Roberti Recall Emerging as Campaign of Paradoxes : Election: The longtime lawmaker is fighting for his political life at a time when he had planned to leave it.

After 27 years in the Legislature, 13 years as head of the Senate and some 25 occasions as acting governor, state Sen. David A. Roberti--prodded by his wife, June--had finally decided to bow out of politics.

Hadn’t the people cast their votes against career politicians anyway, with term limits? And hadn’t running for office changed a great deal since 1966, when civic-minded volunteers and $3.50-a-plate spaghetti fund-raisers first vaulted Roberti into the Capitol?

And so, late last year, the Van Nuys Democrat had reached the decision to forgo running for higher office when his term expired in December. For the first time in practically three decades, Roberti was going to lead a normal life. Go home at night to his family, dabble in historical research and maybe get a job with a bigger paycheck.

Then something happened that made him so angry it changed his mind. A coalition including firearms rights advocates, upset over his assault weapon control legislation, got a recall election set against him for April 12.

“I think they were stupid because I actually had him convinced to look for something else . . . to go into private life, get out of public life,” June Roberti, her husband’s closest adviser, said in a recent interview. “But the recall changed everything. We’re in it now to the end.”

As his foes issued their “throw-the-bum-out” cry, Roberti upped the ante and tossed in a bid for the state treasurer’s office, declaring that he will not be intimidated into retiring from politics.

Thus, the first recall election of a state official since 1914 may be remembered as something of an oddity, based on a series of paradoxes: a man fighting for his political life at a time when the exit light had beckoned; an election-turned-referendum on an assault weapon ban that falls short of perfection; a slick anti-recall campaign that skirts the issue of whether the senator has done a good job.

Friends in the Capitol say it is typical of Roberti, a naturally introverted man, to step out of his shell when challenged to protect his legacy. They say he desperately wants to avoid ending his long career as the victim of a recall effort.

“You can’t turn your back on these people,” Roberti said of the opponents he openly calls “cuckoos” or “nut cases” for the intensity of their Second Amendment rights views. “Otherwise, you turn your back on a career of 27 years, you turn your back on your life.”

But recall proponents are quick to point out that 46,000 registered voters who signed their petitions apparently agree that Roberti has served too long in the Legislature.

“No one has questioned Mr. Roberti’s intelligence,” said Kevin Washburn, manager of the recall campaign. “What we are saying is he presided over the Senate at a time of the worst corruption of the democratic system in California history. And the people of this district are entitled to their democratic rights to recall him.”

By now, the senator’s strategy is apparent: deny that this is about Roberti the officeholder, and define the election as retaliation for his legislation to ban assault weapons.

While that tells part of the story, Roberti’s own rhetoric shrinks away from his record or what he stands for (“You don’t have to like Senator David Roberti . . . “ says one campaign brochure urging a vote against the recall.)

“I really don’t view it as an election about me,” Roberti said in an interview. “If David Roberti were somebody else who had been able to do this (pass gun control laws), they’d be on their case.”

Regardless of the underlying issues, a simple question will appear, in less than two weeks, on the ballot: “Should David Roberti be recalled (removed) from the office of State Senator?”

To answer that question, voters will have to determine just who is this man who burst onto the San Fernando Valley political scene in 1992, renting a Van Nuys duplex to set up residency after a quarter-century of representing Hollywood?

Capitol observers sum up Roberti, 54, as an adroit politician, one who shrewdly negotiates trade-offs--if need be--to further his agenda. And his sharp survival skills enable him to hone in on defining issues in the district, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District breakup movement in the Valley, which he championed.

He has a track record of successful fund raising, collecting hefty donations over the years from labor unions, law enforcement groups, the California Teachers Assn., applicant attorneys, trial lawyers and large corporations such as Arco and Chevron.

His ideology, he says, revolves around his belief that government has a responsibility to help people so they can eventually help themselves.

“I guess I gravitate toward the have-nots, the people who need somebody to fight for them,” Roberti said, noting, however, that, “I think we make an error if we patronize anybody who thinks they are always right because of their condition, rather than the justice of their cause.”

Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who succeeded Roberti in January as leader of the upper house, describes his predecessor as adept at forging the kinds of compromises that keep the wheels of state government churning.

When it comes to the recall, “People tend to focus on guns,” Lockyer said, “but I tend to see him in a different way. If there’s an overarching philosophy, it’s his sympathy for the underdog.”

Republicans in the Senate view the Roberti legacy in a more harsh light.

“He strikes me as having been a typical liberal Democratic legislative leader,” said Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Upland). “He has blocked legislation that would have helped California’s job situation over the years--in tort law, environmental law, business regulation and taxation.”

Leonard described Roberti as a master manipulator when it came to influencing whether a bill would pass or fail. “Because of David Roberti’s personality and dominance . . . he would stack committees to his interest and then guide particular bills to those committees,” he said. But, he added, “I certainly respect his legislative skills.”

But if Roberti has a reputation among Republicans as a die-hard liberal, one notable departure from that stereotype is his anti-abortion rights position, stemming from his Catholic upbringing.

These days, the short and stout Roberti attends a lot of news conferences, often posing with the AR 15s and Colt Sporters that his gun control legislation targets. The image belies his reputation as a soft touch for animals, one of his most passionate issues.

He is no less than a hero to animal rights activists such as “Police Story” actor Earl Holliman, who says of Roberti, “He really cares. He’s a very sensitive man.” He is similarly praised by stage actress Gretchen Wyler, a friend who said she has seen him grow teary-eyed over the loss of a pet cat.

Roberti’s staff hands out a laundry list of his accomplishments that include not only animal rights legislation but new laws to aid low-income tenants, increase criminal penalties for sexual abusers of children, restrict landfill disposal of hazardous waste and fund urban parks, AIDS and latchkey children’s programs.

He is also pushing state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to use the authority given him by the 1989 Assault Weapons Control Act to ban so-called copycat firearms. Gun manufacturers are getting around Roberti’s five-year-old law by making identical weapons under different names from those identified by the ban.

Years ago, military weapons were also at the heart of Roberti’s issues when he first ran for Assembly in 1966, championing an anti-Vietnam War platform while walking precincts with his then-fiancee, June.

The couple met at the Young Democratic Club in Hollywood after Roberti’s union-label family abandoned membership in the GOP because, he said, “the Republican Party was no longer a home for working people.”

One of two sons of a tailor who sewed costumes for the movies, Roberti figures he was drawn to politics because current events were always a topic of conversation in his parents’ home.

Though his mother, Elvira, saw to it that the boys took voice, piano and tap-dancing lessons, Hollywood was never a calling for Roberti or his older brother--both of whom grew up to become lawyers.

A bigger influence on Roberti’s young life was his Italian heritage, which he notes was a target of prejudice and scorn during the World War II era. In fact, when Roberti was born a 13-pound baby, his birth certificate had listed his parents’ name as “Roberts.”

“He’s very, very Italian,” said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Farrell, a former high school classmate. “He’s very proud of it, but in growing up, I know he felt some discrimination because of it.”

Farrell’s recollection of early Roberti campaign events is of low-budget, warm, family-style atmospheres in which Emil (Papa) Roberti strummed the mandolin and his wife cooked stew or spaghetti for a house full of volunteers.

Today, Roberti’s ability to raise huge amounts of campaign funds has reached legendary proportions, although the money flow has dried up some since he gave up his Senate leadership post, a cash cow in California politics.

Roberti spent more than $2 million to win the 20th Senate District in a 1992 special election, garnering 43% of the vote. He estimates that he will have to spend $750,000 to defeat the recall movement, led by activists with far less cash on hand.

It was money that ended up corrupting the three lieutenants Roberti placed in positions of power in the Senate--former Sens. Alan Robbins, Joseph Montoya and Paul Carpenter, all of whom were convicted of using their offices to extort cash from people seeking legislative favors.

By association, this has reflected poorly on Roberti and has emerged as a hot theme in the recall debate.

Says Washburn, “We’re not trying to prosecute Mr. Roberti. We’re saying there is political accountability. It happened on his watch, and either he knew what was going on and failed to stop it, or he didn’t know what was going on and he was incompetent.”

Roberti says he was unaware of his colleagues’ criminal activities. “The best thing I can say is, Alan Robbins represented the 20th District for 18 years, and there was never a recall against him. I don’t have to get into Alan’s problems, except to say they were multiple--and nobody, but nobody, has accused me of any wrongdoing.”

That it is he, not Robbins, who ended up on the receiving end of a vigorous recall effort is an irony that leaves Roberti stinging.

“I’m a human being. And human beings, they feel sorry for themselves sometimes,” Roberti said. “Why should I have to go through this?”

Many of Roberti’s fellow lawmakers, unnerved by the mere thought of a recall, are circling the wagons and refusing to criticize the senator in his moment of vulnerability.

Some observe that the triple duties of performing legislative work, running a treasurer’s campaign and attempting to defeat the recall appear to be taking a toll.

“My sense of it is that he has moments of both depression and determination,” Lockyer said. “There’s times when he feels, ‘Why me? This is unfair.’ And other times when he is determined to prove that these cranks can’t destroy him. I see him both ways--probably depending on whether it’s the second hour of the day, or the 15th hour.”

June Roberti acknowledges that her husband gets physically tired. But, she says, “I think he has the fighting spirit more than he has the low spirit.

“Maybe he feels sorry for himself a little bit, but he doesn’t get away with that at home.”

Home is a spacious, two-story Tudor-style house in Los Feliz, where Roberti’s father, now 90, lives in the care of his daughter-in-law.

His opponents charge Roberti is a carpetbagger, and the senator does not try to hide the fact that he doesn’t reside in the California bungalow-style duplex the Robertis rent on Hamlin Street in Van Nuys.

June Roberti says she stayed there for a short while after her husband won the Valley Senate seat, but grew anxious because of threatening notices that she said were left at the front door by people she assumes were firearms rights activists.

Roberti said he lives in Los Feliz to be with his father, whom he does not want to move at his advanced age. He says he uses the Hamlin Street house as an office, a place to put up his feet while getting some work done and unwinding from the stresses of public life.

There is a theory circulating among Roberti’s supporters that, even if he loses his seat, he’ll benefit in the treasurer’s race from the higher visibility brought on by battling the National Rifle Assn., one of the groups supporting the recall.

“I went to Catholic school. Martyrdom was always the highest calling,” Roberti said. “But I never aspired to it. I always thought there were less drastic ways to achieve an objective.”

Meanwhile, critics label Roberti an opportunist for running a crossover campaign that suggests his authorship of assault weapon laws would boost his ability as state treasurer.

A Roberti-for-treasurer campaign sign, for example, sports a fire-engine red bull’s-eye for the “o” in his name, underlined with the words “The Man Who Banned Assault Weapons.”

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) says of Roberti, “If he survives the recall, he will be known as the guy who fought the NRA and automatic weapons. But gun control is not something the state treasurer can do something about.”

If he loses both election bids, Roberti said, he may well become a “personality” in the growing national movement to limit assault weapon distribution.

But he does not sound crushed at the thought of someday being on the outside looking in:

“What I love about politics is what will happen when it’s all over. I’ll be David Roberti, private citizen. And I think I will be able to look back and say, hey, ‘I was able to do--with the help of my people--this, this and this.’ ”