NEWS ANALYSIS : With Pringle as Speaker, GOP Dreams Get a Chance

After Curt Pringle’s recent ascension to the job of Assembly speaker, his friend and colleague Ross Johnson congratulated him with a bouquet of flowers and a playful kiss.

Johnson had reason to feel good.

When he was elected to the Assembly in 1978, Johnson was among a spirited band of right-wing Republican lawmakers dubbed the “cavemen” who were swept into office by their support of the property-tax-cutting Proposition 13.

For more than 17 years, these suburban-oriented “Prop. 13 babies” and their latter-day GOP proteges such as Pringle battled to take control of the Democrat-dominated California Assembly and oust longtime Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco.

When Pringle finally was sworn in as speaker on Jan. 4, he fulfilled their long-held dream. Now, the tough partisan from Garden Grove is vested with the hopes and aspirations of a generation of conservative activists.

Johnson says Pringle’s selection represents “the culmination of a lot of hard work” by the new speaker and other Republicans, who were stymied for years in their efforts to become the lower-house majority. Democrats, in turn, find themselves on the outside looking in, without the skillful Brown, who was elected mayor of San Francisco, and very much on the defensive.

Republicans took charge with gusto as Pringle moved aggressively to put his stamp on the office.

On policy, Assembly Republicans have touted what they initially called their “contract with California,” a pro-business agenda. But in Pringle’s first days, much of that agenda took a back seat to other high-profile GOP issues that Democrats had bottled up for years.

Pringle called it “significant” that a number of Republican-sponsored bills are now “moving forward for the first time ever.”

Indeed, Republicans won committee approval of contentious proposals to repeal the motorcycle helmet law, to require voters to show a photo ID at the polls and permit the paddling of juvenile graffiti vandals. The Assembly on Tuesday also approved a proposal to allow the continued use of methyl bromide, a highly toxic insecticide gas used by farmers.

Testing their newfound clout, GOP lawmakers introduced other social legislation sure to generate controversy. One Republican lawmaker is pushing a measure that would prevent California from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.

Seeking to neutralize Democrats in an election-year debate over support for public schools, Assembly Republicans joined Democrats in placing a long-stalled school bond on the March ballot.

Reviewing his first week, Pringle said: “There are a lot of issues we need to address, a lot of stones we need to turn over and we’re doing that. . . . Of course, there’s going to be a Democratic response to changing things that Democrats put into place. So if that’s characterized as tit for tat, then so be it.”

Republicans also were busy housecleaning. Saying he is “serious about eliminating wasteful perks,” Pringle in his first full week in power shut down Brown’s speaker’s office in Los Angeles and announced plans to sell three state-owned Cadillacs used by Brown.

Democratic employees too are bracing for a round of Republican-initiated dismissals.

After getting his house in order, Pringle can expect plenty of skirmishing, especially over ideology, with the state Senate, where Democrats hold a narrow margin and are expected to bottle up the GOP agenda.

Pringle’s speakership “is not the end of gridlock,” said political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. “It is the loosening of gridlock in the Assembly, but by no means is it the end of gridlock between the Republican-controlled Assembly and the Democratic-controlled Senate.”

As they look ahead, some lobbyists and Democrats question whether Pringle is savvy enough to horse-trade with Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) or, for that matter, hang onto his leadership post, especially past November’s elections.

Because of term limits, Pringle, who is running this year for his final two-year Assembly term, will never rival Brown’s 14 1/2 years as speaker. Indeed, Pringle’s hold on the job may be just as shaky as that of his immediate predecessor--Assemblyman Brian Setencich (R-Fresno)--who lasted just three months after being elected speaker on the strength of Democratic votes.

Pringle captured his powerful post with a bare minimum 40 Republican votes. He was opposed by Democrats, Setencich and Democrat-turned-Reform Party Assemblyman Dominic Cortese of San Jose.

If one of Pringle’s supporters, for example, seeks a Capitol office with a window but ends up windowless or dislikes his committee assignments, he could turn his anger into a vote to topple the speaker. Or if an Orange County district attorney’s office probe of new Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) drags out, it could hurt the GOP as it enters the November election campaign.

Pringle insists that he will maintain power. But in a recent interview he said he needs to pick up two GOP seats in November to improve his comfort level. Privately, however, Republican strategists say that even holding the current narrow margin may be difficult in November.

Faced with uncertainty, Pringle, who was camped in a cramped two-room office under Setencich’s reign, is deciding how much mercy to show his opponents. The early signs are mixed.

Pringle appears to be trying to bring Setencich back into the GOP fold--not exiling him to a closet-sized office but assigning him fairly spacious quarters in the Capitol. He also has elevated Assemblyman Fred Aguiar (R-Chino), a pragmatic former Democrat, to the position of the Assembly’s presiding officer.

He is not as gentle with the Democrats. Hours after Pringle’s election as speaker, Republicans persuaded the state attorney general’s office to launch an investigation of the contents of a municipal trash truck that allegedly contained Democratic campaign materials dumped out of a state office.

Democrats maintain that the Republicans are being petty, going through garbage, rearranging Assembly floor seating, stripping Democratic staff of Capitol parking privileges and allegedly snooping in confidential computer files and tampering with offices.

“The taxpayers are paying us to solve problems, not argue over who sits where on the floor,” said Democratic Assembly Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar.

“There’s a lack of civility on behalf of the new majority,” said Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles). “Why are they worrying about all these shenanigans rather than pushing their policy agenda?”

Pringle said Democrats are being unnecessarily paranoid. “They are uncomfortable,” he said, “because they don’t control everything like they used to.”

Murray said Pringle’s hold on power is tenuous. “A one-vote majority is not a mandate,” he said.

Still, Democrats last year employed their own hardball tactics, managing to cling to power by electing maverick Republicans Setencich and Doris Allen of Cypress as speaker. As a consequence, there is little reason for the GOP not to get even, said GOP analyst Tony Quinn, who was an aide to Allen.

“Their insistence on playing games in 1995 means the Democrats will pay the price in 1996. . . . There ought not to be any crocodile tears. They brought it upon themselves,” Quinn said.

Still, Democratic staff members chortle that Republicans don’t know how to smoothly run the Assembly, from payroll to printing.

But Democrats, in the minority for the first time in 25 years, would be foolish to believe that such mix-ups reveal Pringle as a political neophyte. Even at 36, he is a hard-edged veteran who is moving to surround himself with seasoned GOP staff veterans, including Mark Watts, a high-level official in Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration.

“The majority party’s candidate has been elected to the speaker’s job,” Pringle said. “That does bring stability.”

One former GOP colleague cautions Democrats that they underestimate Pringle at their own risk, saying that the new speaker “eats, breaths and sleeps politics. He’ll keep coming at you.”