Assemblyman Decides on His Own Term Limit

Career time is almost up for 22 state lawmakers, veterans all, averaging 60 years in age, each driven out of office by legislative term limits.

And, in a striking generational contrast, Ted Weggeland, 32, is leaving with them. The difference, besides his age, is that he doesn’t have to.

Boyish-looking Assemblyman Weggeland (R-Riverside) is the only California legislator this year who is departing voluntarily and leaving politics behind.

The law, and no doubt the voters in his Republican-leaning district, would have allowed the quiet, low-key Weggeland to serve another two-year term. Thereafter--as 14 other “termed out” legislators are doing now--he had ample years in front of him to run for another elective office.

Instead, Weggeland chose to end his career after two terms and its further possibilities, citing mainly what is often the cover story of the political quitter--family pressures.

Except in his case, he offers some compelling evidence of family problems.

During his long absences from home, Weggeland said, his younger brother, who lived near the couple’s small Riverside apartment, would often come by to check on the assemblyman’s pregnant wife, Jennifer, and 2-year-old son, Will.

“It got so my son thought my brother was his father, even called him Da-da,” Weggeland said.

That and other family trauma, he said, convinced him to leave politics. Also, he added, “32 is a better age than 34” for entering the job market.

He departs having created neither raves nor waves. He called his legislative record “substantial but not earthshaking.”

The modesty is befitting his almost invisible presence on the frequently raucous, divisive Assembly floor.

Seldom a speechmaker, never given to issuing news releases, Weggeland decreased his visibility further by stepping down as chairman of the Assembly Banking and Finance Committee last year. He said he preferred to use the time to push his own bills.

Out of sync with the preening and bluster that mark the political animal, Weggeland nevertheless said it wasn’t political drive he lacked. It was family harmony. “My marriage was adversely affected by the continued absences,” he said.

For seven to eight months a year, California legislators must spend at least three work days a week plus a “check-in” day in Sacramento, or lose benefits.

Even in his district, Weggeland said, “the Friday night banquets and Saturday morning pancake breakfasts” never seemed to end, cutting further into time with the family.

Weggeland said he loved being a legislator. But he said he had been in Sacramento less than two years when it began sinking in that, for him, politics and family life were becoming incompatible.

He began looking at other career opportunities--”probably sales and marketing”--and announced in March 1995 his decision to “retire.”

Weggeland is not the only lawmaker to end a state legislative career by choice.

Most recently, in 1994, then-Assemblyman Paul Woodruff (R-San Bernardino) announced he was dropping out after six years in office, citing frustrating intraparty divisions.

Now doing corporate marketing and public relations, with homes in Big Bear and Malibu and an office in Century City, Woodruff simply gave a hearty laugh when asked recently if he was happy with the change.

Weggeland, on the other hand, has no complaints about the job. Frictions are fewer now and there are “four of five bills” he introduced “that I am extremely proud of.”

Among them: updating of the welfare-to-work GAIN legislation sponsored by Gov. Pete Wilson and enacted last year, and a 1993 bill allowing qualifying companies to be state-certified as proper handlers of hazardous waste, giving the firms an effective marketing tool.

Weggeland said he shares the “core beliefs” of moderate Republicans--downsizing government, removing regulatory burdens and moving people from welfare to work.

At one point, Weggeland joined Assembly Democrat Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento--now among the departing veterans--to write legislation cutting down on frivolous lawsuits.

Isenberg said his quiet-mannered partner in the effort left the impression of someone “calm and reasonable, not controlled by a giant ego. He doesn’t like the high school locker room environment here of aging jocks overplaying their roles.”

As for personal concerns, others in the Legislature hold family and job together, but some admit it’s tough.

Assemblyman Jim Battin (R-Palm Desert) last year rose on the lower house floor and tearfully announced he had rushed from his district to cast a crucial budget debate vote, leaving the bedside of his wife who was recovering from surgery.

Battin said he “works on his marriage” by calling home “several times a day. The kids fax me the pictures they draw in class.”

Weggeland’s first campaign was hard-fought, down to the wire, and expensive, his contributions totaling $600,000 versus $400,000 for his Democratic opponent.

He won by a percentage point, and two years later was reelected easily.

Taking Weggeland’s place as the Republican candidate on the November ballot in the 64th Assembly District is Rod Pacheco, a Riverside County deputy district attorney.

Pacheco would be the first Mexican American elected as a Republican in memory to the California Legislature.

Democratic candidate Grace Slocum, a 64-year-old community college board trustee, promises to give Pacheco a tough fight.

Weggeland, predicting a Pacheco victory, said he is happy to “hand the job over to Rod.”

Even if there were no term limits, he said, Sacramento would be seeing the last of Ted Weggeland when the present session adjourns.

He heads into private life armed with a law degree that he does not intend to use, his legislative experience and little in the way of resources.

Weggeland said he owns no real estate; the “little, two-bedroom apartment” in Riverside is rented. Just last year he paid off his college loan. Weggeland’s financial disclosure statements back him up.

Saving to buy their first home, “we live frugally,” he said. The new baby is due next month.