Latest Rage in State Capitol Is O.C.-Bashing

In your face, Orange County. Increasingly frustrated legislators from around the state are saying just that to their ideologically intractable colleagues from California’s bastion of suburban Republicanism.

The message reverberates in private interviews and public debate. And it was painfully clear last week when the Assembly roughed up a series of bills dealing with one of the county’s pet projects: toll roads.

Lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled lower house seized on the bills as a way to temporarily humble the Orange County delegation, which they accuse of being legislative obstructionists and unrelenting Scrooges when it comes to the poor and needy.

Still raw over the budget battle and irked that privately financed roads were approved in the first place, Democrats used parliamentary procedure to hold up the toll-road bills and deliver a tongue-lashing to the peers they often deride as “cavemen.”

“I think there’s some Orange County-bashing going on, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it,” Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Carson) declared after the floor fight over the bills, which come up for another vote today.

“The silk-stocking guys are going to be taking their lumps because, quite frankly, a lot of people are recognizing that people like me, areas like mine, we’re getting screwed over,” he said. “The more misery they endure, far as I see it, is just retribution for their activities in voting everything down that there is.”

Such venom against Orange County isn’t new, says Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), whose derogatory remarks about homosexuals and war against liberal Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) make him one of the most infamous of the local delegation.

Ferguson chalks up the hard feelings to old-fashioned partisan politics.

“I think there’s always that residue of feeling among the majority party that the Republicans are rooted in Orange County, and I think they would rather not have anything go to Orange County,” he said. “But, at the same time, they have to have Republicans on their biggest and most important votes. . . .

“What they would like to do is harm us, but then on second thought, they shouldn’t do it. After having their say, making their points and voting against us, they immediately put up their green lights and let the bills go out.”

Gentility in the 40-member Senate, where more moderate county representatives like Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) and Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) work, generally prevents such open skirmishes and regionalism. There, conservative senators are just as likely to hail from Rohnert Park and Fresno as from Orange County.

But in the more raucous 80-member Assembly, the relationship between Orange County and the rest of the state is more precarious.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) can only lay claim to 45 Democrats. When he is able to hold his independently minded scouts together, the number is more than the simple majority of 41 needed to pass most bills. That number is also more than the simple majority Brown needs to retain his hold on the speakership, which appoints committee chairmen and runs floor sessions.

However, it falls short when the chamber needs a two-thirds vote to pass emergency measures, tax increases and the budget. The task for the Democrats is to woo enough Republicans to tally 54 votes on those crucial measures.

Thus, the two-thirds rule is a bottleneck to Democrats but an occasional opportunity of power for Assembly Republicans. And it sets the stage for a never-ending political dance that inevitably includes the archconservative gavotte of the Orange County delegation.

Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) is leader of the 33 Republicans in the lower house, responsible for rallying his troops and representing their viewpoint in negotiations with legislative leaders and Gov. George Deukmejian. He is also involved with running Republican legislative campaigns outside the Capitol, hoping to either hold onto or increase conservative seats in the Assembly numbers game.

For three years, the mastermind behind those Republican legislative campaigns was Assemblyman John R. Lewis (R-Orange). Before sitting out this year, Lewis matched wits against Willie Brown’s operatives in a series of hardball political campaigns that earned him the universal enmity of Democrats.

Also sticking in the Democrats’ craw is Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), who squeaked out a victory in the only Democratic Assembly district in the county. Democrats are ever mindful of the controversy surrounding Pringle’s victory--charges that he and the Orange County Republican Party intimidated Latino voters by posting uniformed security guards at Democratic polling places in Santa Ana. Last year, some of the defendants in the lawsuit settled with the Latino plaintiffs for about $480,000.

Inside the Capitol, Orange County Republicans have proven just as nettlesome. Bent on reducing the size of government, people like Ferguson, Dennis Brown (R-Los Alamitos) and Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) are eager to hit the red “no” button for existing or increased programs and spending. Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) has angered some Democratic leaders with her stubborn campaign to ban gill nets off Southern California shores, a proposal she managed to get on the November ballot. Mild-mannered Robert C. Frazee (R-Carlsbad), whose district includes San Clemente, is on the outs because he decided to take a vacation in July when Speaker Brown was counting on him to help break the budget deadlock, according to capital insiders.

Orange County has come to symbolize ardent right-wing enthusiasm that acts as a centrifugal force, pulling the Republican caucus to the right on such issues as abortion and spending cuts.

Floyd is more pointed in his description of the Orange County officials.

“They’re all Republicans, aren’t they? And they’re all Neanderthals,” he said.

Orange County legislators were sympathetic to the kind of budget cuts this year that created the summer’s fiscal crisis and resulted in more than $750 million being axed by Gov. Deukmejian from social programs.

Their part in the budget drama, with leader Johnson serving as the public point man for Assembly Republicans, has sparked widespread muttering in the capital about the tyranny of the two-thirds voting rule.

On Thursday, the Democrats returned the favor when they attacked a trio of Orange County toll-road bills up for floor approval.

The measures, requested by the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, were presented as inconsequential measures that would help reduce the costs in selling the bonds.

One would have allowed all 15 Orange County cities in the toll-road corridors to hold a consolidated public hearing before raising tolls or developer fees. Republicans requested a two-thirds vote so that the bill could pass as an emergency measure and go into effect immediately after Deukmejian signed it.

A second bill would have permitted the transportation corridor agencies to use the tolls on one of the three private roadways to help pay for construction on any of the others.

Assemblyman Rusty Areias (D-Los Banos) led Northern California Democrats in attacking the measures. He said that despite promises that developers and motorists would fund Orange County toll-road construction, the county is in line to receive $35 million in state highway funds--money set aside to help build 15 miles of the toll roads. The county is also asking for another $11 million, a California Department of Transportation spokeswoman said last week.

During the Assembly debate, Areias called the toll-road bills a “sinking Titanic.” He was particularly critical of the bill that would allow consolidated hearings.

“I think this bill is part of a registration drive for Republicans because when it passes and developer fees are raised without a check by the public, no Democrat’s going to be able to afford Orange County,” Areias said.

However, Republican leader Johnson drew attention to the fact that Northern California structures such as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco charge tolls.

“We’ll volunteer . . . to elevate the roadways in Orange County, run a garden hose under them and call them a bridge,” he said. “That way, all you Northern California hypocrites can be satisfied.”

Areias, a longtime foe of toll roads, accused Orange County of its own brand of hypocrisy.

“In effect, what these Republicans are doing is asking for taxation without representation,” he said. “What it smacks of to me is it’s OK as long as it is special-interest developers in Orange County building projects in Orange County. . . . That’s contrary to what we hear all the time from these folks.”

Sen. Seymour, who lobbied on the Assembly floor for the measures Thursday, said afterward that he heard other gripes about Orange County: Why have its residents refused to enact a 1-cent county sales tax for transportation? Why did they vote in June against Proposition 111, the ballot measure that passed statewide and added a 5-cent gasoline sales tax to help pay for transportation projects?

“Some of the members said: ‘Orange County hasn’t passed a sales tax, and they didn’t vote for Proposition 111 either. Therefore, I don’t like Orange County, and I’m going to vote against this because Orange County wants to do it this way,’ ” he said.

Seymour said he approached Brown during the floor debate and asked why the bills were being hamstrung. He said the Speaker looked right at him and said, “We’re going to kill those damn bills.”

In the end, the Assembly Democrats refused to give their Republican brethren the two-thirds vote needed to pass the consolidated-hearing measure as an emergency bill. It is likely to pass today but only as a regular measure that goes into effect next year--a wait that toll-road officials had clearly wanted to avoid.

The other two measures actually passed Thursday but were pulled back and stalled at the last minute when Areias asked for reconsideration today.

Seymour and Frazee said Areias used the procedural tactic at Brown’s urging.

Brown’s office would not comment Friday on the toll-road bills. But Floyd said Orange County would eventually get its bills--after getting a message.

“The governor will sign it all, but some of us are just damned sick and tired of . . . Orange County legislators with their . . . attitude towards the rest of the world,” he said. “They are part of the world, and they’ve got to recognize it.”