Allen Commits UnSpeaker-able Act of Being a Woman

Only the truly perverse among us would enjoy the spectacle of grown men being emasculated.

OK, so I’m truly perverse. Emasculation is normally serious business, but watching the male-dominated Republican Party power structure in Orange County and California get the treatment from Assembly Speaker Doris Allen is right up there with a Marx brothers movie.

Inevitably, though, her action prompted a sequel: “The Empire Strikes Back,” subtitled “Revenge of the Castrati.”

Months ago, the Good Old Boys of the GOP sat around over drinks and convinced themselves that they had to remove Allen--the Lorena Bobbitt of Sacramento--for the good of the party. She was a traitor, they said, for cutting a deal with Willie Brown to ensure her election to the speakership. How dare she circumvent the anointed ones of the party and seek the job herself?

She must be removed, they reasoned, for the good of the Republican agenda that would create a more perfect California.

If they actually believed that, the moment must have come after about the ninth round of drinks. During their more sober moments, they would have admitted that their vendetta against her was little more than a petty tantrum over losing what they thought they had after last November’s election: administrative control of the Assembly.

In short, Allen outfoxed them. She got the speakership. She got the power and privilege that they wanted. In a more chivalrous era, the fellas would have doffed their cap to her and grudgingly acknowledged her craftiness.

But chivalry is dead. So too will be Allen’s career, if the boys have anything to say about it.

It’s not as though Allen is some liberal Republican intent on upsetting the GOP agenda. She hardly veers from the conservative philosophy that dominates the GOP.

No, this is about someone who didn’t know her place.

To think that a woman, especially one not part of their inner circle, was the one who took their you-know-whats and nailed them to the Statehouse wall was . . . well, you know how painful that can be.

No self-respecting man could let that go unchallenged. And so, into the breach leaped such leonine figures as Dana Rohrabacher, Curt Pringle and Ross Johnson.

The result is a recall campaign against Allen that didn’t start with unhappy voters in her own district but with unhappy legislators in Orange County and Sacramento. Allen’s camp is preparing for the likelihood that enough signatures will be collected to put her recall on the ballot, probably in November. About 20,000 of the 25,600 required signatures have been verified, as of this week.

It’s a tawdry little business, run by men who actually lay claim to the moral high ground in their personal lives.

Allen’s opponents claim she is Willie Brown’s puppet. Mind you, that is not to say they object to puppets; only those not attached to their strings. If she were their puppet, none of this would have happened.

“If you look at the legislation coming out of the Assembly, it’s not legislation that Willie Brown is for,” says Allen campaign consultant Alan Hoffenblum, who, ironically, managed Rohrabacher’s first successful congressional campaign.

“The point I’ve been making all along is that they [GOP leaders] didn’t hate Willie Brown; they wanted to be Willie Brown,” Hoffenblum says. “That’s what this is all about. She beat them to the punch. They want to use the speakership as an ATM machine to raise huge sums of money to follow through on their agenda. This has nothing to do with policy. It has everything to do with politics and personal ego. And now it’s gotten to the point where they’ve gone so far, they have to follow through.”

Assuming the recall is held, the only question is whether voters in the 67th Assembly District will play the role assigned them by the GOP power structure.

“Only one person can get 41 votes [needed for the speakership] and that’s Doris Allen,” Hoffenblum says. “She’s got the speakership, and the only people who can take it away from her are the voters in the 67th District. Rohrabacher can’t do it, Pringle can’t do it, Rob Hurtt can’t do it. Only the voters in the 67th can.”

In their peculiar way, the Republicans behind this may think they’re striking a blow for democracy. What could be more democratic than a recall?

Hoffenblum, hardly a Republican outsider, sees little virtue in the effort: “I’ve been a political consultant for 25 years . . . I know all these people [directing the recall], I know them personally. This drives me up the wall.”

We won’t know anything for sure until election day. But if nothing else, Allen’s defeat would reinforce the truth of an old political maxim:

Hell hath no fury like a Good Old Boy scorned.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.