GRANDMASTER OF COMPROMISE

IT WAS NEARING MIDNIGHT ON the eve of the last day of the legislative session, and Willie Brown was in his element.

After 10 months of on-again, off-again negotiations and days of around-the-clock bargaining, the biggest special interests in the Capitol were close to a deal to overhaul the state’s civil liability laws. The players were the California Trial Lawyers Assn.--traditional guardians of the right to sue--along with lobbyists for the insurance companies, manufacturers and doctors, who often end up on the losing end of costly court judgments. These parties had banged heads all day and into the night in an anteroom between the Assembly Speaker’s personal office and the ornate, 19th-Century chambers. Now the private meeting had moved two blocks down L Street to Frank Fats--downtown Sacramento’s landmark Chinese restaurant and watering hole. Yellow legal pads gave way to note-covered cocktail napkins as the leaders of the warring factions ate chicken wings and pea pods and struggled to put the finishing touches on the deal. It was a smoke-filled room right out of the pages of a cheap political novel.

But as the night wore on, there were still sticking points big enough to unravel the tangled bargain, and the longtime combatants needed a peacemaker. They found one in Speaker Brown, who shuttled between tables and booths and occasionally retreated into an upstairs meeting room to review proposed drafts and amendments with the key participants.

When the trial lawyers balked on a crucial point, Brown erupted. “Are you going to trust me?” he demanded of his allies. “Are you going to let me deal for you?”

They let him deal, and Brown helped produce a consensus for legislation that one consumer leader later called a “back-room raid on victims’ rights.” The new law made it harder for consumers to sue manufacturers over unsafe products--and harder for accident victims to obtain punitive damages from negligent corporations. In exchange, the lawyers got more generous contingency fees on medical-malpractice awards of more than $200,000. Brown described the Civil Liability Reform Act of 1987 as landmark legislation. Consumer groups, which were excluded from the negotiations, howled in protest.

“That was a back-room deal between lawyers and insurers and the medical association, which in my view had almost no meaningful outcomes for real people,” says state Sen. Patrick Johnston, a Stockton Democrat who moved to the Senate in January after 10 years in the Assembly. “But it was hailed as a real achievement,” he adds, “a peace treaty between powerhouse interest groups that was going to maintain the status quo.”

Peace treaties. Compromises. Big deals. Keeping people happy. This is also the stuff that motivates Brown to get up every morning and begin another day in his record-setting, 10-year-plus tenure as Speaker of the California Assembly. This is also what makes Brown as popular as ever among the lawmakers in the Legislature’s lower house.

But these same traits--his desire to build consensus among competing economic interests and his need to be liked by those with whom he serves--may have prevented Brown from making a major, lasting impact on California public policy. They certainly have done nothing to improve his standing with the state’s voters, who last year delivered a stunning verdict on the Legislature’s leadership by approving Proposition 140, which limited the terms of state lawmakers, sharply cut their operating budget and scrapped their generous pension program.

Perhaps the key reason for this perception is that Brown has had no political ambition other than to be, as he once put it, “Speaker for Life.” His constituency, then, has been the membership of the Assembly more than the people of California.

Brown says he learned from watching the mistakes of his Democratic predecessors--Jesse Unruh, Robert Moretti and Leo T. McCarthy. “All three of those individuals made it clear that they had an interest in becoming governor of this state,” Brown says, “and each of them had one other thing in common: They all became ex-Speakers fairly soon after they made that gubernatorial ambition known. I did not want the membership of this house to ever believe that I had anything in mind other than being their Speaker.”

An assemblyman since 1964, Brown first tried to become Speaker in 1974 but lost to McCarthy, a fellow San Franciscan. Six years later, after McCarthy was challenged and weakened by Los Angeles Assemblyman Howard Berman, Brown struck the biggest deal of his life. Promising to share his power, he persuaded 28 opposition Republicans to vote for him, and won the Speakership even though he was not the favorite of his own party.

Brown quickly began securing his prize. In 1981, he supervised the drawing of new district lines following the 1980 census. After the voters rejected the first draft in a ballot referendum, the lines were changed slightly and passed--with bipartisan support--just in time for Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. to sign them into law as he left office.

The new boundaries helped ensure that even as Democrats slipped from 53.2% of state voters in 1980 to 49.5% in 1991, Brown’s party maintained a comfortable margin of power in the Assembly. To take advantage of the Democratic-leaning districts, the Speaker helped pick the party’s candidates and their political managers. He reported raising nearly $20 million in campaign contributions during the decade. Time after time, Brown’s forces defeated the Republicans in the close races. Today, there are 46 Democrats in the Assembly and 31 Republicans, with three vacancies.

“It’s very frustrating,” says Bob Naylor, a former Assembly Republican floor leader. “He always seemed to have a little bit more resources, properly directed at the key time, than the Republicans were able to focus.”

But Brown is the leader of all 80 members of the Assembly. Never forgetting that he needed Republican support to win the job in 1980, Brown has always tried to keep enough GOP lawmakers happy to provide a cushion for crucial moments. So when former Encinitas Assemblywoman Sunny Mojonnier needed a lawyer for her son after he was arrested in a bizarre kidnaping case in 1985, Brown helped her choose one. And when the daughter of Republican Assemblywoman Cathie Wright of Simi Valley faced jail in 1988 after being ticketed 27 times, Brown called a Ventura County judge and asked for leniency.

Brown has used the taxpayers’ dollars to keep all his members, including the Republicans, comfortable. Under his tenure, the Assembly’s annual operating budget has increased four times as fast as the state’s population and now stands at almost $100 million--to the apparent displeasure of voters. Brown made sure that the Republicans got their share of the increased staff and perks. He also allowed GOP leaders to choose which of their members would sit on which committees.

This policy of placating the opposition paid off for Brown after five Democrats broke ranks in 1988 and challenged his leadership. The so-called Gang of Five could have unseated Brown if the 36 Republicans then in the Assembly had gone along. But, reluctant to turn Brown out in favor of an unknown, almost all the GOP lawmakers supported the man they love to vilify.

Still, some of Brown’s colleagues believe his desire to keep everyone comfortable can sometimes hinder him as a leader.

“He busts his ass trying to please everybody,” says Assemblyman John Vasconcellos, a Democrat from Santa Clara and a longtime friend of Brown. “That’s what gets him in trouble, always trying to be available to everybody, trying to please everybody. You can’t. People want contrary things, and he’s trying to figure out how to keep them all happy.”

Brown has tried to keep the Democratic Caucus large and strong. “That means placating a great variety of interests,” says Democratic Assemblyman Tom Hayden of Santa Monica, “letting the conservative Democrats do their thing, the pro-business Democrats do their thing, the pro-agriculture Democrats do their thing. It means letting me take a stand on my issues.”

Although Brown is often portrayed as an all-powerful ayatollah of the Assembly, his role is more complex than that. To be sure, Brown is capable of reversing a lopsided vote when he turns on the pressure. Last year, when the “Nickel-a-Drink” tax-increase initiative produced fewer than half of the 54 votes needed for passage, Brown told reporters: “There are a number of people who obviously need to be spoken to.” Three days later, the industry bill passed. (The voters later rejected the measure.)

From time to time--on issues as obscure as eyeglass regulation or as prominent as automobile insurance--he appears in a committee to lobby the members or works the floor of the Assembly in a furious effort to control the outcome of a vote.

But that kind of blunt exercise of power is more the exception than the rule. Unlike Unruh, who pioneered the powerful Speaker’s role in the 1960s and won the nickname “Big Daddy” for his heavy-handed use of authority, Brown prefers to use finesse whenever he can.

“It’s the stiletto versus the hammer,” says Dennis Carpenter, a lobbyist and former state senator who knew Unruh and has worked with Brown. Others have compared Brown’s role to “herding cats.”

Willie Brown, unlike Unruh, has toiled mainly under Republican governors, often supported by a united group of Assembly Republicans. Much of the time he has been on the defensive. “Only Willie is able to bring together these personalties, giant egos, and help create moments of opportunity,” says Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento). “That’s what leadership is all about in a situation like this. You can’t give orders. This is not the army. This is summer camp, and the counselor’s gone.”

Indeed, Brown seems to view his power as a finite resource, something that can be tapped only so many times before it runs dry. Rather than force through his solution, he more often tries to split the difference, so that all participants come away thinking they’ve been treated fairly--or with equal unfairness.

He facilitates deals by finding the middle ground, says Assemblyman Pat Nolan, a Glendale Republican and former GOP leader. “It’s brilliant, seeing him come up with what he calls ‘tweeners. His M.O. is to say, ‘Let’s set philosophy aside. Let’s do what we need to do to get an agreement. It doesn’t matter what the policy result is.’ ”

Some of these deals turn out better than others. A 1983 education package that Brown helped guide through the Legislature poured more money into schools to pay for a longer school day and year, tougher graduation requirements and higher pay for starting teachers. In 1989 he helped draft a ballot measure, which increased the gasoline tax for transportation construction and loosened the state’s constitutional spending limit. Brown also played important roles in an overhaul of the state community-college system and a measure to help the state prepare for, and clean up, oil spills.

On the other hand, Brown, who says that managing the state’s budget has been his proudest achievement, boasts that he “almost single-handedly” fashioned the agreement that broke a weeks-long deadlock and led to passage of the state spending plan last summer. But the budget ended up $14.3 billion out of balance, a prospect that many Republicans and some Democrats at the time warned was in the offing.

Similarly, Brown today still speaks fondly of having crafted a “reform” of the state Medi-Cal program, which was one of the big bipartisan agreements of 1982. Yet the Assembly’s own experts say now that the legislation has led to the denial of basic medical care for several hundred thousand of the state’s “working poor,” many of whom are minorities.

Brown’s stand on automobile insurance is another example of what his critics say is his desire to find the perfect compromise, even if the deal fails to solve the problem at hand. He has repeatedly helped block state Sen. Johnston’s efforts to enact no-fault insurance, which would limit lawsuits and is anathema to Brown’s allies in the trial-lawyer lobby.

“The idea of compromising on auto insurance is the wrong objective,” Johnston says. “The objective is that auto insurance has to be made less expensive and still protect people in auto accidents. It does no good to have a compromise that pleases the participants but falls short of the goal.”

But Brown, who has said he never falls in love with his legislation, believes in doing what is possible. “If you can’t take a whole loaf, you take part of a loaf,” he says. “If you can’t take part of a loaf, you take a crumb.”

The problem for Brown is that the voting public doesn’t always share this pragmatic view of the art of politics. When they tire of crumbs, they lash out at the Legislature and at Brown. According to the Los Angeles Times Poll, Brown’s popularity has fluctuated over the years but generally has dropped. In 1983, 33% of those surveyed had a favorable impression of the Speaker. In January, that percentage had dropped to 24%. And last month, his rating was a mere 18%.

Periodically, Brown has vowed to change his style. After the voters passed a measure slashing the Legislature’s operating budget in 1984, Brown promised for the first time to shape a package of major legislation that would bear his name--to provide, as he said, his “footnote in history.” He made the same promise in 1988 after overcoming the challenge to his leadership by the Gang of Five.

Although Brown succeeded in enacting a measure requiring all motorists to wear seat belts and helped develop the consensus for a gasoline-tax increase to build new roads, most of the legislation he trumpeted fell by the wayside. His bold promises to expand access to health insurance, make auto insurance cheaper and overhaul the state’s campaign finance laws never were fulfilled.

The stalemates on these and other issues--blamed widely on the unwillingness of lawmakers to endanger their flow of campaign money from big economic interests--helped fuel the voters’ disgust with the Legislature and prompted the passage of Proposition 140. Although Brown has begun cutting the Assembly’s budget and eliminating the pension program for new members, he and state Senate leaders have asked the California Supreme Court to throw the term limits out. If the measure stands, Brown and almost every other current member of the Assembly will be forced from office on Nov. 30, 1996.

In the meantime, Brown is out to change his image again, seeking to reshape it from wheeler-dealer to statesman. As the current legislative session got under way, he conducted a series of interviews in which he threatened to fight back rather than passively accept the common image of him as a legislator more interested in politics than policy. He distributed a list of accomplishments that included his mandatory seat-belt measure and another bill, dubbed the “pass to play,” that set stricter academic standards for student athletes.

“It has taken a personal toll on me,” Brown says of the continual criticism. “You get sick and tired of irresponsible, sometimes stupid people vilifying you. . . . I’m going to vent my annoyance in that regard rather than remain silent, and if nothing else, it will improve my mental health.”

Despite persistent speculation that Brown will soon quit out of frustration or boredom, he insists he will not be hounded from office. “I have no plans to do anything else except to remain a member of the Assembly for as long as I’m legally allowed to do so,” he says.

And he believes that history will treat him more kindly than have his contemporary critics.

“I believe that as the years unfold,” Brown says, “the 10 years of my managing the Speakership of the state of California will be acknowledged as one of those periods in which California really sparkled.”