Willie Brown’s Options Add Up to Senate

Speaker Willie Brown has pretty much decided what he wants to do after term limits force him to leave the Assembly in three years. He wants to move south a few yards and take over leadership of the Senate.

It would be historic: The first California legislator to serve as both Assembly Speaker and Senate president pro tem. The first African-American to lead the Senate. And a record for continuous legislative membership--40 years, if he stayed the allowable two terms. “I looked it up,” he says. “There’s nobody else who’s done 40 years.”

That would be impressive for any politician, but especially for a poor black kid from segregated East Texas, who cleaned spittoons for tips in a white man’s barbershop and caught the first bus out of town for San Francisco the day after high school graduation. Now 59, Brown is a long way--in culture and time--from little Mineola, Tex. It has been a very good life. But he still feels challenged and has more things he’d like to prove, unlike Michael Jordan.

The scenario is this: In 1996, Brown must leave the Assembly. He then would run for the Senate seat now held by veteran Milton Marks (D-San Francisco), who also faces a term limit that year. Marks would try to swap seats with Brown but likely would fail. Brown’s district is ready-made for a gay or lesbian candidate, and several have been waiting for the Speaker to retire.

For years, people have speculated about Brown running for mayor of San Francisco. But leading a big city is no fun these days and, anyway, Brown loves the Legislature. Also, a longtime friend, Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco), is seriously considering a 1995 mayoral race.

“I’m a natural legislator,” Brown says. “And one of the options readily available that wouldn’t require me to do anything differently would be to run for Milton’s seat and take over the leadership of the Senate. . . . It’s the most logical.

“I’m serious about this.”

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Not much, if anything, has been heard from Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) about Brown’s ambition since the Speaker leaked it last week into the column of an old pal, Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle. Lockyer has lined up the votes to take over the Senate leadership when President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys) steps aside early next year. And presumably he does not relish the prospect of Brown moving in on his territory.

But Brown says Lockyer need not fret. He wouldn’t challenge his leadership. He’d wait him out. Lockyer must exit anyway in 1998 because of term limits.

The Senate and Assembly always have been jealous rivals with markedly different power structures and atmospherics. Senate power has been more diffused and its operations less partisan. Senators might reject Brown’s dogmatic, flamboyant leadership.

Countering this thesis, however, is that the Senate is expected to become much more like the Assembly as lower house members--booted by term limits--beat a path into the upper chamber. By the time Brown gets there, it could be like a homecoming. Personal relationships coupled with deals determine leadership elections. And nobody is better at either than Brown.

“It could be that the graduate chapter of the Willie Brown speakership is in the Senate,” Brown muses.

“One more thing,” he adds. “To have visions and designs on the Senate leaves me strongly viable. . . . I’m no longer a lame duck.”

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Brown is telling me all this as he sits under a big banner that reads, “Willie L. Brown Jr. for Governor.”

He is at a convention of the Black American Political Assn. of California, which he co-founded 15 years ago. For months, his BAPAC fans--led by Alice Huffman, political director of the California Teachers Assn.--have been trying to recruit him to run for governor in 1994. And Brown has had a tough time saying no, although he is a realist and clearly will not run.

“I have not actively discouraged people,” he says, “because dreams are very, very important to people who have been on the outside.”

He also enjoys the speculation.

Brown has been on a strenuous speaking tour, one fit for a statewide candidate. “Don’t believe that--not at all,” he asserts.

The Democratic leader says his aim has been to explain the Legislature’s 1993 package of economic recovery bills and to make sure the Assembly gets its proper credit. “All of a sudden everybody wants me,” he says, “and I made all these dumb commitments. I’m an oddity. I know that.

“I’m so damned tired. I’m running all over the place. People are giving me gifts and hats and little boxes. Hey, you’d think I was the President. Ha ha ha.”

Maybe a future president pro tem.