A Hell Week That Seems to Have No End

Doris Allen and Shannon Faulkner are similar in one regard: Both are pioneers. Unlike Faulkner, however, Allen didn’t call it quits at the edge of the wilderness. She’s still trudging into the unknown.

Faulkner fought through the courts to become the first woman cadet at The Citadel, then folded during hell week to avoid “killing myself just for the political point.”

Allen fought fellow Republicans to become the first woman Speaker of the California Assembly, and her hell week now is into its 81st day. There have been suggestions she fold her tent to avoid a career-killing recall in Orange County, where Republicans take particular offense at party disloyalty.

“I will not walk away because of bullies, because of anybody,” she defiantly told the Sacramento Press Club on Tuesday. “I don’t care if it’s the governor. I don’t care if it’s the media. . . . So, no, I will not walk away. And, yes, I hate it.”

It’s hard not to admire Allen’s courage, tenacity, toughness and even self-deprecating humor.

What does she hate about being Speaker? “The name-calling is pretty heavy. When you’re called a puppet of Willie Brown-n-n,” she answered, drawing out her mentor’s name for emphasis, “and Willie Brown in drag-g-g, and the first thing I’ve got to do is my hair-r-r, and I eat my young-g-g, and Willie Brown’s fixing his speakership with an ‘Allen wrench-h-h.’ ” When the laughter died, she added: “You didn’t know that one? That’s from my friend’s father-in-law.”

Allen is articulate, usually candid and sometimes entertaining. But her ability to lead the Assembly, shepherd a Republican legislative program and survive politically still are very much in doubt.

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Allen’s hell was created because she committed the grievous sin of deserting her party and siding with the devil incarnate, Democrat Willie Brown. Her pact with the devil earned her the speakership. All 39 Democrats voted for her; none of the 39 Republicans did, except Allen.

Three weeks later, realizing their deal was too good to last, Democrats released her from much of it. They consented to Republicans holding one-vote majorities on every committee except Rules.

That stopped the food fights on the Assembly floor, but not the recall effort. Nor has it begun to unite Assembly Republicans around Allen. They still are angry because, although she allowed Democrats to control their own committee assignments, the new Speaker has retained sole power over GOP assignments. She has used that power to reward and--mostly--punish.

Allen insisted on this control, she said, to keep her enemies in check and make sure they couldn’t “put me in a position of being a puppet of [former GOP leader] Jim Brulte or Gov. Wilson.”

The tension tightened Monday when Republicans elected as their new floor leader Allen’s chief antagonist, Assemblyman Curt Pringle of Garden Grove.

Asked what she might do to win over the GOP Caucus, Allen conceded: “You know, I’ve kind of given up on that. It hasn’t been a pretty picture. . . . I am very independent. I represent my constituents. And I don’t have to walk lock-step with my caucus. I don’t have to and I won’t. I never have.”

That’s why it’s perpetual hell week.

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Allen has a handful of friends among Assembly Republicans, but only one solid ally: Assemblyman Brian Setencich of Fresno, whom she appointed to preside over the house as Speaker pro tem.

The others are out on a limb trying to help her, but won’t be there if it crashes to the ground. All are trying to avoid a recall campaign and party bloodletting. Three of these friends--Assemblymen Jan Goldsmith of Poway, Brett Granlund of Yucaipa and Bernie Richter of Chico--met with Allen at an Orange County restaurant last week and urged her to negotiate with the GOP Caucus. The meeting lasted five hours with no conclusion.

Granlund told Allen she had three options: Continue on her destructive course, negotiate a restructured speakership or step aside and become a Speaker Emeritus, a la Willie Brown.

Goldsmith, whom Allen has designated as her personal “majority floor leader,” handed her a proposed restructuring plan that would greatly dilute the Speaker’s power and transfer it to the party caucuses and Rules Committee. “The Speaker should become a referee, rather than the leader of the Assembly,” Goldsmith wrote.

No way, Allen responded. She wasn’t about to become just “a figurehead.”

But unless she negotiates some compromise, Allen’s fate will be an interminable hell week and the Capitol will remain in legislative limbo. The GOP agenda will be dead. And, of course, that is what the Democrats have prayed for.

The only other real alternative, as her friend implied, is to take a cue from Shannon Faulkner.