Brown Defends Call on Behalf of Tarkanian : College Athletics: Assembly speaker says his recommendation to SDSU President Day that he hire the embattled coach to take over foundering basketball program wasn’t improper; others are critical.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown said Monday that he called San Diego State University President Thomas B. Day directly to “support the candidacy” of Jerry Tarkanian for the school’s next basketball coach.

The powerful politician, who by virtue of his position influences policy and spending for California universities, said the telephone call to Day was “not unlike other recommendations I’ve made” to help people get jobs.

Tarkanian “is just a man whom I’ve met, admired. Period,” Brown said during an impromptu news conference on the Assembly floor. “It’s not the first recommendation I’ve made, and it won’t be the last, I hope.”

But a number of California State University trustees said Monday that they consider it improper for high-ranking public officials--including themselves--to intervene in campus hiring decisions. Three specifically criticized the flamboyant Brown for trying to exert “undue influence” on SDSU. Brown (D-San Francisco) is an ex-officio trustee who rarely attends board meetings but is able to vote.

“I think it’s an intrusion, and it’s bad taste for Willie to use his position as speaker of the Assembly to push the employment of anyone at our CSU institutions,” said J. Gary Shansby, managing partner of a San Francisco investment firm and a CSU trustee for eight years.

Ralph Pesqueira, owner of the popular El Indio restaurant and the only CSU trustee from the San Diego area, added, “I think it was inappropriate.”

Pesqueira said he, too, had talked to Day about the possibility of hiring Tarkanian, but only after the SDSU president brought up the subject first in casual conversation.

“He just kind of asked me what I thought of the possibility of--Tarkanian, is it?--coming to the campus,” Pesqueira said. “I told him I’m not a basketball fan, so I’m not in the best position to tell him. I don’t follow the sports pages enough to tell about the positives or problems.”

State law does not prohibit Brown or any other high-ranking state official from personally lobbying agencies or institutions such as SDSU to hire friends, according to officials at both the Fair Political Practices Commission and the attorney general’s office in Sacramento.

A spokesman for the CSU system also said there are no rules barring trustees from discussing personnel matters with administrators.

Brown said Monday that it was strictly his idea--and not Tarkanian’s--to call Day on behalf of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas coach, who has been mentioned as a possible candidate to resuscitate the moribund SDSU basketball program. Day fired Jim Brandenburg on Feb. 11, and the Aztecs posted their worst season in school history.

“I saw or read someplace that San Diego State was considering it, and knowing how much press he generates . . . knowing how much respect I have for the kind of work he’s done with those young, basically black ghetto kids . . . I thought it appropriate to support his candidacy,” Brown said.

Although the phone call was the first time he ever has “recommended an employee” to Day, Brown said, it shouldn’t pose a problem or be interpreted as political pressure to hire Tarkanian.

“I’ve been doing it all my life,” Brown said about making job recommendations. “If there is an unspoken rule (against it), I’m doing the same thing everybody else does.”

Brown added that he was host to Tarkanian recently when the coach was honored by the Assembly. Brown also sponsored a 1990 joint legislative resolution calling on President Bush and Congress to guarantee due process rights for athletes and coaches under investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.

The resolution was inspired by Tarkanian’s bitter legal fight with the NCAA over recruiting violations at UNLV. He won an injunction against punishment for 39 infractions--10 of them allegedly committed by himself--but it was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. As a result, the school has been banned from the 1992 NCAA championship tournament.

A second investigation documenting 40 more violations is tied up in Nevada courts, and the trial begins this week. Tarkanian resigned in June but said last week that he wants to rescind the action.

Several CSU trustees on Monday said they believe it was improper for Brown to offer anything more than a simple letter of reference on Tarkanian’s behalf.

One trustee, who asked not to be identified, said the speaker’s unexpected phone call could be interpreted as “very intimidating.”

“Willie’s reputation for retribution is known wide and far,” the trustee said. “His expectation for people to bow to his wishes is well known. And his willingness to exact revenge has taken on almost historical proportions in this state.”

Trustee Shansby said: “I just think it is completely out of line. When you’re the speaker of the Assembly, you shouldn’t be going around the trustees and the chancellor and go directly to the president of a university and tell him who to hire.”

James H. Gray, chairman of Harbor Bank in Long Beach and a CSU trustee, said he doesn’t think Brown was out of line in offering unsolicited support for Tarkanian--as long as it wasn’t couched as an order from a powerful public official.

“I would not say, from what I’ve been told, that it was inappropriate,” said Gray, who is also a friend of Tarkanian from the coach’s days at Cal State Long Beach.

“Are you asking whether I would do it? Probably not.”