GOP Should Learn From Brown’s Win

This was Assembly Republican Leader Jim Brulte’s “worst nightmare,” the frightening vision that he had confided last fall was a constant torment. Now, in the midnight hour, he was on the Assembly floor suffering the final stage of this bad dream. And it was no hallucination.

Brulte had feared that 41 Republicans would be elected to the Assembly, giving the GOP a tenuous one-vote majority. That happened Nov. 8. He envisioned Assemblyman Paul Horcher of Diamond Bar deserting the party and siding with Democratic Speaker Willie Brown, splitting the house. That became a reality Dec. 5.

In his agonizing, Brulte also foresaw Assemblyman Richard L. Mountjoy of Arcadia getting elected to the Senate and leaving the lower house, dropping the GOP to a one-vote minority. And that had just happened hours earlier, in a manner not even envisioned by Brulte. Brown and the Democrats--bending rules, ignoring their own lawyer and setting a dangerous precedent--simply had yanked Mountjoy’s membership and booted him out.

Mountjoy was a senator-elect who had no interest in the Assembly and was loitering there only to “cause mischief,” Brown asserted. Mischief, by the Democrats’ definition, meant voting with Brulte.

“They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind,” intoned veteran GOP warhorse Ross Johnson of Placenta, forewarning Democrats with a biblical quotation.

But not this night.

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The scene on the Assembly floor this Monday midnight was a picture of Republican impotence.

These Republicans, so proud on Nov. 9, now were beaten and spent. They had been befuddled and outmaneuvered by Brown. They meandered and chatted impassively. Like prisoners, they waited in submission as Democrats--somewhere off in caucus--took their sweet time drawing up the terms of unconditional surrender.

By 2 a.m., Willie Brown would be elected Speaker for the eighth time and “power-sharing” rules would be imposed, giving Democrats an edge.

Much of the Speaker’s power will be shifted to the Rules Committee, as in the Senate. Committee chairs will be divided evenly by party. Each committee also will be balanced evenly. But if Republicans cannot agree on the specifics within 15 days, the Speaker will divvy the spoils himself. “I’m the hole card, I’m the trump,” Brown noted. And, of course, he will preside over the House--as he did so shrewdly during the speakership fight by virtue of his being the senior member.

Brown’s victory, which seemed so improbable after the fall elections, actually came “almost by default,” he told reporters. “The Republicans blew it at every step of the way.”

Indeed, “Brulte blew it” has become the opening phrase of popular Capitol chit-chat. It has a ring similar to discussions about the gubernatorial race between Gov. Pete Wilson and Kathleen Brown: Is it that one side was so brilliant or the other side so inept? And always the answer is “both.”

To start with, Brulte refused to play by an old-fashioned rule, a maxim recited by Brown: “If you really want to be Speaker, you get your votes wherever you can get your votes.” When he first was elected Speaker in 1980, Brown was backed by 28 Republicans and just 23 Democrats.

Brulte would not offer committee chairmanships to win over the four or five Democrats he needed for a comfortable margin of support. This was a new era, he proclaimed--one of honor, fairness and GOP rule. But politics is a tough old game, and in the Assembly there’s an old rule, the rule of 41. And Brulte let Horcher slip away.

“If I’d had their hand, I would have had 60 votes,” Brown said. “No question.”

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After Dec. 5, inflation set in: The Democratic price gradually rose and Republicans never would pay it.

Brown demanded that Republicans back off an attempted Horcher recall and/or agree to a two-year truce. He finally imposed his own two-year deal.

Reams will be written about the jockeying--analyzing whether negotiations were in good faith, whether Brown used renegade Republican Bernie Richter of Chico as a decoy Speaker candidate. . . . But the end result--with Mountjoy expelled--was Brown 40, Brulte 39.

The late legendary Speaker Jesse (Big Daddy) Unruh liked to say, “If you’ve got 41 voters, you can do anything around here.” Brown took that to a new level by getting reelected Speaker with 40 votes.

Conventional wisdom is that Republicans sometime this year will regain their 41st vote and then oust the Democrats. But they won’t unless they have learned a lesson or two from wily Willie. For now, they can only dream.