In ‘Dills Country,’ the Beat Goes...

For 51 years, Sen. Ralph C. Dills has campaigned to the beat of his own music.

When Dills earlier this year threw his annual birthday fund-raising bash here, the 79-year-old Gardena Democrat, who does not read music, serenaded hundreds of dinner guests on his saxophone, and his stepdaughter performed a Tahitian dance.

Dills, who worked his way through college playing in honky-tonks, is also the leader of the Dills Derby Band, which performs around the capital.

In an era when politicians get advice on everything from the color of their ties to their best side for TV appearances, the 6-foot, 2-inch lawmaker with a taste for show business is an exception.

Dills cuts a folksy figure: carefully coiffed steel-gray hair, loose-fitting jackets, loud ties from his collection of 200, and a voice, with hints of his native Texas, that he can raise like a high note on his horn to needle a colleague.

Now Dills, who by his own count has won 16 general elections as a judge, assemblyman and senator, plans to run for reelection next year, hoping to blow his 17th victory song.

Declared Dills, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1938: “I’m not the retiring kind. My happiness, my joy and my fulfillment, that which makes me come alive, is in doing that which I am doing here.”

With his longevity, Dills provides an institutional memory for details of events that occurred long before many of his colleagues were born. He is a liberal, pro-labor Democrat who still preaches the New Deal. But he has been criticized for carrying special-interest legislation that hurts the average working person whom the lawmaker says he is representing.

Nonetheless, Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson), who became a Dills aide after stumping for an opponent in 1966, boasted: “Some people say they’re from God’s country. This is Dills country, and there’s not a whole lot of difference.”

Even staunch Republicans concede that Dills appears unbeatable because registered Democrats outnumber Republicans almost 3-1 in the Southeast area’s 30th District. “They could put a lily on his chest and give him the last rites, and he’d win four years later,” cracked former Sen. H. L. Richardson (R-Glendora).

But Dills is very much alive.

Once a youthful supporter of the left-leaning End Poverty in California program, Dills is now a crusty veteran with a reputation for knowing how to get what he wants. Examples include:

* Overcoming consumer objections last year to win passage of a bill to lift the limit on interest rates charged by retailers.

* Using his political muscle to pave the way for such public works projects back home as a waste-to-energy incinerator in Long Beach.

* Maintaining a firm grip on the chairmanship of the key Senate committee that oversees liquor, horse racing and gambling legislation as well as the state lottery, which he opposes.

Dills’ clout stems largely from his chairmanship of that panel, the Senate Governmental Organization Committee. It is known as a “juice” committee because of the ability of some legislators to raise substantial campaign contributions from industries regulated by the panel.

Dills typically ranks in the middle rung of Senate fund-raisers. In the first six months of this year, Dills reported raising $76,400, almost all from special interests outside his district, boosting his campaign committee balance to almost $197,000.

In a recent interview, Dills dismissed suggestions of any connection between the contributions to his campaign and his legislation. He maintained that contributors chip into his campaign kitty “without any promises that they are going to get a dime’s worth of effort or support out of me.”

Since he was first elected to the Senate in 1966, Dills has usually faced only token opposition in the heavily Democratic, ethnically diverse, mostly working-class district, which includes Lynwood, North Long Beach, Paramount and parts of Compton in the Southeast area.

The spotlight is often on Dills because he frequently presides over the Senate--a duty he shares with other senior lawmakers. From the podium of the ornate chamber, the one-time Compton Latin teacher sometimes scolds lawmakers for grammatical mistakes or chides them for being long-winded.

As he approaches his 80th birthday in February, Dills said he is in good health, despite knee injuries, poor vision in one eye and skin cancer that has been successfully treated. One former staffer said Dills has “been able to settle into this pace where he doesn’t seem to wear out. I’m amazed at his ability to preside over the Senate for hours. . . .”

Away from the podium, Dills has also been active on a wide variety of fronts. Most of his legislation--this year he carried 65 bills and resolutions--winds through the Legislature without much attention.

But in 1988, he became embroiled in a dispute over a bill that removed the 18% limit on the interest rate retailers may charge their customers.

The bill, which became law last January, prompted sharp criticism from Harry Snyder, West Coast director of Consumers Union. In an interview, Snyder complained: “Ralph Dills is one of the legislators who will carry juice bills. He’s in a safe seat. He wins by a large majority . . . and he doesn’t have to care about his constituents . . . and therefore he’ll carry bills that are harmful to every constituent in his district.”

In a letter to the senator in September, Snyder said that because of the Dills law, retailers have “gouged consumers” with higher interest rates. He estimated that consumers have paid an additional $100 million just to large retailers because there is no longer any interest limit.

Dills defended his law as fair, saying he hoped to dissuade his constituents from becoming too dependent on credit cards. He said he did not realize that the change would benefit department stores.

Dills reported contributions of roughly $5,000 in the first six months of this year from major department stores. In contrast, last year he received $1,000 from major department stores, according to Legi-Tech, a computerized information service.

He said there was no relationship between contributions and the revision in the credit law. “The campaign contributions don’t go into my pocket, for God’s sake,” Dills said. “If my motives were to make money, then I would retire . . . and then go out here and become a lobbyist or get into a law practice” with a higher salary.

Dills has had other skirmishes with consumer-oriented groups.

In 1985, he was the author of one of the session’s most heavily lobbied bills, intended to curb the sale of prestigious European wines at bargain prices. Domestic wineries, fearing the competition, and a few importers who prefered not to lower their prices went to Dills to kill the so-called gray market that made the bargains possible.

During one debate on the measure, Dills branded California Common Cause, one of the consumer groups that opposed the bill, as “Common Curse” and said other critics had exaggerated the bill’s effect on the buying public.

“I’m a consumer also. I like California wine, and I could use a belt right now,” Dills said.

Nonetheless, Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed the bill as “unfair to consumers.”

When Dills was first drawn to politics in the mid-1930s, he was a follower of author Upton Sinclair, the 1934 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, and his End Poverty in California program. The EPIC movement envisioned unemployed urban masses being resettled in rural “land colonies” where they would live communally.

Dills said he continues to seek a progressive political agenda to help his working-class constituents, especially by supporting more government funds for education, bills backed by labor unions and proposals sought by minorities, which make up 68% of his constituents.

Rep. Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton), active in the black community for three decades, said one secret to Dills’ political longevity is that he listens to the concerns of minorities. “When I was in the Senate, (Dills) had a better NAACP (voting) record than I did,” Dymally said.

But others suggested that Dills has blocked redistricting efforts that would increase the voting power of blacks, Latinos and Asians.

One legislative staffer, who asked not to be identified, said Dills’ reelection chances are further boosted by low voter turnout, which tends to favor incumbents. For instance, in the 1988 election only 56% of the district’s registered voters cast ballots for President, compared to the statewide average of 72.8%.

Dills’ roots in his district go back more than 60 years, when the area was dotted with dairy farms.

The Dills family, which included nine children, moved to Gardena after a general store owned by the senator’s father burned down in Arizona. Dills finished high school in Gardena in 1925.

He took up the saxophone by accident when a laundry where he worked drummed up recruits for a marching band. The band fizzled, but Dills kept his instrument and taught himself to play. He later went to UCLA, working summers and holidays for a nurseryman named Joe Kobata. Kobata later lent Dills $150 to attend USC.

But even after Dills obtained two college degrees, he could not find a steady job as a teacher. After Prohibition ended, he played saxophone in bars and substituted in Compton schools before eventually getting a full-time teaching position in 1934.

Earlier that year, a friend asked Dills to help him run a campaign for the Assembly. Dills, who said he knew little about politics, not only helped his friend win but also caught the political bug.

In 1938, he won his own Assembly seat, preaching the New Deal. He earned $1,200 a year as a part-time lawmaker and continued to teach when the Legislature was out of session.

Dills recalled making his final loan repayment to Kobata out of the first state mileage check he received after taking office.

After the outbreak of World War II, with anti-Japanese feeling running high, his relationship with Kobata was put to the test. When Japanese-Americans were ordered to relocation camps, Dills drove his friend to Santa Anita Park, which was used as a staging area.

Several weeks later, Dills said, he brought Kabata a pair of shoes and some toiletries. But for several hours he was blocked from leaving the race track until someone recognized him as a state legislator and let him out.

In the middle of an emotional debate last year on the confirmation of Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-Long Beach) as state treasurer, Dills declared: “Don’t tell me that there were not concentration camps, because I was there.” Dills, who called the vote on Lungren one of the most important of his career, objected to the nomination because of Lungren’s vocal opposition to a bill to pay $1.2 billion--$20,000 each--to the surviving Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II.

During the war, politics became a family affair.

In 1942, Dills encouraged his brother Clayton to run for an Assembly seat. Clayton A. Dills captured the seat and served for 23 years. A third brother, Floyd (Curley) Dills, was a longtime Capitol elevator operator.

Among his achievements, Dills cites his role in the 1940s in helping pave the way for the establishment of Cal State Long Beach and the law school at UCLA.

But in 1949, after 10 years in the Legislature, Dills resigned to become a Justice Court judge. He said he left for two reasons: the judicial job paid $7,500 a year, in contrast to his $1,200 legislative pay, and his first wife disliked Sacramento’s hot weather. His first wife died in 1960. He divorced his second wife and is now married a third time.

Dills served on the bench for 17 years.

As a result, he receives judicial retirement pay of $61,540 a year, according to state pension officials. Added to his legislative pay of $40,816 a year, Social Security of $2,700 and teachers’ retirement of about $2,400, Dills makes more than $106,000 a year.

By the mid-1960s, Dills was ready to return to Sacramento. He saw his opportunity after the U.S. Supreme Court’s “one-man, one-vote” decision spurred the creation of 14 1/2 state Senate seats in Los Angeles County, which until then had only one. In 1966, Dills outdistanced a large field and won his seat.

After his election, one of his pet projects was a unique but unsuccessful cause: a toll tunnel through the San Gabriel Mountains from Pasadena to the Antelope Valley.

In 1974, Dills faced one of the toughest challenges of his Senate career from two Democrats, including Robert Pauley, son of oilman Edwin Pauley. Pauley accused Dills of favoring special interests. During the campaign, Dills, who had authored legislation encouraging geothermal development, acknowledged that he owned 160 acres in an Imperial Valley area that has geothermal potential.

Since then, Dills’ landholdings have not attracted controversy. According to his annual economic disclosure statement filed earlier this year, Dills and his wife continue to own land in Imperial County, along with property in Tulare and San Bernardino counties, Gardena and Rocklin, near Sacramento.

Another dispute arose during his 1982 reelection campaign when Dills was accused of not living in the district. Los Angeles County prosecutors determined that although Dills maintained a residence on the Rocklin ranch, his home was in Gardena in his district.

Former Sen. Richardson maintained that Dills spends most of his time in Sacramento. Said Richardson: “He’s probably the most unknown district representative. . . . He’s not down there often, but he doesn’t have to be” because of the Democratic registration edge.

Dills acknowledged that he is not a frequent flier between Sacramento and Los Angeles. “I don’t go down there that often because there’s no occasion to go down there that often. I’m elected to come to Sacramento. . . . My work is at Sacramento.”

In the capital, Dills has had a sometimes stormy relationship with environmentalists. One lobbyist, who asked not to be identified, asserted that the Dills committee “has been the primary break on progressive environmental legislation,” especially on some air quality issues. “He has profoundly little sympathy for the notion of environmental protection,” the source said.

Gerald Meral, lobbyist for the Planning and Conservation League, acknowledged that the committee “has been a problem over the years” but has improved recently. “Dills is not very interested in environmental issues. He listens. He’s polite. It’s just not a priority for him,” Meral said. Even so, Dills this year sided with environmentalists on 85% of 21 key Senate floor votes, according to the League of Conservation Voters.

Dills dismissed the criticism, adding that he does not control the way the other committee members vote.

Most of Dills’ own legislation seems to win easy passage, even though it may have a big impact on certain businesses.

Earlier this year, for example, a Dills measure to lower the bond paid by swimming pool contractors from $10,000 to $5,000 sailed through the Legislature. But it was vetoed by Deukmejian, who said that by lowering the bond, “the public will not be adequately protected.”

Another Dills measure that coasted through the Legislature and was signed into law established a loophole in state liquor laws for the Los Angeles Turf Club, operators of Santa Anita Park. The law allows Santa Anita to take over a food and beverage concession at the track and continue its arrangement with Anheuser-Busch to use a team of Clydesdale horses to move the starting gate during races--an arrangement which would have been prohibited.

In the last four years, Dills has received $13,000 from the brewery and $9,000 from the Los Angeles Turf Club, according to Legi-Tech. But Dills said there was no relationship between contributions and the measure.

Two years ago, Dills suffered a setback when the Assembly defeated his measure, sought by the city of Paramount, to crack down on swap-meet vendors who fail to pay sales taxes. The measure was criticized as costly and duplicative of existing law. After it was rejected by a decisive 54-11 margin, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) cracked: “The bill and the author are rejected.”

It was a rare setback for Dills, who said he has learned to become more pragmatic since he first served in the Assembly.

“I know you have to compromise. . . . I know that you sometimes have to hold your nose and vote for things,” he said.

Another reason Dills seldom loses a fight could be that he goes out of his way not to upset Republican colleagues, several of whom attended his dinner fund-raiser. Unlike most of his colleagues, Dills refuses to support fellow Democrats who challenge incumbent GOP lawmakers.

“I don’t want any of them giving money in my district against me, and I am not going to do it against them. It is not my business,” Dills said.

Even though no one has filed papers with the Fair Political Practices Commission to challenge Dills next year, the lawmaker said he is always poised to take on a well-financed opponent.

But even Republicans predict that political survivor Dills will easily win reelection. Said Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia): “I have a feeling that he’s going to be there as long as he wants.”