Assembly’s Profile Little Changed by Term Limits

When the two houses of the Legislature convene today to begin a new session, the Assembly will have completed a journey of fundamental change launched by the voters six years ago.

That’s how long it has taken for all 80 members of the lower house to come under the restrictions of legislative term limits, approved in 1990. And with the last of the long-serving veterans “termed out,” the Capitol’s first house of “citizen legislators” will be complete.

But the promise of term limits--that they would “reform a political system that has created a Legislature of career politicians”--still seems elusive, with the makeup of the new Assembly in many ways at odds with that high-minded ideal.

Based on interviews, computer-assisted analysis and preliminary tracking of campaign funds, a Times profile found telling similarities in age, careers and political backgrounds between the Assembly elected Nov. 5 and the “professionals” who reigned in the 1988 Assembly.

Supporters of term limits acknowledge that they may not yet have brought about major changes, but say that at least the 10- and 20-year veterans are gone. Opponents say the similarities are proof that term limits have accomplished little. The advent of term limits “hasn’t lessened the desire, or the money, to get elected,” said Assemblyman-elect Don Perata (D-Alameda).

Comparing the Assembly in 1988 to the Assembly being sworn in today, the Times found:

* Prior political experience and the amassing of millions of dollars in campaign financing are just as prevalent now as then.

* Comparing occupations in private life, lawyers--widely viewed as the ultimate political careerists--numbered 15 in the 1988 Assembly; there will be 14 now.

* Former business owners--regarded by term limit adherents as a prime source of citizen legislators--totaled 21 in 1988, compared to 18 now.

* The average age of the incoming Assembly is just under 48, almost the same as in 1988, when 27 members had served for a decade or more.

Another sign that some things don’t change: 49 members of the Assembly-elect served previously in elective office or on paid political staffs, almost a mirror image of 1988 when 51 members fit that category, 33 of whom referred to themselves as “full-time legislators”--unaware that term limits would be approved by voters two years later.

And the political career-building goes on in the new Assembly, much as it always has. Not content to be limited to three two-year terms, many of those taking office today are already jockeying to run for a seat in the state Senate. Senators are now limited to two four-year terms.

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To opponent Bruce Cain, a University of California political science professor, term limits are deceptive. Those politicians “good enough, smart enough and lucky enough” will stretch their legislative careers to 14 years--six in the Assembly and eight in the Senate.

Recycling the Assembly every six years “may get you new faces, but they are new faces on old bodies”--using the same special interest funding to run campaigns that the career politicians used, said Cain, who directed the 1990 statewide campaign against term limits.

Perata, a former Alameda County supervisor, said it is not surprising that placing a six-year cap on an Assembly career has done little to discourage a life in politics.

For lawmakers to leave their previous employment to spend six years in the Assembly can be “a fairly serious career interruption,” he said.

That’s why, he suggested, the Times data showed comparable numbers of former elected officials and political aides and fewer business owners in the new Assembly compared to 1988.

Career-building will change, however, according to a term-limit defender--former Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), now GOP minority leader after the 43-seat majority Democrats won on election day.

The opportunities to bounce from one house to the other will decline over time as more termed out Assembly members compete for fewer open Senate seats, said Pringle, who will be termed out himself in 1998. More vacancies than usual are showing up now, he said, “because term limits is taking out long-serving senators now just as it did long-serving Assembly members.”

Term limits forced out 10 senators this year and will remove the last of the veterans in 1998.

Meanwhile, the allure of the political dollar shows no sign of waning.

State records show that in 1988 Assembly candidates raised $57.3 million in campaign contributions, or $73.9 million in 1996 dollars.

This year, contributions in Assembly races, when the totals become known in coming months, are likely to hit new highs, according to several analysts who keep track of political financing, including Ruth Holton, the head of California Common Cause, the lead sponsor of Proposition 208. The measure, which limits campaign fund-raising, was approved by voters Nov. 5.

Spending has been spurred on, in part, by the unintended consequences of term limits, according to Holton and others.

For example, she said, lobbying interests have been pouring more contributions into open seat races where they can have an impact early in a politician’s career. Created by the term-limit revolving door, there were 31 open Assembly seats up for grabs this year.

In one of those races, Holton said, the California Teachers Assn. set a record for a single donation by a Sacramento lobbying group in an open seat primary.

The CTA contributed $106,000 to Democrat Virginia Strom-Martin, a teacher and former CTA officeholder from the little town of Duncans Mills on the North Coast.

She won her primary and, helped by additional union and other contributions, went on to win an open, competitive Assembly seat.

In an interview, Strom-Martin defended her CTA contributions, saying the union was logically supporting one of its own.

“I’m proud the organization backed me to that extent,” she said.

Holton maintains that special interests such as the CTA “are shaping the membership of the California Legislature for the next decade.”

Pringle agreed that open seat races invite more contributions. But, he said, “they also invite more competition” among candidates, just as the voters intended.

As the 1996 campaign showed, competitiveness and big spending can go hand in hand in the era of term limits.

Typical of many Assembly rookies showing abilities to wage aggressive, money-savvy campaigns was Republican Rico Oller, the owner of a building supply company from San Andreas in the Sierra foothills.

New to Sacramento and to elective politics, Oller had good credentials for the citizen legislator.

But to get there he deployed his ample bankroll like a veteran politician, lending his campaign $200,000 in a hot primary fight that featured charges that Oller was mud-slinging.

In the general election, he cruised to victory in his heavily Republican district. But, like the insider moves common during pre-term-limit days, he kept campaign funds flowing, state records showed, sending checks to GOP candidates in tough races from a political action committee he set up and heavily endowed.

An outspoken conservative, Oller said of his campaign tactics: “Under duress, I’ll fight back,” adding that he would bring to Sacramento the attitude of the business world “where you’ve had to fight government jerking you around.”

His previous experience in politics, he said, was confined to “filling out the stinking forms that government sends me every day.”

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Other findings from the Times profile of the new Assembly:

Minority membership is up, for a total of 20 compared to 11 in 1988 and 17 just before the November election.

Among the 37 Republicans are two minority members and three women. The Democrats include 17 women and 18 minorities among their 43 members.

“The contrast is striking--Republicans male and white, Democrats the rest of California,” said political science professor Gary Jacobson of UC San Diego, an expert on legislative bodies who reviewed the Times data.

“The simple-minded image of the two parties,” he said, “turns out to be right.”

Pringle, who directed Assembly GOP campaigns this year, said Republicans “tried to elect more women,” three of whom were “targeted” for victory with extra campaign funds supplied by GOP leaders. One of those, Pringle pointed out, was an Asian American, Sylvia Sun Minnick of Stockton, who challenged incumbent Mike Machado (D-Linden).

But Minnick and another of the targeted GOP women, former Assemblywoman Tricia Hunter of San Diego, lost on election day.

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Prosecutor Rod Pacheco of Riverside will become the Assembly’s first GOP Latino member in nearly a century. The party will continue to urge minority candidates to come forward, Pringle said.

Democrats are boasting about their gains in diversifying the Assembly, notably by electing a record number of Latinos.

Though diverse in many ways, about two-thirds of the Democrats in the new Assembly now describe themselves as politically moderate, the profile showed. Almost three-quarters of the Republicans clustered more distinctly around the conservative label.

Other findings:

* The surge of Latinos elected to office nationwide is reflected in the Assembly by the election of four new Latinos, for a total of 14. Thirteen are Democrats, including Cruz Bustamante of Fresno, who is expected to be the new Assembly speaker.

* The election of Democrat Mike Honda, a Japanese-American and former county supervisor from San Jose, adds a second Asian to the Assembly. Republican Nao Takasugi of Oxnard, also a Japanese-American and a former mayor, was elected in 1992.

* The number of African Americans, all Democrats, dropped from six to four. Two who left were elected to other offices: Barbara Lee of Oakland to the state Senate and Juanita Millender-McDonald of Carson to Congress.

* Of 76 new members listing a religious affiliation, 52 said they attend services regularly.

* Of all 80 new members, 42 are native Californians.

* Fifty-two hold a bachelor’s or higher college degree; three have doctorates; 11 completed only high school, but most say they spent some time in college.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Citizen Assembly?

The 80-member Assembly elected Nov. 5 is the first state-level body to fully reflect the “citizen Legislature” that term limits sought to create. Here is a profile of the new Assembly, with comparisons to 1988, when veteran professionals predominated.