THE STATE : Will It Be the Speakership That Ate the Assembly?

In the end, Doris Allen went out with a whine. “I feel like I’ve been gang-banged,” complained the former Assembly Speaker after overwhelmingly losing a recall election last week. Well, that’s not quite what happened.

The Allen saga is a case study of the forces shaping California’s Legislature. It reflects a political environment in which ideological purity is paramount and compromise, once the lifeblood of legislative policy-making, is punished.

Ironically, it also highlights an Assembly in which term limits loosen the party’s long-term grip on individual lawmakers and intensify the leverage of solo political entrepreneurship--a force in legislative deal-making ever since former Speaker Willie Brown traded the imperial speakership for the imperial brokership.

These two conflicting dynamics bombard an already unstable legislative process. The Assembly has had three different speakers this session. Nothing can get done when a body as complex and and volatile as the Assembly changes leaders as often as long-distance carriers.

On the other hand, with the election of Scott Baugh, an attorney with religious-right ties, to replace Allen, the lower house is primed to move a sharply conservative agenda, under a GOP speaker leading a “loyal Republican” majority. Whether that happens depends on several factors.

One is the likely election, later this month, of Brown as mayor of San Francisco. Brown successfully mobilized Assembly Democrats to protect his party’s liberal agenda. He has raised the kind of money needed to win back control of the Assembly in the 1996 elections. Can another Democrat fill that void?

Republicans, now holding a 41-to-39 edge in the Assembly, have no room for error. The California Target Book lists 15 “Republican Defensive Targets” (vulnerable GOP incumbents or open seats) up for election next year, compared with 11 similarly situated Democrats. Republicans, furthermore, may have trouble raising the money necessary to defend the seats.

Allen, branded a tool of Brown and the Democrats, raised little money in her short tenure as Speaker. What she collected went to fight for her political survival. The need to raise money to mount recall after recall--three this year--has also taxed the fund-raising capabilities of other GOP leaders.

Freshman Assemblyman Brian Setencich (R-Fresno), the Republican moderate who succeeded to the speakership after Allen resigned, is in no better shape to assume direction of his caucus’ campaign apparatus. Beholden to Democrats until he solidifies his speakership, Setencich’s ability to raise GOP money remains tenuous. Also, the new Speaker is the target of a potential coup by Assembly GOP leader Curt Pringle and his “real Republican” supporters.

Will Setencich find himself facing a recall? Unlikely. Much is made of the use of the recall election as a tool for political revenge. Yes, revenge can be sweet--but only if the target is vulnerable.

Allen was vulnerable because she alienated her caucus, personally and politically, and because she “betrayed” her conservative district. The GOP leaders who pushed for her ouster were confident that her constituents would elect another Republican, one who would play ideological ball, to replace her.

Setencich is different. He has maintained civil, even friendly, relations with GOP caucus members. He has entertained overtures of accommodation to their demands for true majority status on committees and in terms of resources. And his seat is a classic Central Valley “swing” district. It has a large Democratic registration edge, but has lately voted Republican. Because Setencich remains popular with his constituents, he is better positioned than Allen was to fend off attacks.

Next year’s primary elections, however, may be the decisive battleground in the speakership fight. The 1995-96 Republican battle could be a replay of the 1979-80 Democratic wars, when candidates backed by incumbent Democratic Speaker Leo McCarthy fought those supported by his challenger, Assemblyman Howard Berman. McCarthy and Berman spent more than $1 million trying to elect their supporters in the general election.

Democrats started the election season with 50 Assembly seats, ended with 47. But, in the face of the national Reagan revolution, the California Journal concluded, “without this kind of effort, Republicans might have won a few more seats.” And out of that confrontation came the coalition speakership of Willie Brown--and a sky-high increase in the cost of campaigning.

In the next election, Brown solidified Democratic control for the next 12 years.

Conversely, Republicans could mimic the woes of Jess Unruh, who ultimately rued his decision to get involved in the 1966 Democratic primaries. Unruh wound up creating enemies--and losing loyalists--within his own caucus and wasted time, money and energy better allocated to the general election. The Assembly Democratic majority went from 49 in the 1965 session to 41 in the 1967 session. In the 1968 elections, Democrats lost control of the lower house.

In an effort to rally their troops--and voters--GOP Assembly members have begun crafting a “contract with California,” modeled after the congressional GOP plan. Is it because they’ve been too busy beating up on one another that they don’t possibly realize what a risky strategy they have undertaken?

Given the growing public opposition to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his “contract with America,” California Republicans may soon realize that a contract can turn into an albatross?

Or has somebody decided that, if narrow majorities, unstable coalitions and ideological in-fighting remain the turbulent norm, the Republicans in charge will bear the brunt of voter anger? And, in an election year, that is the GOP’s greatest risk of all.*