Legislator Works Religiously on New Life : Politics: Assemblyman Dennis Brown says he feels at peace after deciding to become a lay minister instead of seeking reelection. He already is putting lawmaking aside for more study of God’s laws.

It is Thursday morning and Assemblyman Dennis Brown is once again of the Legislature but not in it.

His desk is empty while his colleagues, milling around the ornate Assembly chamber, wrap up another week of public business by voting on a handful of bills before hastily deserting the Capitol for a weekend in their respective districts.

A few miles away, the Los Alamitos Republican sits quietly in a Bible class, jotting notes about the Holy Spirit as his burly teacher inveighs against the growing American indifference to homosexuality, fornication, idolatry, covetousness, strife, drunkenness, materialism, pornography, suggestive body language and dirty jokes.

Reminded during break that the same sins have been loosely used to describe the conduct of the Legislature, Brown smiles.

“Now you know why I want to get out,” he joked.

One of the Legislature’s most extreme conservatives, notorious for his habit of voting against almost everything, the six-term lawmaker has begun to turn his back on the business of the Capitol to start a new life as a born-again Christian and prospective lay minister.

The change, he says, began with a religious experience early last year and culminated in his surprise announcement March 5 that God had directed him not to run for reelection from a safely Republican district, which includes portions of Long Beach and coastal Orange County.

Brown also says that his decision to quit politics--a passion since high school--was influenced by a growing disillusionment with what he calls a “rotten” governmental system that falls short of representing the will of the people, and encourages the crass exchange of votes for campaign contributions and speaking fees.

There was also the little matter of his narrow escape from felony charges for his cameo role in the controversy over the forging of President Reagan’s signature on 440,000 campaign letters in 1986.

But now Brown, 41, says he feels at peace. He is intentionally distancing himself from the backslapping world of the Capitol, where once he helped direct conservative attacks on liberal legislators and government spending for social programs. He has quit his position on the powerful Assembly Ways and Means Committee and skips floor sessions so he can dedicate more time to religious classes at the Capital Christian Center, a large local evangelical church.

“You know, the Bible spells it out so perfectly, how the world will despise you, how you’ll be persecuted, how you will be laughed at,” he said. “Since I made my announcement three weeks ago . . . , I’ve noticed a difference in how people treat me. I haven’t been insulted or anything. People are a little bit more uneasy around me, a little standoffish.

“Some of my closest friends, I can kind of see that they’re not as interested in being as close personal friends as they once were.”

Some of his political enemies--such as Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson)--are as uncharitable as ever, however. They are still fuming over Brown’s 11-year record as one of the so-called “Cavemen,” a group of conservatives that prides itself on fighting government from within.

Floyd also questions the timing of Brown’s religious redirection. Could it be that Brown felt politically vulnerable, especially since the Huntington Beach oil spill highlighted his record of voting against environmental legislation? Or that conservative voters these days seem to be at odds with Brown’s anti-abortion position? “If Jesus was responsible for getting him out of the way, Jesus was not interested so much in him as He was looking out for the rest of us,” Floyd said.

It was near-religious fervor that delivered Brown, a stockbroker and former Los Angeles County chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, to the heavy doors of the Capitol in 1978. Proposition 13 had captured the angry mood of the electorate, and Brown rode that mood to victory in a Democratic district on his first try for public office. The district’s boundaries later were changed, increasing the number of registered Republicans.

“It was a stroke of luck,” Brown said. “If it hadn’t been for Prop. 13, I don’t think there is any doubt that I would not have won that race.”

His race was one of seven that threw out incumbent Democrats in favor of conservative Republicans. Two other 1978 Assembly victors were Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), a chum of Brown from Young Republican days at USC--and Ross Johnson (R-La Habra). Two years later, John Lewis--Brown’s best friend, former college roommate and top aide in Sacramento--was elected from another Assembly district in Orange County.

The group formed the nucleus of the conservative faction in the Assembly that, while not numerous enough to prevail, was powerful enough to block or scale down government spending. Brown himself concentrated on changes in the state tax code. “There were enough of us coming up here to feel that mandate, and we did have an impact during the early tenure,” Brown said.

Even when his more moderate conservative brethren would relent and vote for laws, Brown stood alone, pushing his “no” button on principle. A computer analysis of all Assembly votes since December, 1988, shows that Brown has voted no 32% of the time, making him the biggest naysayer in the lower chamber.

“I think one of the things I’m proudest of . . . is I kept my own personal integrity in voting on issues in a way that I thought was right.”

That a number of colleagues--Republican and Democrat--do not operate that way is just one of the reasons Brown says he has become disillusioned with the legislative system. Too many lawmakers, he believes, are basing their decisions on how a vote will anger or please campaign contributors.

“It is a rotten system, the campaign finance system,” he said. “There are a lot of pressures, and I haven’t been immune from them. The financing system of campaigns, the expensiveness of campaigns are real negatives on the way the Legislature operates.

“There are a number of legislators up here, there are some people who have reputations for being on the take, so to speak, just really letting contributions and honorariums influence them to the degree where it really does border on the illegal.”

Another element of Brown’s disillusionment is how the Legislature conducts reapportionment, the exercise every decade of redrawing district boundaries after the U.S. Census. Legislators are so intent on making sure they have “safe” districts by party affiliation, the net effect has been to create an Assembly that is way out of step with the general mood of the voters, Brown said.

Yet for all of the political science talk, Brown concedes it was more personal reasons that prompted him to leave the Legislature. His legislative schedule of four days in Sacramento and three days in Southern California has left him little time to cultivate a personal life at a time when most of his other friends are getting married. Brown says he is ready to end his bachelorhood, long a Sacramento subject of speculation about his life style, to start a family of his own.

And within the last two years, Brown has seen his closest colleagues become embroiled in legal controversies. Both Nolan and Assemblyman Frank Hill (R-Whittier) have become targets of the recent FBI undercover operation to expose corruption in the Legislature; the legislators have not been indicted.

Brown himself had a close call during Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s investigation into the forgery of President Reagan’s name on 1986 campaign literature sent out on behalf of Republican candidates, one of whom was Roger Fiola, a friend of Brown running against Floyd.

Testimony before a Sacramento grand jury in February, 1989, indicated the idea to use the unauthorized signature was made at a 1986 meeting that included Brown, Johnson, Nolan and Lewis--the quartet of Assembly Republicans responsible for developing strategy for campaigns. According to the testimony, Brown ordered a political consultant to rewrite one of the campaign hit pieces so that it accused Democrat Floyd of caving in “to the powerful underworld drug industry.”

The grand jury declined to indict Brown, Nolan or Johnson. However, it returned a felony forgery indictment against Lewis on Feb. 6, 1989. After a costly legal fight, Lewis convinced an appellate court to overturn the indictment and dismiss the charges.

Brown said last week that the turmoil over the investigation “impacted me a lot, probably subconsciously. The AG (attorney general) was after me awhile, and obviously that was distressing, but not nearly as distressing as what John had to go through. . . . “

On Valentine’s Day, 1989--eight days after the indictment was unsealed--Brown said he hit bottom. He went to his Capitol office, but was too depressed to work. He suddenly did not want to be near the Legislature or Sacramento, so he booked a flight home to Southern California, where he sat and read a couple of religious books he had put on his bookshelf, long forgotten.

“I really feel that was an act of God,” Brown said. “Those books were waiting for me. I read them over the next two or three days, and the following Friday, the 17th of February, I was on my knees in prayer, just asking for God’s guidance and (saying) I wanted to turn my life over to Christ.

“It was at that specific moment I felt an incredible release in my life, that God came into my being and allowed me to know Him in a very personal and real way,” he said.

Since then, Brown has been trying to conduct his life according to the Christian maxim of being “in the world but not of it.” He has shied away from going to bars after legislative sessions, one of the primary activities of legislators here.

Public records have shown that since his 1989 conversion, Brown has used his political campaign funds to donate at least $12,000 to the Lighthouse Christian Assembly of Seal Beach, $2,000 to the Assemblies of God, and $1,700 to the Capital Christian Center of Sacramento. In addition, he has taken two trips to New York on behalf of the Assemblies of God, an evangelical and Pentecostal denomination.

Brown said last week that he has also formed a nonprofit Vietnam Children’s Home, an organization that will collect money to care for orphans from Vietnam. He plans a trip to Thailand and Calcutta, India, in July to inspect Assemblies of God activities there.

Despite the religious agenda, Brown has found time for a few legislative pursuits, like a handful of bills he has introduced to change the tax law. One would change the assessment procedures on private railway cars, many of which are owned by wealthy individuals.

But there is no doubt that Brown, in a twist of the Christian maxim, is technically of the Legislature but not very much into it these days. It is clear that he is much happier attending Bible classes such as the one on Thursday than pushing the “no” button at his desk in the Assembly.

And does he feel guilty about cutting work to study the word of God?

“Not really,” he said.