Speaker Battle Puts Spotlight on Doris Allen : Assembly: Cypress Republican is the choice of many Democrats to succeed Willie Brown should GOP win an expected majority in a special election next week.

For 13 arduous years, Assemblywoman Doris Allen has toiled mostly in the shadows in the Legislature. But these days, the Cypress Republican is emerging as a key player in continued wrangling between the GOP and Democrats over who will become the next Speaker of the Assembly.

With a special election next week expected to give Republicans a slim majority of seats in the Assembly, Allen has become the unlikely first choice among many Democrats for the top post.

A chorus of Democratic lawmakers is voicing interest in the candidacy of the Republican veteran, saying she represents the best hope for them to retain a bipartisan toehold in the lower house.

“The attractiveness of Doris Allen offering herself up like this is that she wants to be bipartisan, she isn’t interested in settling old scores and wants to move this place in a bipartisan manner,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “But like anything else around here, nothing is done until it’s done. I don’t know that Doris has it together yet.”

The GOP is expected to gain a 40-to-39 edge over Democrats in a special election next week to fill former Republican Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy’s seat. Mountjoy of Arcadia is now in the state Senate.

But if the Democrats can put together a 39-vote bloc behind a single Republican candidate they find palatable, they could determine who would replace longtime Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a Democrat.

Brown, who is expected to announce this weekend that he is running for mayor of San Francisco, has said he would step aside as soon as another member puts together 40 votes to replace him.

During her tenure in the Assembly, Allen has earned a reputation among Democrats as a moderate who can occasionally be counted on for a vote--unlike many of her more ideologically rigid Republican colleagues. Allen has often sided with the Democrats to increase education funding and was part of a bipartisan team that put together environmental reforms which proved acceptable to liberals.

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Allen, 59, is a divorced mother of two grown children who made her first venture into politics as a school board member in Orange County before vaulting to the Assembly in 1982. Under the state term limits law, she must leave office in 1996.

Allen’s effort to woo Democrats has disturbed many of her Republican colleagues, who feel her candidacy would deny the GOP what one official called the party’s “manifest destiny” to eventually seize control of the Legislature’s lower house.

The leading candidate has been Republican Assembly Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga. Allen has said her candidacy was motivated in large part by her ire over slights from Brulte and other GOP leaders, most notably their backing of Allen’s Republican opponent, Ross Johnson, when she ran unsuccessfully earlier this year for the state Senate seat vacated by Marian Bergeson, who became an Orange County supervisor.

Republicans won a one-seat majority in last November’s election, but failed to gain the speakership when GOP Assemblyman Paul Horcher bolted the party and cast his vote for Brown. Voters in Horcher’s Diamond Bar-based district recalled him last week, leaving the Assembly with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, and two vacancies.

One of those will be filled next week, while a second special election to fill Johnson’s seat in Orange County’s heavily Republican 72nd Assembly District seat won’t be held until mid-July.

The existing bipartisan rules in the Assembly, hatched during the speakership tug-of-war earlier this year, have resulted in Republicans and Democrats sharing an equal number of committee chairmanships, committee assignments and staff funding. But after years under the thumb of Brown and the Democrats, many Republicans want to throw out the bipartisan rules and stack committees with a majority of GOP members.

That’s the sort of reign of terror Democrats are eager to avoid.

“It will depend on who can offer us the most stability, on who we can trust,” said Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles). “We want to be protected in a true power-sharing relationship.”

Democrats said the fight goes beyond gamesmanship to deep-rooted beliefs that split the two parties on issues such as gun control, abortion and the environment.

“What I have heard from the Republicans is that they want to change the rules immediately, and that worries me a lot,” said Assemblywoman Sheila J. Kuehl (D-Santa Monica). “There is a deeper battle going on. That battle isn’t about partisanship or politics, it’s about ideology.

“From that perspective, Doris Allen isn’t a bad choice,” Kuehl added. “She’ll keep the rules, which means we have a shot at having our ideology reflected.”

Many Democrats say they were willing in December to vote as a bloc for Republican Assemblyman Bernie Richter of Chico as speaker. The attempt failed when Richter backed down, Democrats say.

“I was willing to vote for Bernie Richter,” said Assemblywoman Debra Bowen (D-Marina del Rey). “I’m not going to rule out a vote for Doris Allen either.”

Republicans, meanwhile, might simply bide their time until late in the year, when they hope to gain firm control of the Assembly by capturing the seat vacated by Johnson and staging a successful recall of Democrat Michael J. Machado of Linden.