Mullah of the Moment

The maverick legislator had cut a deal with the opposition to seize control of the Assembly, and party regulars were furious. “An unholy alliance,” spat one. “Craziness,” moaned another. The new Speaker, counseled an old Assembly hand, wouldn’t survive “for very long.” The other party now had a puppet to manipulate--and toss whenever it saw fit.

The Speaker in question was not Doris Allen, although her Republican colleagues pretty much were bleating in the same way last week after her Assembly coup. No, the comments had come 15 years ago, when an upstart Democrat from San Francisco bargained with the devil--in his case, conservative Republicans--to ascend to the Assembly speakership.

“Ayatollah of the Assembly,” Willie Brown would take to calling himself--after he had reunited Democrats, solidified his power base and taught Republicans to rue the day they’d helped install him as Speaker.

That Allen essentially followed Brown’s path to power seemed a point lost on her colleagues and assorted Assembly watchers last week. “An outrageous power grab,” grumped one Assembly Republican. “Willie Brown in drag,” scoffed another, predicting a short career for Allen as a tool of the newly titled Speaker emeritus. “A baldfaced deal, period,” huffed one political pundit, to which might be added:

Yes, and so what else is new?

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The Republican wailing over Allen’s triumph was weird. It’s one thing not to acknowledge defeat, to battle on against hopeless odds. They forge legends out of losers like George Armstrong Custer, who shouted, “Now we’ve got them, boys,” even as he led the 7th Calvary toward its fate. It is quite another thing, however, not to have sense enough to recognize victory.

Most members of the Republican Caucus have built their Assembly careers around a singular vow--to remove Brown from the speakership. This now has been accomplished. As of last Monday, the Ayatollah of the Assembly was no more. Brown surrendered his gavel and took his seat with the common pack. And how did the Republicans react, now that the evil genius was vanquished?

Well, beyond a desultory sipping of champagne, they generally keened and wailed and carried on like schoolchildren with bloodied noses. They called the engineer of their victory a traitor and gave silent blessing to a recall drive. They proposed loyalty tests, made cracks about Allen’s hair and also about what’s directly beneath it. “The least member,” they called her, in polite moments.

The invective demonstrated how little the speakership battle had to do with ideology. Allen is no Newt Gingrich, perhaps, but she’s well to the right of the average Democrat, a bona fide Orange County Republican. What made the Republican leaders so mad was not her politics, but her power. This was a struggle over who would make assignments to the committees that generate the most campaign contributions. This was a fight for the power to award perks--spacious offices, big staffs, choice parking places. That power now belongs to Doris Allen.

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The Republicans also felt they’d been cheated out of a good hanging. As Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg, (D-Sacramento), observed: “When you have been fighting in the wilderness so long, you begin to think victory comes only if you absolutely crush the enemy--drive a stake through the heart of each of them, cut off their heads and parade them around on spikes.”

Allen pursued a more sophisticated strategy. She recognized that with an evenly divided house it would take some dealing with Democrats for a Republican to unseat Brown. Moreover, even if the GOP eventually did gain the 41 votes needed to seize the speakership outright, subsequent compromise with Democrats still would be required in order to conduct major legislative business--like, say, passing a budget. Her colleagues’ attitude--Our way or die!--simply was not going to work.

So she negotiated Brown’s surrender, although no one up here seems ready yet to call it just that. She let Brown claim victory, to smile and wink for the cameras, but all the same by Thursday it was Doris Allen pounding that gavel. By then a few Republicans already had fallen behind her. She had begun to solidify her base. It was interesting to observe how power had begun to flow her way.

Outside the Capitol, a Republican who three days earlier had ridiculed Allen now said wistfully that he “hoped Doris understands we’re on the same side. Hey, we can work together.” If he had not seen the light, this one at least was fumbling for the switch. He won’t be the last. Because of term limits, there probably won’t ever be another Ayatollah of the Assembly. Nonetheless, Doris Allen is the mullah of the moment. And the prediction here is that, once they stop crying, the Republicans will learn to like it.