Katz, Boland Argue Across Great Divide Widened by Speaker

D ecorum in the state Assembly hit a low point this week, when Democrat John Vasconcellos of Santa Clara aimed an obscene gesture at Republican Paula Boland of Granada Hills. Boland was furious at Vasconcellos and even more so at Speaker Doris Allen’s response. Allen refused to seek an apology from Vasconcellos, saying the exchange was a private matter between the two legislators. She turned the tables on Boland, one of her most outspoken critics, saying: “I would say that . . . women who attack women are out of order, too.”

The Allen speakership is at the heart of the bitter dispute between Democrats and Republicans in the Assembly. Although Allen, of Cypress, is a Republican, she won the post with Democratic support and only one GOP vote--her own. It is widely believed that former Speaker Willie Brown orchestrated her ascension in exchange for concessions favorable to Democrats. The maneuvering left Democrats and Republicans deeply divided, as illustrated by remarks from Valley legislators Boland and Assemblyman Richard Katz, a Sylmar Democrat and Brown lieutenant, who were interviewed by Times staff writer Cynthia H. Craft.

Q: The election of Doris Allen as Speaker has fractured the Assembly along partisan lines as few issues have. What kind of effect does this have on policy and what will it take for the Assembly to heal and get beyond this great divide?

Boland: It’s apparent that Doris Allen keeps using the word “policy,” but we never hear what policy she’s talking about. We as a Republican caucus talk about policy and what we want to accomplish all the time. It’s been very obvious that Doris has allowed for us to be adjourned so we don’t have to do any work. She’d rather let the state budget stay in the conference committee than deal with any of these policy issues. A reference to the word “policy” is all I’ve ever heard from her. In order to heal, we need Doris Allen to step down as Speaker. She’s not the best for us, and the confidence level in the speakership deteriorates every day.

Katz: People were divided along partisan lines before this. Now you have Democrats voting for a Republican Speaker in a bipartisan effort. What has to happen now is the Republicans have to stop fighting among themselves. This is not a fight between Democrats and Republicans--what you have is a fight between Republicans over who is more loyal and who is more pure and who is a better Republican. And they have to decide among themselves to stop that fight.

Q: Much of the Assembly’s focus in upcoming days will be on budget negotiations. What kind of impact do you think the current battle will have on making progress toward passing a state budget, which not only pays the bills but often sets policy agendas for California government?

Boland: Doris will be able to deliver one Republican vote, and that’s her own. Whenever Doris comes in our caucus, she comes in sarcastically, making comments to our members. Anyone who has a disagreement with her, automatically she hates. They don’t hate her. She hates them. And so she’s not going to be a leader on the budget at all. I don’t think really that Doris even understands the issues, and she certainly doesn’t want to hear about them. And she didn’t go from member to member in our caucus and try to get anyone from our caucus ever to even vote for her as Speaker, so I don’t think she intends to go from member to member and try to get people to vote for the budget either.

Katz: The biggest problem right now in making progress on the budget is the absence of the governor. He is campaigning around the country. There have been no meetings of the leadership and the governor. Speaker Allen asked for that on Monday. And the governor has to get involved in . . . the really large issues, such as: Do you fund public education or do you give a tax cut? How much, if any, does Aid to Families With Dependent Children get cut the way the governor wants? Can we stop the governor’s fee increases at CSU and UC and the community colleges? They can’t go forward as long as he is traveling and campaigning for President. To some extent he gets cover by what’s going on on the floor.

Q: In the face of GOP doubts and even a recall campaign, Speaker Allen insists she has taken the reins of the Assembly to further the agenda of her Republican Party. Yet it is clear she made a deal with former Speaker Willie Brown that is favorable to Democrats. Is Speaker Allen being a faithful Republican in light of her actions, and to what extent will this help or hurt her?

Boland: Every time she says, “I gave my word, I gave my commitment [to the Democrats],” the other half of that sentence is, “I gave my word so I could be Speaker.” When you ask her, “But what did you get for the Republicans?” there’s a blank stare. And so how she thinks she’s taken the reins of the Assembly for her party, I don’t know. She certainly has voted against Republicans up to now in 98% of the issues. Again, she is very, very willing to adjourn with the Democrats. Very, very willing to keep the budget amendments off the floor. So I don’t know what she means when she says she’s taken the reins for Republicans. She’s not being a faithful Republican at all in that way.

Katz: The Republican agenda for the last 15 years has been to replace Willie Brown and have a Republican Speaker. Doris Allen achieved that. So the extremists can say she’s not one of them or it’s not the way they wanted it to be, but they couldn’t get the job done. And so, to a large extent, as an outsider to that whole argument, it looks like whining. Also, [GOP members] lost their hate object. For 15 years, Republicans have not campaigned against individual Democrats, they’ve campaigned against Willie Brown. They’ve used Willie Brown the way George Bush used Willie Horton. I think part of the difficulty they have now is, now that goal has been accomplished, many of them don’t know what to do with their lives anymore.

Q: The question of competency has been raised by some Assembly members opposed to Ms. Allen’s rise from a so-called “backbencher” to Speaker of the Assembly. How do you weigh in on the issue? Is this a legitimate concern to raise or a mean-spirited attempt to undermine her authority as Speaker?

Boland: It isn’t anybody being mean-spirited at all. The question of competency comes in because Doris hasn’t even been able to recognize all the support and help she’s had in the Republican caucus. She certainly is incompetent as a leader. A leader is one who brings peace and harmony and brings people together, not one who divides them. I think she’s unfit and I think she proved it today. She showed her true colors. She showed today that she can’t put her own personal self aside as a true leader. We were far better off with Willie as Speaker than with Doris Allen because he, at least, treated us with more dignity and respect than she does.

Katz: The fact that someone has not been in the leadership in the past doesn’t mean they don’t have leadership ability. The question is, now she is Speaker, can she rise to the occasion? Can she become a Speaker of 80 members? That’ll take time. I think people have been surprised by how well Doris has run the floor. I think she’s surprising people with her tenacity and her ability to hang in, take considerable abuse, and to be vilified in Sacramento, in the district and as the hate object of a lot of her own party. I think it made her stronger and she’ll be stronger as she comes through it. One thing that’s very clear is that the Republicans are not making it easy for her to succeed. They remind me of school kids throwing temper tantrums because they didn’t get their way.

Q: Many observers are using the “sandbox” analogy in reference to the Assembly. The bickering, they say, has reached a childish level. In your opinion, what will the history books say about this year in the Assembly?

Boland: I think the bottom line again, with Mr. Vasconcellos and his action, is that the Democrats are snickering and sneering because they’ve found a way to locate two of our absolute weakest links in the Republican Assembly ever--Doris Allen and [recalled Assemblyman] Paul Horcher. There’s kind of a smugness from them because they’ve preyed on that weakness. It’s tragic because we have lots and lots of freshmen this year, most of them very bright people. The Democrats went lock-step with Willie Brown again and allowed this whole scenario from the Twilight Zone to occur. It’s too bad. I think history’s going to show that Republicans got the vote. I think history will show there are those who want to go forward and those who want to stop the momentum for their own personal gain--and it’s obvious who falls in which category.

Katz: It’s June and we still have a half a year to go. But I think what they will say is that probably one of the most colorful, powerful, intelligent people to have ever held the office of Speaker turned over the reins to the first woman Speaker--who is trying to overcome the hostility of her own party. As to how successful she is, the jury is still out. But it’s hard to govern and it’s hard to lead when your own party is opposing virtually everything you do in Sacramento. Hopefully, when people look at this they realize that what’s happened this year is Democrats have taken the first step of what I call their 12-step program, which is to recognize that the Democrats are a minority party in California and we have to rebuild our base to become a majority again. And that while Democrats were rebuilding, Republicans were so angry that the old-boy network couldn’t choose one of their own, that they lost their opportunity to govern.