GOP Legislators Reject Brown’s Overture : Politics: Freshmen Assembly members call his invitations to private meetings a blatant attempt to divide them.

Freshman Assembly Republicans on Friday flatly rejected as the “political equivalent of jury tampering” an offer by Democrat Willie Brown to meet privately to settle the speakership fight and organize the lower chamber for business.

In a letter signed by all 18 GOP newcomers, they told Brown his invitation amounted to a “blatant and transparent attempt to split and divide the newly elected Republican freshman members of the Assembly.”

Brown, fighting to regain the state’s second most powerful political office, sent letters Tuesday to each of the new GOP members inviting them to meet with him privately to discuss their “interests, desires and needs” before the new session gets started in earnest Jan. 4.

But Assembly Republicans rebuffed the invitation as an attempt to persuade them to abandon GOP leader Jim Brulte’s quest to become Speaker and reelect Brown. Currently, the Assembly is without a Speaker, with Brown and Brulte tied with 40 votes each.

One of the Speaker’s key powers is the authority to make committee assignments and appoint committee chairs, which Brown has used to solidify his political base by rewarding his supporters. In an apparent attempt to drive home his point, a Brown postscript told the freshmen: “I hope you have completed your committee preference list and have forwarded it to the chief clerk.”

But the new GOP Assembly members replied Friday that Brown’s “attempts to utilize political insider tactics to remain as Speaker to overturn the verdict of the California electorate is nothing less than the political equivalent of jury tampering.”

Republicans won 41 seats in the Nov. 8 election, setting the stage for a takeover of the lower house for the first time in more than two decades. But their plans were upset Dec. 5 when maverick Republican Paul Horcher of Diamond Bar broke ranks and voted for Brown, deadlocking the house.

Since then, neither Brown, of San Francisco, nor Brulte, of Rancho Cucamonga, has produced the 41st vote needed to become Speaker.

Meanwhile, Brown, who has been pitching a “power sharing” arrangement with Republicans to break the stalemate, is talking to the public in an attempt to build popular support for returning as Speaker.

His aides said Friday that Brown has participated in at least 20 talk shows and news interviews since the Dec. 5 deadlock.

“This is an ongoing effort to make sure that our unfiltered viewpoint is out to the public so they better understand what is going on in Sacramento,” said Brown’s chief of staff, Michael Galizio.

On Thursday, for example, Brown spoke with Los Angeles Times editors and made several other media appearances in Los Angeles, Galizio said.

Brown’s offensive was characterized by Assembly GOP spokesman Phil Perry as a desperate attempt to recapture the post, and Perry said Republicans will attempt to counteract Brown.

Inside Sacramento

* A blow-by-blow account of how Willie Brown survived the crucial vote for the speakership of the state Assembly, provided by California Journal, is available on the TimesLink on-line service. Sign on and “jump” to keyword “California Journal.”

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