Allen Quits as Speaker; Setencich Gets Post : Assembly: Republican steps down after three months to fight recall. GOP successor defies his party to take job.

Assemblywoman Doris Allen, comparing her three-month tenure as Speaker of the Assembly to a stay in Dante’s “Inferno,” stepped down as leader of the lower house Thursday and helped her closest lieutenant, freshman Republican Brian Setencich of Fresno, succeed her.

Setencich became California’s 60th Speaker with a bare minimum 41 votes--all 39 of the Democrats’ and two of the Republicans’, his own and Allen’s. All other GOP lawmakers voted for Assembly Republican Leader Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove).

Appearing at the Speaker’s dais shortly before 2 p.m., Allen announced that she would relinquish the speakership, three months and nine days after winning the job once called the second most powerful position in state government.

“I am very happy to step out of Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ frankly,” said Allen, a Republican who spent her speakership fending off attacks from Republicans. Her tenure was the shortest since 1899.

Setencich, 33, is the youngest lawmaker ever to serve as Assembly Speaker. Upon his election, the lanky, conservative former basketball player looked over the Assembly and offered a touch of “Mr. Smith Goes to Sacramento” humor: “I sometimes just think I get myself in the darndest situations.”

Setencich said Gov. Pete Wilson had called him Tuesday to urge him “to do the right thing, what’s good for California and good for myself,” but added that Wilson did not specifically ask him to support Pringle for Speaker.

However, Leslie Goodman, Wilson’s spokeswoman, said the governor told Setencich not to go against the Republican Caucus position by taking the post with Democratic support.

The transition marks the second time this year that the speakership has changed hands and caps a week of rumors and speculation about when Allen would step down. It comes as the year’s legislative session--among the least productive in years--is drawing to an end, with more than 200 bills awaiting action in the Assembly by the close of business at midnight tonight.

The pending measures include major issues such as aid to financially strapped Los Angeles and Orange counties, bills to help provide Californians with earthquake insurance and legislation to place on the March ballot a $3-billion school and university construction bond.

Before Allen resigned, she and Setencich met privately in the Speaker’s office for several hours with other Assembly leaders, including former Speaker Willie Brown, to work out the final transition details.

Addressing the Assembly, Allen said that while she was stepping down as Speaker, she would retain her seat by beating the recall that her own party has mounted against her as punishment for accepting the speakership with Democratic votes.

Democrats stood and applauded. Republicans remained seated and silent.

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Presented with a bouquet of a dozen red roses by her allies, Allen thanked lawmakers who had supported her as the state’s first woman Speaker, as well as the first Republican Speaker in 25 years, and called on Republicans to spare Setencich “your nastiness.”

She lauded Setencich as a “man who deserves to be Speaker, a man who will not lie to you, a man who will not intimidate you, will not threaten you, will certainly not threaten you with recall.”

Elected as a staunch conservative Republican, Setencich describes himself as an independent lawmaker. He is antiabortion and anti-gun control and has introduced 23 bills and resolutions, mostly reflecting a pro-business stance. But his biggest challenge lies ahead.

While a few Republicans were talking in conciliatory tones about the new Speaker, several used some of the same language for Setencich that they had directed at Allen.

“It’s a sham, it’s a rerun,” said Assemblywoman Marilyn C. Brewer (R-Irvine), among Allen’s toughest critics. Republican lawmakers said, however, that they will not seek to recall Setencich.

Brown pushed Democrats into voting for Setencich on Thursday, much as the former Democratic Speaker did on June 5, when he orchestrated Allen’s election to the post. Once Allen got the job, she was unable to use the power of the speakership to solidify her position--and most Republicans other than Setencich spent the summer attacking her.

Like Allen, Setencich told Democrats on Thursday that they could keep their current committee assignments. Although most committees have Republican majorities, the important Rules Committee, which has the power to bottle up bills, will continue to be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, Setencich said.

Democrats hope that, unlike Allen, Setencich will be able to wield power more effectively and woo Republicans to support him. At a minimum, they hope, he will withstand Republican attacks better than Allen. As evidence of his toughness, Democrats pointed out that Setencich used to play professional basketball in Europe.

“You play professional basketball, you get banged around a bit,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). Referring to Setencich’s high-pitched voice, Katz added: “You grow with a high voice, you take a lot of grief and a lot of shots. He has been banged around. He knows how to take it and how to give it.”

Setencich already has survived the tough job of presiding over the year’s rancorous Assembly sessions, often using humor to defuse the tension and occasionally giving brief lectures in an effort to stop some of the bitterest diversions in debate.

Allen’s decision to step down had its beginnings with her performance at a news conference last week, when she showed up 40 minutes late and could not detail the contents of the bill she was supposed to be discussing.

Tony Quinn, a Republican consultant who was advising Allen in her final days, described the news conference as a “complete meltdown” and said “her mood went from bad to worse.”

It worsened even more when she held a fund-raiser that fell far short of her goal of $300,000. Then, on Monday, speaking to reporters, she stunned the Capitol when, referring to her Republican enemies, she declared that she was not about to be pushed around by “a bunch of power-mongering men with short penises.”

Quinn said it was that comment that prompted Quinn and Allen’s top aide, former GOP Assemblyman Gerald Felando, to tell her that her situation had “become impossible.”

“She became the subject of national ridicule, and ridicule is something no politician can withstand,” Quinn said.

He said she “didn’t want to hear” such talk about resignation. But he and Felando persisted, recommending that if she wanted to beat the recall, her only option was to turn the speakership over to someone acceptable to the GOP Caucus.

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By then, however, her opponents in Orange County already had turned in the requisite number of signatures to qualify the recall against her--and Thursday, Secretary of State Bill Jones certified that enough valid signatures exist for the recall election to take place.

Quinn said that, unable to stop the recall, Allen turned to the Democrats and struck a deal to install Setencich as Speaker.

“She went through hell,” Setencich said. “Everything she said, everything she did, no matter how good it was, was just part of an extremely negative spin that the media continued to barrage her with. She must have an unbelievable sense of strength to go through that.”

Allen, with the new title of Speaker pro tem bestowed on her by Setencich, was hustled by aides out of the Assembly chamber immediately after Setencich was sworn in. But moments before the vote was taken that gave the speakership to Setencich and denied it to Pringle, Allen stood at the front of the chamber, glared at Pringle and called him “an untrustworthy young man.”

Then, looking out at other Republicans, Allen said she was “ashamed of your behavior,” chastising them for refusing to rally to her support and for attacking her “again and again and again.”

Pringle, 36, did not respond to Allen’s attack. He had been courting several Democrats to vote for him. Asked why that effort failed, he said Setencich’s victory shows “very clearly that Willie Brown is still in control of his caucus.”

Allen, 59, from the Orange County town of Cypress, gained the speakership in June with a bare minimum of 40 votes--including 39 Democrats’ and her own--in what was a 79-member house. Although she was California’s first Republican Speaker in 25 years, she never was part of the GOP inner circle and had an undistinguished legislative career that began with her first election in 1982.

Allen never solidified her position within her own party. With only a few exceptions, angry Republicans battled her publicly. Disgruntled GOP staffers and lawmakers distributed anonymous flyers--entitled “Doris Watch”--that detailed the latest slights, perceived or real.

She responded by stripping rival GOP lawmakers of staff and committee assignments. But she was thwarted when, for the most part, other Republicans refused to fill the vacancies.

To give Republicans a majority on the committees that review and vote on legislation, Allen was left to make temporary assignments to the panels, which added to the lower house’s disarray.

To manage her campaign fund raising, Allen relied on Democratic operatives, because Republicans would not work for her. Her fund raising has lagged, and as she tries to fight off the recall, Republican activists have protested outside her fund-raisers.

“What you’ve seen here is an interesting process of tearing down a human being,” said Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park) of Republican treatment of Allen. “She’s a battered woman.”

Former Assembly GOP Leader Jim Brulte had a different take: “The Allen speakership was a tragic play, written, produced and directed by Willie Brown. The show wasn’t very popular, and it had to close early.”

Times staff writers Max Vanzi, Carl Ingram and Eric Bailey contributed to this story.

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