All Eyes Will Be on New Senate Leader

The state Senate will get a new leader today and nobody is quite sure what to expect.

The first day should be pretty routine. Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) will be nominated by the Democratic Caucus to become president pro-tem, succeeding Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys), whose 13-year reign is being severed by legislative term limits. Lockyer then will be elected by the full Senate. That much will be pro forma.

Predicting what may come later is like trying to forecast an earthquake, which is probably a fair analogy given the fault lines in Lockyer’s personality.

Lockyer’s volatile temper and bizarre behavior are the stuff of Capitol legend:

* He once tried to seduce a female reporter over lunch. Years later, as she was preparing to write about the incident in an article on sexism, Lockyer denied her assertions that he had been trying to swap information for sex. “I was just wanting to (make love to) you,” the senator told her in graphic language. She quoted him.

“I actually thought it wasn’t printable,” Lockyer recently told me. “It was just an honest, private-type answer.”

* Once while trying to solicit a campaign endorsement, he angrily said of his opponent: “I’ll tear his heart out and eat it.”

* Lockyer has a history of storming out of restaurants when he doesn’t like the service. Once he threw a wine glass against the wall.

* While chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee during the frenzied windup of a legislative session, he told Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles): “I resent your mindless blather. . . . I hope I am offensive enough to make you leave again and then we will get some work done.” She did leave, in tears.

“I was responding to what I thought was unfair criticism of the staff,” Lockyer told me. “It was a mistake, mostly because it was undiplomatic. I’ve apologized a thousand times.”

*

So how does somebody like this become leader of the California Senate?

To begin with, these and other tasteless incidents occurred mostly back in the mid-1980s. “Felonies wash out in seven years,” he says, referring to the statute of limitations. “How long do these things have to stick around?”

A turning point, Lockyer says, came when he “blurted without thinking” during a meeting in Roberti’s office. Roberti turned to him and said: “Bill, reform, reform ,” he recalls . “I said, all right, I’ll give it a try.”

Now, the word is that Lockyer has controlled his temper. “That’s what I claim,” he says.

“I’m supposed to have a temper. I guess I do some. . . . Frankly, there isn’t much to control. But to the extent that it’s there and (Senate) members express some concern, I make sure not to let anything happen. And, of course, the latest press game in town is who’s the one who can provoke Bill? It’s sort of like the real scalp to get . . . to show the old rather than the new Bill.”

Lockyer also has an “everybody does it” view of Capitol temper tantrums. “I just see it all the time around here,” he says. “It’s sort of like living in a submarine together. There aren’t enough showers and so there is stress.”

As for himself, Lockyer says “I have this sort of perverse theory. I hate pop psychology, but you probably know that I’m a molested kid. I think there was some anger. I don’t remember having this temper (before). . . . I think what happens to (molested) kids is you feel so let down by the people who are supposed to protect you that it generates anger toward authority.”

Lockyer says he was molested by a male baby-sitter when he was 10 or 11. He never said anything then, and repressed it for decades. But in 1989, he stood on the Senate floor and disclosed the sexual abuse while pushing a bill to assist prosecution of child molesters. The measure had met stiff resistance before Lockyer’s stunning speech, but then was quickly passed.

*

Lockyer, 52, a lifelong political junkie who had been a legislative aide before winning an Assembly seat 20 years ago, outlasted two other contenders to garner the votes for Senate leader. Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) decided to run for state insurance commissioner and Sen. Robert Presley (D-Riverside) opted for the State Board of Equalization.

Lockyer, who is usually charming and almost always candid, solicited votes over meals with each of the 39 other senators. “In a way, it’s like 39 seductions,” he says, and insists: “I didn’t make a single promise.”

Nobody questions Lockyer’s brain power or energy or commitment to society’s underdogs. He has championed feminist, anti-crime and political reform causes. He’s complex: a liberal, but not a knee-jerk, siding with the ACLU on the 1st Amendment while supporting the death penalty.

The Republican strategy is to sit back and see if he self-destructs.