,” on the Assembly floor after he accused her of cutting a deal with Brown, Wright recalled.

She maintains that she did what she considered the right thing. She said the charge of partisan betrayal was particularly unfair because she generously donated campaign dollars to GOP Assembly candidates over the years. Time, she predicted, would dissipate the ill will.

Costly Victory

But her Rules Committee victory may prove Pyrrhic. Party foes say Wright will be bounced from that post in 1990 when her two-year term expires. Moreover, the squabble could haunt her if Bradbury’s probe leaves her vulnerable to a GOP primary challenge in 1990 or she someday proceeds with her long-stated ambition to run for the 19th Senate District seat held by Ed Davis (R-Valencia).

Robert Wilcox, a former La Follette aide, is exploring the possibility of opposing Wright in the 1990 primary and has vowed to make an issue of her ties to Willie Brown, a favorite target of Republican candidates.

La Follette, a potential future Senate opponent, gloated: “She’s made herself vulnerable to such a campaign. She has provided the ammunition, you might say.”

And Wright can expect further fallout from Brown’s reported involvement in her daughter’s traffic woes when Bradbury issues his investigative report.

In early 1988, with Victoria possibly facing jail for driving without a license, Brown gave Wright the name of an Oxnard attorney to represent her daughter. Wright said Brown made the suggestion after overhearing her ask fellow Republicans on the Assembly floor for a referral; Brown, however, said Wright made an appointment and came to see him for assistance.

Call to Judge

Municipal Court Judge Herbert Curtis III, a Democrat handling the Wright case, has told investigators that Brown called him at Wright’s behest, according to an official close to the investigation. Brown told Curtis that Victoria “was a good person trying to get her life in order and deserved a break in the case,” the official said. Wright reportedly had been unable to reach the judge.

Wright insists she did nothing improper on her daughter’s behalf. Brown said he helped Wright with a legal referral much as he has aided 60 members from both parties with one favor or another in the past five years. He denied calling Curtis.

Brown and Wright say they never cut a deal or reached an understanding on the speakership vote, committee assignments or the traffic case. Brown has suggested that Wright’s GOP opponents have spearheaded the inquiry by Bradbury, a Republican, to destroy her politically.

Little Support

Whatever the validity of Brown’s assertion, some Republicans are privately enjoying the spectacle of Wright twisting in the wind. Few have rushed to her defense.

But given her personality and past, no one expects her to go quietly into the political night. She has overcome barriers all her life and by her own admission, “eats, drinks and sleeps politics.” Besides, she seems to relish a good fight.

“A few shots have been fired across her bow,” said Davis, who verbally sparred with Wright when she considered challenging him in 1988. “But she’s not taking on water yet.”

Wright was born in Old Forge, Pa., a gritty coal mining town whose 7,000 residents were called “coal crackers.” Her father, who worked in a gas station and car dealership, never made more than $65 a week. Her mother was a housewife.

“My mom didn’t believe women should be able to vote,” Wright told a visitor to her cramped district office in Simi Valley. “She never voted.”

‘Assemblyman Wright’

She may have come a long way, but Wright is no feminist. She opposes the equal rights amendment, and aides answer the phones, “Assembly man Wright’s office.”

Raised amid FDR-era Democratic loyalists and Pennsylvania’s urban ward politics, where party committeemen arranged everything from garbage pickup to a city job, Wright was a Democrat until 1976. By then, she said, the party’s leftward, pro-welfare tilt had alienated her.

A graduate of Scranton Community College in Scranton, Pa., she moved to Southern California in 1960 and in 1963 married Victor Wright, a gruff former Illinois state trooper. They bought a modest three-bedroom home in Simi Valley in 1965, a year after Victoria was born.

By 1969, Wright had become a high-profile gadfly in the newly created city. It took her four tries to win a City Council seat before she was finally elected in 1978. After a tumultuous two-year term--which included a year as mayor and her support for the city’s rapid growth--she sought the GOP nomination for an open Assembly seat in 1980.

Faced With Problems

At this point, her husband had severe heart and kidney problems and she was selling insurance, which she detested. A full-time political career was an appealing alternative.

Drawing on her Simi Valley base in the solidly Republican district, which included parts of western Los Angeles County, she won a five-way GOP primary and coasted to a November victory.

Wright soon joined a coterie of younger, conservative Republican Assembly members led by Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) and became a Nolan loyalist as he rose to minority leader. He resigned in November after it was disclosed that he was a target of an FBI corruption probe in Sacramento; Wright says some colleagues have sought to punish her for her ties to him.

The early Assembly years were trying. Her husband died in 1982, leaving Wright to juggle her roles as lawmaker and single mother. The same year, her district was redrawn to stretch all the way from Lompoc in Santa Barbara County to Lancaster in the Antelope Valley.

Fund-Raising Violations

And in 1980, Wright was fined $5,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for soliciting a $5,000 campaign contribution from a developer in the form of a loan to her husband so she would not have to report it; accepting cash contributions totaling $2,600 and failing to report $19,855 in income. She called the transgressions “bookkeeping errors.”

Wright’s legislative record is primarily parochial. Her trademark has been responsiveness to district concerns--opposing a proposed state prison and a toxic waste disposal site and spending weekends and evenings at community and political events.

She has, however, sponsored important mental health legislation. She pried loose state funds for an innovative Ventura program that seeks to provide a coordinated and accountable system of caring for emotionally disturbed children, and she later championed legislation to expand the much-touted program on a trial basis elsewhere in the state.

Kept Fighting

“I was absolutely amazed with her tenacity in sticking with that program and keeping it going when there was tight financial times,” said Dr. Dennis (Michael) O’Connor, director of the state Department of Mental Health.

“She knew her constituents wanted that program and it would be good for the kids in her county and she stayed with it when everybody else was saying ‘no,’ including me. That has turned out to be one of the most successful children’s projects in the country.”

For all her toughness, friends attest to a kinder, gentler Wright. Nolan, her longtime Assembly seatmate, maintains she is “fun, and a very kind person.” Catherine Morrison, her administrative assistant since 1980, says Wright makes pasta from scratch for her veteran staff and sings along with Frank Sinatra cassettes as she travels her district.

Then there was this appraisal of the lawmaker by her embattled daughter, Victoria, in a 1982 interview: “She is independent and very headstrong. She’s set in her ways, but she’s nice. When I want something, I can get to her soft side. I’m about the only one who can, and then it’s hard.”