Understanding What Makes Brown Tick

Probably the best insider advice ever provided a governor about how to approach Assembly Speaker Willie Brown came from his two lionized mentors, Jesse Unruh and Robert Moretti.

Republican George Deukmejian had just taken over as governor in 1983 and was facing a fiscal minefield, not as severe as Gov. Pete Wilson’s today, but plainly requiring political dexterity to navigate. And he was having big problems with--sound familiar?--Democratic Speaker Brown.

So the new governor’s chief of staff, Steven A. Merksamer, sought out ex-Speakers Unruh and Moretti for advice. “We were trying to figure out what makes this guy tick,” Merksamer recalled recently.

“Unruh and Moretti were very helpful. They said that Willie is like an onion. You peel off one layer and you think you’ve got that understood, then you peel off another layer and you think you’ve got that understood. . . . They said don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure him out. We’re his best friends and we can’t figure him out. But you can deal with him. “

How?

“By recognizing that he has political requirements,” Merksamer continued. “Then he will recognize that you have political requirements and you can work together in a way that allows both of you to achieve something. . . . He has to have his fingerprints on everything. He has to share in the credit.

“But if he perceives you’re out to hurt him--and his initial tendency is to assume that--then he can become the supreme warrior and about as bad an enemy as you can have because he’s so damn smart. If you can get past that, however, he can become a very effective ally and a tremendous force for good.”

One other thing about Brown, Merksamer said: “He’s one of the few legislators around who still believes that the most important thing a legislator has is his word. The problem is, you’ve got to listen very carefully to what Willie says. An ‘inclined to’ is not a commitment.”

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Although there were sporadic spats of partisanship and bullheadedness, Deukmejian and Brown wound up having a pretty good relationship. “I can’t give Willie enough credit” for helping to resolve that first-year fiscal crisis, Merksamer said.

Eight years later, Brown came to the rescue of another new governor in his first fiscal crisis. It was the Speaker who plotted the strategy and delivered the Assembly votes for Wilson’s unpopular tax increases and program cuts.

Brown had his fingerprints on that budget--and also soon afterward all over a legislative redistricting plan he thought the governor should at least negotiate. But Wilson refused and jockeyed redistricting into the state Supreme Court, which delivered a plan more favorable to Republicans. Brown--who still had not forgiven Wilson for his campaign endorsement of term limits--knew then that the governor not only was out to hurt him, but to kill his speakership. And Brown became the governor’s bad enemy .

“He lost face with the (Democratic) caucus,” one Brown associate says. “He felt betrayed,” says another. “The animosity toward Wilson is beyond rationality.”

Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno, a political adversary but social friend of Brown, said: “I suspect Willie’s long-term strategy is to make Wilson a one-term governor.” The governor shares that view. “If it’s true,” Wilson says, “then the public will continue to be disgusted.”

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So the Capitol now is wondering whether Wilson and Brown can patch things up and get some vital business done.

The first test will come at the economic summit Brown is planning for Los Angeles in mid-February. The Speaker justifiably wants his fingerprints all over that event; it was his idea, after all. And he privately was rankled when Wilson offered the services of himself and other legislative leaders as co-sponsors. The governor now has backed off and is settling for Brown’s invitation to be the opening speaker.

“If there’s any chance of putting aside their significant distrust, it centers around what happens with this summit and whether there are legislative recommendations both can support and push this year,” says one longtime Brown adviser. “They don’t even have to like each other.”

They don’t even have to understand each other.

Brown just has to decide whether he personally--for his legacy’s sake--is better off cutting deals this year with Wilson or waiting for a possible Democratic governor in 1995 as he begins his final Assembly term. And Wilson must decide whether he should be more conciliatory toward Brown or politically can afford continued stalemate in order to have his way.

The answers to both questions seem obviously the former.