CAPITOL JOURNAL : Alquist Serves as Shepherd of Liberal Flock

Sen. Alfred E. Alquist is in his glory.

The Democratic chairman of a six-member panel of legislators that must deal with the state’s $14.4-billion deficit is clearly in control. Banging his gavel and quickly moving from one agenda item to another, he is showing impatience at any debate that lasts longer than a couple of minutes, particularly if the views are those of a Republican.

At 82, Alquist is the state’s oldest legislator and, having represented San Jose for two terms in the Assembly and six in the Senate, is one of the Legislature’s most senior members. He moves the two-house committee of veteran lawmakers through its paces with the ease and assurance of someone who spent, as he did, decades moving trains through the nation’s railroad yards.

Flinty, opinionated, stubborn, and, most of all, decidedly liberal, Alquist is one of the Legislature’s true believers. His latest cause is pressing for an income tax increase on the wealthy to head off budget cuts to public schools.

Even after more than a decade of presiding over legislative budget panels, Alquist wears his heart on his sleeve, managing to win the respect of GOP lawmakers who must butt heads with him.

“Al is amazing,” said Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno after a long negotiating session last week. “Most of us burn out after a few years. You can only take so much of this agony. But Al is always there. In fact, he seems delighted to be doing it.”

Alquist is considered more a yardmaster--keeping major spending bills on track and maneuvering them through the often treacherous switches--than a member of the inner circle that works out the deals that bring Republicans and Democrats together.

Basically, he is too stubborn to be a good negotiator, too set in his single-minded determination to save health, welfare, school and other programs serving low income persons.

According to Maddy and others, what has kept Alquist in the driver’s seat so long is that he does reach a point where he is willing to bend to the wishes of Democratic Senate leaders once a deal is struck. “He can produce the votes for the budget, whether he likes it or dislikes it. He never denies you the vote needed to bring a deal together,” Maddy said.

As he conducts his budget business, Alquist seems truly pained to impose fees on community college students, reduce financial aid to welfare recipients or cut off health care to the poor. You can witness it in his bitter holdouts that have dragged budget fights into the late summer in recent years.

At times, as he endures speeches by Republican lawmakers who are as adamantly opposed to tax increases as he is committed to saving social programs, Alquist’s lips turn downward and his face seems to sag in sorrow. But the tonic of good liberal rhetoric just as quickly can cause him to break out in a grin.

White-haired, and partial to metal-frame glasses and suspenders that are a reminder of his railroad days, Alquist frets constantly that the Legislature he loves and liberal programs that he has spent a political lifetime supporting may be losing ground to conservatives.

“Unfortunately, I’m afraid the conservatives are coming out ahead here in recent years,” said Alquist, who speaks venomously of tightfisted budget policies of California’s last three governors--Republicans Ronald Reagan and George Deukmejian and Democrat Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. “We haven’t had a real governor since Pat Brown,” he said.

Alquist refuses even to consider some proposals put forward by conservatives, such as one that would give parents a voucher that they could use to send their children to public or private schools.

“It would have been unthinkable for any legislator to make such a proposal a few years ago. It would destroy our public schools,” Alquist said. Then, expressing the kind of liberal dogma that drives Republicans crazy, Alquist said: “The only problem with our schools is we don’t give them enough money.”

Alquist delivered another characteristic comment when budget negotiators took up Republican Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposal to cut welfare benefits 8.8%. Among other things, Wilson complains that California’s welfare benefits are the second-highest in the nation, behind only Alaska, and well ahead of other industrialized states, such as Illinois and New York. Just as the debate on Wilson’s proposal was warming up, Alquist shut it off and left Republicans stunned when he said: “I’m proud that California is No. 2.”

Alquist worked riverboats on the Ohio and Mississippi during the Depression, trained Navy fliers in World War II, worked in the unsuccessful presidential primary campaign of Estes Kefauver in 1956, and finally found a home in the California Legislature in 1963.

But he spent most of his pre-political years working for the railroads, as his father had, starting as a 12-year-old water boy in 1920.

“My father came from Sweden with a tag around his neck,” Alquist said. “He couldn’t speak a word of English. The railroad guaranteed them a job and paid their passage over here. They had to agree to work for them long enough to pay for their passage. Well, my father ended up working for them practically all his life.”

Alquist, the oldest of eight children, worked in railroad yards in Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Florida and Southern California before winding up as yardmaster for Southern Pacific in San Jose.

He married in 1934, and it lasted until his wife, Mai, died in 1989.

For his first three years in the Legislature, Alquist commuted from San Jose to Sacramento, fitting a full-time yardmaster’s schedule into his nights and weekends while tending to his legislative duties. He retired from the railroad in 1966 and became a full-time lawmaker.

Since 1980, Alquist has carved a role for himself as the Senate’s chief budget writer. He chairs the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, one of the Legislature’s two budget committees. The other is chaired by a lawmaker who is just as liberal, and who also is from the San Jose area, Assemblyman John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara). While Vasconcellos has a high profile--among other things, he is a leader of the self-esteem movement, lampooned in the comic strip “Doonesbury”--Alquist is little-known to the average Californian.

One of the few who has seniority on Alquist, Sen. Nicholas C. Petris (D-Oakland), calls his colleague the “shepherd” of the liberal flock.

Petris said most major issues, such as tax questions and levels of financial aid for public schools, are decided on a party basis, rather than by one or two individuals. He said Alquist helps shape the agenda by his unrelenting support for basic Democratic Party issues, making “eloquent statements” and reinforcing long-held beliefs.

“We get battered around here on a lot of issues. Some of the arguments you hear sound logical, persuasive, and the sheep sometimes tend to stray. Sometimes it is very tempting to give in, say ‘to hell with it.’ But Al is a good shepherd. He blows that whistle and says, ‘Hey, c’mon back here. You’re going into the wrong territory.’ ”

Now in his 11th year heading budget negotiations for Senate Democrats, Alquist said he does not plan to let go of the whistle. “I still enjoy it. I still think I am pretty good at it,” he said.