Target Me! Recall Me! Martyr Me!

Producing political pain by bleeding our targets is what brings us great pleasure and satisfaction. --From a strategy memo by proponents of a recall of state Sen. David Roberti.

State Sen. David Roberti slumps in his chair, arms dropped to his side, head hung low. He looks up with sad eyes, and talks in resigned tones of playing “the hand that is dealt me.” His posture and demeanor suggest a man awaiting execution. The temptation is to whistle a little “Tom Dooley,” to offer a last cigarette.

Poor David Roberti. On April 12, after a quarter-century in public office, he will be subjected to the first recall election of a California legislator in 80 years. How is it going? he is asked. Roberti shrugs.

“I think all right,” he says tentatively.

Well, what’s it been like, facing this assault so far along in political life?

“It feels like you are under siege,” he says. “It’s been nasty. There have been personal threats, political threats. The recall and the whole opposition of the gun lobby is a very difficult thing.”

He looks up again with those big, sad eyes, a martyr in waiting, and it at once becomes clear.

David Roberti is the luckiest politician in California today.

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He is lucky because just as his career was fading, a coalition of gun rights activists and various government watchdog types from the fringes of state politics came along and sponsored a recall drive against him. He is lucky because either through adroit campaigning, simplistic reporting or plain truth--the point is debated--the recall has become a closely watched referendum on assault weapons. It has become, to quote one national pundit, “the most important political campaign in the United States.”

Roberti’s story is that the “gun nuts” have come to hunt him down in his last political hour. Five years ago, a troubled soul exercised the rights the NRA works so diligently to protect. He took his AK-47 and played army with a schoolyard of children in Stockton. After the slaughter, Roberti helped push through a bill that banned certain assault weapons. Prior to this, his only foray into weapons control legislation was a crackdown on toy guns.

It is Roberti’s view that the recall is simple pay back. “The reason why I have been able to put the attention on weapons” he says, “is because I am telling the truth.” He buttresses the case with strategy memos obtained somehow from the other side, polemics laced with mock assassin language about “bleeding targets” and the like.

This scenario is disputed by recall proponents, but not with any great effect. The script is set. Roberti has been cast in the role of his biblical namesake--a lonely warrior sent to battle the gun lobby Goliath. This is how the story has been told from here to New York City and across the nation on television. This is how the election seems to be framed in the minds of voters in the 20th District. That the NRA announced last week it would start airing pro-recall commercials was but one more piece of good fortune for Roberti, solidifying, as it did, his preferred story line.

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Before the recall drive, Roberti seemed marked for political exile. His long run as Senate leader was all but finished; term limits mandate his departure before Christmas. Prospects for higher office were dim in part because, short of Willie Brown, no one better personifies Sacramento politics--hardly a helpful distinction in these days of voter discontent.

Now, however, no one asks much about Roberti’s Sacramento record; they mainly want to talk guns. In public, Roberti’s main role is to wave guns at every photo op and look beleaguered. His campaign placards don’t mention his name, only assault weapons. And now there’s even an explanation for Roberti’s rather startling failure to move to the Valley from Los Feliz after switching districts: the “gun nuts” had threatened his family. Now he has new friends to tap: “There’s an issue at stake,” he says. “I’m not just another politician calling.”

Although Roberti insists he’d rather be “a hero than a martyr,” the distinction is thin. Beat the recall, and polls have him way ahead; Roberti becomes the courageous leader who stared down the gun people. Lose, and he can wave his own bloody shirt--the man who gave all. Yes, he’ll have surrendered eight months of lame-duck duty, but Roberti can use the free time.

Since the recall began, Roberti has announced his candidacy for state treasurer. Consider how much tougher that quest would have been without the attention and glory that have come his way in this fight. Does the firing squad have any last requests?