New Digs for Assembly GOP Leader : Legislature: Jim Brulte inherits office formerly occupied by Speaker Brown’s aides. The lavishly furnished room is a sign of the Republicans’ newfound clout.

Assembly Republicans this week accomplished the seemingly impossible: Their leader finally has a Capitol office nearly as big and expensive and prestigious as that of their Democratic nemesis, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

In a development that speaks as much about the Republicans’ rise as Brown’s diminished power, GOP leader Jim Brulte did the political equivalent of moving uptown, leaving the Capitol’s drab east wing for a third-floor office in the 126-year-old restored west wing. Awaiting him were $110,000 worth of taxpayer-purchased 19th-Century antiques, including a pool-table-size carved oak desk worth more than $20,000, and a work space that state historians call a living museum.

Brulte’s gain comes at the expense of top Brown aides who had occupied the office and were forced to move into smaller quarters on another floor.

The Republican leader’s new digs are a byproduct of the prolonged speakership fight between the GOP and Democrats, resolved for now with Brown reclaiming the title he had held since 1980. But with Brown holding a tenuous 40-39 majority only because of the vote of a Republican-turned-Independent, he and Brulte agreed to several changes in how Assembly business is conducted, giving Republicans more clout and Brulte a new address.

Even so, some of Brulte’s aides believe the new office had less to do with bipartisanship than with Brown preparing for the day when he will no longer be Speaker and must move from his larger and more lavishly appointed office.

“We’re pleased we finally got to move over where the Republican leader ought to be,” said Phil Perry, Brulte’s spokesman, “but the Speaker apparently wanted a nice office to move into in case the Republicans obtain a majority and he becomes minority leader.”

Dana Spurrier, Brown’s acting press secretary, suggested that Perry leave that opinion in the east wing. “That is absolutely incorrect,” Spurrier said. “Mr. Brulte has been lobbying Speaker Brown for more than a year to get that office. Now he has it and it is historically correct. If he doesn’t like it, he can always move back to his old office.”

That won’t happen any time soon.

“I like some things about the (new) office, but not others,” Brulte said, describing the antique desk chair as “uncomfortable.” He said he’d like to replace it, but feared the replacement might not be “historically correct.”

The office furnishings include the huge desk, which has a green leather top, gold-embossed carvings and marble inlays, a table with six chairs, a large glass-doored book cabinet, a walnut sideboard with a marble top, and several oil paintings depicting the Gold Rush and a Spanish mission.

Dan Visnich of the Historic State Capitol Commission, who spent $110,000 for the antiques, defended their cost.

“This was a damn good deal,” Visnich said. “That’s not a lot of money for that kind of antique furniture, some of which are museum pieces. For example, we have a table by Thomas Brooks, a 19th-Century manufacturer from Brooklyn, N.Y., that many private collectors would like to have. We also looked at reproductions at the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, but they would have cost more money.”

In 1982, the state spent $500,000 for furniture, circa 1870 to 1910, for the Speaker’s second-floor office and other offices in the restored Capitol. The Legislature had just moved back to the west wing after a $68-million restoration project.

Brown, whose office furniture includes a partner’s desk that was purchased in the early 1870s for the attorney general and a pair of 19th-Century Louis XV-style velvet-covered walnut armchairs, joked at the time that being Speaker “means having an office as big as your hometown.”

On the Senate side, both President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) and GOP leader Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) also have large offices with antique furniture in the more prestigious old wing.

Rank-and-file legislators occupy more modern but less colorful offices in the east wing, a six-story building that was added to the Capitol in the 1950s.