Have the Voters Created Their Dream State Legislature?

Will it be back to the future for the state Legislature?

When lawmakers convene in Sacramento this week, they may feel as if they are entering a political time warp--the state Capitol in the 1950s, before Jesse M. Unruh created California’s imperial speakership and the sky wasn’t the limit in raising campaign funds.

Today’s Capitol isn’t dominated by white male lawyers, insurance agents and a few farmers, as was the old part-time Legislature. The current political cast looks much more like the rest of the state. Indeed, the Assembly’s first Latino speaker will take office this week, a milestone that would have been unthinkable before “one-man, one-vote” changed the face of redistricting and term limits opened up competitive seats to all comers.

In the wake of the first full round of elections to replace term-limited incumbents, a new dynamic of legislative leadership is unfolding. The change will be noticeable first in the Assembly, where control has passed to a new Democratic majority whose ranks include only two members who have more than four years of legislative service. It will come to the Senate, too, after current President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, the remaining legislative strong man, is term-limited out of office in 1998.

This new leadership dynamic is, in reality, an old leadership dynamic. The future speakership will likely resemblethe collaborative speakership that existed before Unruh institutionalized the office’s power. It probably won’t be as ideologically extreme or as baldly partisan as recent speakerships, and it will certainly be less imperious.

In the ‘50s, loyalty to the leader was based on personal factors or political philosophy, rather than on partisan affiliation or campaign support. Leadership in the Assembly was exercised by a small, collegial group of legislators or by influential individual lawmakers with whom the speaker shared his power. The centrist Bustamante may face a similar situation. Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), once a potential Bustamante rival, told the Associated Press, “As speaker, with a majority of the caucus environmentalist, human-rights people, worried about welfare, he has to put together a team that’s more progressive than he is.”

Two other recent reforms add to the sense of political deja vu: the “open primary” initiative, passed in March, and new campaign finance restrictions, approved last month.

Early in the 20th century, California progressives, bent on eviscerating political parties and dismantling partisan government, instituted “cross-filing,” which allowed a candidate to run in the primaries of two or more political parties without having to reveal his or her actual party affiliation. An early study of legislative partisanship concluded that, “The cross-filing law made party affiliation an unstable affair.” Well-known, well-heeled incumbents, who tended to be Republicans, dominated the primaries. The reform lasted until the mid-’50s.

The reformers also established an open primary, which permitted registered voters to cast their ballot in the primary election of any political party. Ironically, opponents of the reform used a progressive tool--the referendum--to repeal it.

This year, California voters used another progressive legacy--the initiative--to reinstitute a form of open primary. It not only allows voters to vote for candidates across party lines, but it also provides for just one ballot, on which all candidates for partisan office are listed randomly and not grouped by party.

It’s unclear whether the new open primary will strengthen or diminish the pull of party affiliation. But, generally speaking, allegiance to both major parties appears to be weakening as independent and swing voting increase. If the impact of partisanship is lessened as a voting cue, the outcome is likely to favor incumbents and candidates with high name recognition, just as cross-filing did.

The newly instituted financing reforms may add to that possibility. Limits on campaign expenditures, contributions and fund-raising periods, as mandated by Proposition 208, also tend to favor known quantities.

Should the initiative withstand probable court challenges, it could also have the potential to return legislative politics to the way they were before Unruh centralized fund-raising power in the speaker’s office.

Back then, the legislative leader could certainly hold some sway over who received campaign contributions, but he did not command the flow of political money from contributors to individual lawmakers. In fact, from the 1930s until the 1950s, master lobbyist Artie Samish controlled the Capitol by using funds collected from the liquor industry to “select and elect” legislators and keep them happy.

Samish got caught. The outrage and political embarrassment that followed led to the reform movement, which Unruh spearheaded, to upgrade the Legislature and create a body no longer in thrall to special interests (although maybe just a little in thrall to the speaker).

With the evolution of the full-time, professional Legislature, the most important duty of legislative leaders became collecting campaign contributions and redistributing them to deserving lawmakers of the same party. These days, with term limits eroding the speaker’s power to discipline opponents, campaign support is just about the only sure way he or she can extract loyalty. But that leadership tool appears ready to be blunted by the passage of Proposition 208.

The ability of the new speaker--indeed of any legislative leader who follows--to hold sway over his or her caucus could be particularly hindered by the initiative’s ban on transfers of funds between candidates. In the short term, this could create real obstacles to any plans Bustamante may have to target more Latinos for legislative office and crimp his ability to help and protect other Democrats as well.

Over the long haul, leaders of both houses may find themselves far less able than today’s crop to reward and punish colleagues in the most potent possible manner--aiding or threatening their political careers. This can only exacerbate the legislative instability that marked the pre-Unruh era and the early post-Willie Brown Assembly.

It is highly ironic that, as the Golden State moves toward the millennium, the new political synergy of term limits, open primaries and campaign-financing restrictions has made legislative life in California an old ball game.