Roberti’s Old School Approach

Holding political office is like holding down any other job in one respect. You apply for the work and if you’re hired, you do what the boss says. It’s that simple if you want to be a good employee and keep on drawing a paycheck.

Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) has always tried to be a good employee for the voters who hired him to represent their interests. The fact that he repeatedly has been sent back to the state Capitol since his first election in 1966 speaks for the job appraisal given by his boss, the local legislative district.

So when a group of business people, parents and politicians from Roberti’s new district in the San Fernando Valley asked him last summer to help them break away from the Gargantuan, crisis-plagued Los Angeles school system, he listened, made some inquiries and hopped to it.

It was that simple. Sometimes, even in politics, things are what they seem.

But since Roberti began leading the charge to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, the political underground has been abuzz with speculation about some thicker plot, a complex long-term strategy for ingratiating himself to the Valley and perpetuating his career.

This is so unlike Roberti, the talk goes. As a legislator based in Hollywood until his old district was abolished in reapportionment last year, he always had been a champion of inner-city schools. In fact, in the 1970s he had opposed hacking up the Los Angeles school district. And he had supported court-ordered busing to achieve racial integration, which the Valley bitterly fought.

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Adding fuel to the deeper motive theory is the fact that Roberti must start looking for a new job next year, no matter how well he performs for his boss. The seat he chose to run for last year--the one vacated when its former occupant, Alan Robbins, pleaded guilty to political corruption--will turn over again in November, 1994, because of term limitations.

But Roberti adamantly insists he has no intention of competing for some other Valley-based legislative office--Congress, Assembly, Board of Supervisors or City Council. Statewide office--particularly treasurer, controller, attorney general, secretary of state--is “a possibility” depending upon which incumbents do not run, he says. And “I’d be a very good judge,” the former attorney adds with a wide grin when asked about perhaps being appointed to the bench by President Clinton or a future Democratic governor.

Actually, acknowledges the 53-year-old lawmaker, his wife, June, is after him to get out of politics completely. “This is a perpetual discussion I’ve been having at home. . . . It’s like every week my wife and I discuss it. She’s on a, you know, ‘enough already.’ . . . I may be on another track. I enjoy holding public office. . . . She says no. “

June Roberti, like many political wives, would like her husband to adopt a more normal home life and also use his law degree to earn a better income.

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So why is Roberti fighting so pugnaciously for a Valley breakout from the school district, if his months as a Valley politician are numbered (22 to be exact)?

For starters, Roberti is a pugnacious fighter for any cause he takes up--whether it be banning assault weapons or opposing a prison near downtown Los Angeles. In some ways, he is a paradox: a pragmatist who can become a firebrand; quiet-spoken but also a passionate orator.

He showed the scrappy side in Los Angeles on Tuesday at an oft-testy hearing of the Senate Education Committee into the proposed school district breakup. Pounding his fist on the podium, jabbing his finger at colleagues, Roberti warned that unless the district is fractured into manageable pieces so parents have more influence, voters will approve private school vouchers--in effect taking tax money away from public education--”as fast as we can blink an eye.”

Emotions were even stronger among minority legislators, indicating that Roberti is facing one of the toughest legislative fights of his career. They see strong undercurrents of racism and classism in the breakup attempt and fear the Establishment’s abandonment of minority schools. “This is going to be hell,” vowed Sen. Dianne Watson, who represents parts of South-Central Los Angeles.

But from all indications, the proposed breakup is highly popular in the Valley and also other middle-class-to-affluent areas of the county.

“During my campaign,” Roberti says, “I made a point of telling the voters I was going to be receptive to their concerns and represent the San Fernando Valley. And after I was elected, an enormous number of parents contacted me and said this was the No. 1 issue on their minds.”

And so it is Roberti’s No. 1 issue. Simple as that.