Brulte’s Burden : GOP Assemblyman Is Resigned That He Will Never Be Speaker

It was June 6, another day underscoring another defeat, time for Jim Brulte to ask God again what lessons he was supposed to be learning from this agony.

Turncoat Doris Allen had just mounted the Speaker’s dais in the Assembly chamber--standing where he should have stood--to preside for the first time.

Smelling a story of the mighty being humbled, reporters surged toward Brulte on the Assembly floor to hear him vent frustration.

He didn’t.

“Today, I’m going to be a sphinx,” he said, and the reporters melted away. But the description was apt, then and now.

Like the disfigured man-lion squatting in the sands at Giza, its features ravaged by its environment, Assembly Republican Leader Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) remains in place, still an imposing presence on the political landscape.

But it is not the larger presence that once seemed so attainable. Though he more than anyone plotted and financed the campaigns last November leading to a Republican majority in the Assembly for the first time in a generation, the speakership that supposedly goes with that kind of leadership went elsewhere--first to his wily Democratic nemesis, Willie Brown, and then to Allen, a veteran Assembly backbencher.

Now it seems that the Speaker’s gavel will never be his. “There are some scenarios where you don’t get to win,” he said in an interview. “There are some problems that can’t be solved.”

Last week, Brulte announced to Assembly Republicans that he was through trying.

“On Monday, I advised the [Republican] Caucus I did not believe it was possible to get Democrat votes for Jim Brulte for Speaker,” he said. “Therefore, I would not be a candidate for Speaker.”

If the chance comes to oust Allen, Brulte told his colleagues, pick someone else.

“The caucus selected Jim Rogan,” Brulte said, a name often mentioned as a possible future Speaker. Rogan, of Glendale, a former Municipal Court judge, won his Assembly seat in May of last year in a special election.

Even if enough Republicans could unite behind a candidate without the need for Democratic votes--theoretically possible if recall efforts succeed against Allen and Central Valley Democrat Michael Machado--Brulte said time is against him.

“There’s a little bit of a crack but it ain’t going to happen,” he said.

Brulte removed himself from the running at a time when rumblings had begun from within Republican ranks that it was time to find another candidate. Some Capitol staffers said recently for the first time that Republicans needed a new face in the speakership race.

In other power positions, Brulte remains alive and kicking. His role as Assembly Republican leader is seen as secure. At Gov. Pete Wilson’s insistence, Brulte is one of five legislative leaders meeting with Wilson to try to reach agreement on the next state budget. His formidable fund-raising operation remains in business. And he is establishing himself as a de facto senior counselor to Assembly Republican freshmen.

Facing forced departure from the Assembly next year because of term limits, Brulte has all but formally declared that he will run for the state Senate in 1996. Looking back, Brulte said, he did all anyone could ask on his way up the mountain.

“This caucus [Assembly Republicans] selected me to be their leader in 1992. They drafted me. They asked me to do three things.

“One, unite the caucus, which I did.

“Two, pick up seats, which I’ve done.

“Three, move the Republican policy agenda, which we’ve done.

“I’ve done everything I was supposed to do, and yet I open a newspaper and find out that I’m a guy who’s so incompetent I can’t count to 41 [the number of votes usually needed to become Speaker].”

A devout Baptist, Brulte said he has prayed for guidance.

“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t ask God what is it that I’m supposed to be learning from this process,” he said.

Placing himself in some lofty company, he believes he is hearing the “first step” of an answer.

“I don’t know why Moses was given the task of freeing his people from bondage but wasn’t allowed to see the Promised Land. . . . I don’t know why David was given the task of building the kingdom of Israel but he wasn’t allowed to build the temple.

“And, frankly, I don’t know why I was given the task of getting the Republican majority but not being able to be elected Speaker. But I’m willing to accept that fact.”

Brulte said he never coveted the speakership out of personal ambition. What bothers him more is what the loss means to voters and Assembly colleagues--the denial of a Republican Speaker who will pursue a Republican agenda.

What Allen has done with her power, however, has been more directly devastating to Brulte than any other Republican. Other than denying him the speakership, the missiles she has hurled have included consigning him to a small office vacated by another Brulte enemy, Paul Horcher, after Brulte was forced out of the spacious, ornate minority leader’s suite, and Allen’s decision to fire key Brulte aides and consultants.

The latter act of punishment is what “gets me down” the most, he said.

Brulte claims Allen was pushed by the Democrats to fire 14 GOP staffers, “most of whom have a direct association with me.”

Allen contrived a bitter irony, Brulte said.

He noted that Horcher, the ex-Republican whose support for Brown deprived Brulte of the speakership in December and was later recalled by voters, has been hired by the Democratic Party.

“Most of Horcher’s staff is still on the legislative payroll,” Brulte said. “But the people who helped lead the Republican operation for the last two years . . . have all been terminated . . . all highly talented professionals whose only crime was they helped us get a Republican majority.”

In his new office, Brulte candidly recounted the tortuous path of his fortunes since the heady days following the Republican victories in November. In a significant way, he said, the defections and betrayals that denied him the speakership are proof of his skills and stature.

When he hears the criticism that he did not become Speaker and, therefore, must have done something wrong, he says: “I understand. Politics is a contact sport.”

But “when Democrats say to my face and behind my back, ‘There’s no way we could let Jim Brulte be elected Speaker,’ I wear that as a badge of honor. The fact that I can’t get Democrat votes says something about me. I happen to think it says something good about me.”

If Brulte broods, he does it in private. On the Assembly floor, where Allen’s appointed Speaker Pro Tem, Brian Setencich (R-Fresno), presides over frequently raucous sessions by drowning out others with a voice pitched almost to a scream, Brulte has been a center of bemused calm.

While others shout, Brulte seldom joins in and seldom sits down, instead casually pacing the green-carpeted floor, his blue eyes twinkling knowingly atop his 6-foot-4, 349-pound frame.

Asked what he could do--as a leader--to stem the recent chaos on the floor, Brulte said he intended to meet with Setencich and tell him his parliamentary tactics were unfair to Republicans.

Easily accessible to reporters during Assembly sessions, Brulte, 39, often ducks into a quiet corner for interviews, speaking fast and knowledgeably on the issues. His manner suggests more experience than his 4 1/2 years in elective office.

Depending how it’s phrased, a question probing whether faulty negotiating skills account for his failure to become Speaker can bring on a cold, silent stare. When he chooses to answer that one, he tends to say there was nothing anyone could have done to win over Horcher or Allen at crucial times.

Brulte takes pride in the 39 Republican votes he can call on for affirming his position as Republican leader, in contrast to sharply divided caucuses under previous leaders.

Those divisions, such as in the 1992 primaries, had consequences “that people never recovered from,” he said. “It resulted in the kind of vicious, personal attacks that were the norm rather than the exception in our caucus. We have not had those in the last 2 1/2 years.”

As a result, he said, there were no serious challenges to Republicans running for the Assembly in the 1994 primaries, “with one exception, Doris Allen.”

Vicious, personal attacks, however, are not wholly a thing of the past in Republican Caucus meetings, and it is the vitriol between first Horcher and now Allen and the other 39 members that Brulte could never eliminate and that prevented his ascension to Assembly Speaker.

In addition, another Republican maverick, Bernie Richter of Chico, openly questions Brulte’s ability to lead, although in the last showdown, Richter went along when Brulte was reelected Republican leader by acclamation.

In the inevitable comparisons of Brulte’s political skills to those of former Speaker Brown, Brulte appears to be the loser in most assessments. While Brulte--with a majority behind him--never won speakership, Brown with only a minority of fellow Democrats to count on finessed his reelection in January, then brokered the replacement of his choosing.

Brulte--”I’m an optimist”--reads it differently.

“I believe Willie Brown’s goal is to politically destroy me because I ruined his exit strategy,” Brulte said. “When the history books are written, they will be written that Willie Brown was the first Democrat leader in 25 years to lose his party’s majority.”

Admirers of Brown “can spin it however [they] want,” he said. “[But] eight months ago there were 47 Democrats in this house and today there are 39. Willie Brown presided over that. Trashing me is just one more element of what Willie wants to see happen.”

Always ready with a Brulte critique, Brown said last week that Brulte “never understood that to lead this house you must look out for the whole Assembly, not some Republican agenda.”

Just as predictably, Republican Assembly members, from experienced conservative Curt Pringle of Garden Grove to freshman moderate Jim Cunneen of Cupertino, praised Brulte as an effective consolidator of Republican clout.

Cunneen said that as a newcomer “Republican progressive” coming to Sacramento, he was welcomed warmly by Brulte, who assured Cunneen he would never tell him how to vote.