Brown Seeks New Leader to Fight Initiative : Government: A focus on his skin color and personality could hurt the effort to retain affirmative action programs, Assembly Speaker says.

Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who has become the leader against repeal of affirmative action laws in California, said Tuesday that he wants someone else to take over because his close identification with the issue may hurt more than help.

“I do think this debate needs to move away from this black face to a more diverse face,” said Brown, one of the nation’s leading African American politicians and Speaker of the Assembly for a record 15 years.

Brown, a San Francisco Democrat, is the Legislature’s top advocate of protecting affirmative action programs for minorities and women. And, by dint of his forceful personality and outspokenness, he has assumed the role of leading the charge against a proposed 1996 ballot initiative that would repeal such programs.

In doing so, Brown, who has said his commitment to affirmative action is a matter of conscience, has taken on both top Democrats and Republicans.

Last month, he cautioned President Clinton against making changes to affirmative action laws simply as a way of defusing election year pressures. More recently, Brown engaged in a lively, well-publicized debate with the authors of the proposed ballot measure, which would outlaw preferential treatment by government agencies in hiring, awarding of contracts and admission to college.

At a press conference Tuesday, Brown said he believes that the only way a high-quality debate over the merits of affirmative action can occur is by shifting his leadership role to others.

“As long as it stays focused on this black face, the results . . . and the actions are always going to be skewed based on not only skin color but on the personality who happens to be encased in that skin,” said Brown, who over the last several months has waged a spirited fight for affirmative action that has repeatedly landed him in the spotlight.

At one point, he blasted supporters of abolishing affirmative action as racists, and later maintained that there is scant evidence of wholesale reverse discrimination against whites that necessitates changes in the law.

The cause of saving affirmative action, he said, would be better served by having others step forward. Brown cited as an example former Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole. As a member of the George Bush Administration, she was a leader in trying to break the “glass ceiling” blamed for blocking advancement of women to corporate suites. Dole could not be reached for comment.

Brown said others might include university administrators, officials of the Urban League and executives of nonprofit groups who “bridge the gap between corporate and private America and great ethnic minority America.”

In recent months, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young has been an outspoken advocate of affirmative action on the university level.