Wilson-Brown Political War Is Personal, Too

Nobody likes to kick back after hours more than Assembly Speaker Willie Brown--to dine with friends, have some laughs, maybe even do a little politics over a glass of good Cabernet.

So the Capitol was dumbfounded in January when Brown snubbed Gov. Pete Wilson and refused to attend an elegant dinner that the governor hosted for legislators after his annual State of the State address.

“I certainly wouldn’t want to use whatever little free time I might have to be with him,” Brown recently said of Wilson, acknowledging for the first time to a reporter that his no-show, indeed, had been calculated. “I’ll do public business with him. I’ll do meetings. But I don’t have to socialize . . . . How can I be happy using my free time looking at him?”

That rare rebuff to a governor by a Speaker more than two months ago was a harbinger of most everything that has happened ever since between the two most powerful politicians in California government. “Willie was sending Pete a message and he picked up on it,” noted a Capitol insider.

“Things aren’t pretty. It’s absolutely vitriolic behind the scenes in terms of the antagonism behind these two guys. There’s a war going on.”

While Brown and Wilson are natural adversaries--one is a Democrat, the other a Republican--the bad blood goes far beyond normal party partisanship.

Most important, it threatens to poison negotiations over critical legislation, including a solution to the latest state revenue deficit, now estimated at around $6 billion. Hardly anyone sees any hope this year of resolving such lingering problems as automobile, health and workers’ compensation insurance.

Already, Brown has played a major role in blocking Wilson’s proposals for forestry protection and a new office of child development and education. Even the minor confirmation of an actuarial firm for the state pension system has been stymied. In each case, the Speaker’s stated reasons involve differences in philosophy or approaches to government. But it is clear that the disputes also are personal.

The verbal volleys have been heavy. The Speaker has compared the governor’s fiscal policies to Herbert Hoover’s and his welfare thinking to David Duke’s. Wilson has belittled Brown as “the darling of San Francisco cafe society,” and devoted one entire speech to denouncing him as a spiteful obstructionist.

“Nothing’s getting done” is the frequent complaint of legislative staffers and lobbyists.

After intense haggling, the Legislature and governor finally agreed last week to place on the June ballot construction bond issues of $1.9 billion for schools and $900 million for colleges. It was the Capitol’s first significant achievement of the year. But still in limbo are additional bond proposals totaling $2.4 billion, all part of a once-heralded package of economic stimuli.

This ineffectiveness is not all the fault of the Brown-Wilson feud, of course. The Capitol is afflicted with acute election psychosis, aggravated by redistricting and term limits. Meanwhile, Assembly Republicans seem rudderless and headed in every direction again.

But the Brown-Wilson conflict is the first thing most people mention when they lament the Capitol’s doldrums.

From Wilson’s perspective, it started as nothing personal--just politics. The governor simply is an enemy of the liberal philosophy represented by Brown and the Assembly Democratic majority.

So he has gone after them by endorsing Proposition 140 term limits, by steering reapportionment into the state Supreme Court where Republicans got a better shake, by overseeing election campaigns aimed at winning GOP control of the Assembly, and by sponsoring a welfare initiative with a separate feature giving him more budgeting power.

In all of these efforts, the governor’s principal, symbolic target has been the flamboyant and controversial Speaker.

Brown believes he has gotten the back of Wilson’s hand. He was the governor’s best friend in the Assembly last year, delivering votes for his unpopular budget package. The thanks he got, the Speaker says, was the ungrateful governor’s bad-faith negotiating on reapportionment, refusal to help ease the pain of Proposition 140 staff cuts, the “power grab” ballot initiative and personal attacks.

The veteran of 28 years in the Legislature--11 of them as Speaker--now sees his beloved political world starting to collapse under Proposition 140 and redistricting. “Members are cutting each other up because they’ve been forced to run against each other,” he said. “They’re all looking for jobs.”

For a while, it even seemed that Brown himself might face a tough reelection fight because of redistricting. And that, the Speaker said, is why he boycotted Wilson’s dinner--”I had nothing to celebrate.”

What about his future beyond term limits? “Who knows?” Brown asked, the sparkle returning to his face. “I’m thoroughly convinced that circumstances will always take care of Willie. . . . There are very few people who have had the kind of career I’ve had.”