Standing Her Ground

Former Assemblywoman Doris Allen has kept a few reminders from her turbulent three-month reign as speaker in 1995, mostly leftover stationery and a nameplate or two still burrowed in a packing box from her move to the capital from Cypress.

What she would just as soon forget from that period is a cantaloupe-size tumor later removed from her colon.

She believes that the cancer grew from the stress of defying a furious Republican establishment bent on revenge for her ascension to the speakership with Democratic votes. She replaced longtime Democratic Speaker Willie Brown, who stepped down to run for mayor of San Francisco. The GOP swiftly branded her a traitor.

Two years after being booted from her north Orange County seat, Allen lives in the upscale Sacramento condominium she purchased while a member of the Assembly. Her horse, Rona, is boarded nearby. Except for a brief--and successful--foray into local community action, she has guarded her privacy. She finished radiation therapy for her cancer last month, and the disease is in remission.

But the effects of the recall, she said, linger in other ways: Her political banishment hurt opportunities to work in government or education, the arena in which she first held public office--on the Huntington Beach Union High School District board in the 1970s. An eight-month lag between leaving the Assembly and collecting a $3,000-a-month pension nearly bankrupted her, she said, and forced her to sell her longtime home in Cypress.

Still, she cites no regrets for what she did or said, especially the oft-repeated quote that her GOP enemies were “power-mongering men with small penises.” She said the comment was meant as a metaphor for the men controlling the party who she said felt threatened by a woman in power.

“I regret that I had so much stress, that I had surgery. I regret that I don’t have a livelihood,” said Allen, 61. “It was a sad thing for my district. But do I regret having done it? No. I don’t regret being speaker. I was the first speaker Orange County ever had.

“I think I did well to maintain my dignity. I didn’t go under,” she said. “They wanted me politically dead, they wanted me financially dead, and that takes a tremendous amount of hatred. They wanted to destroy me. So far they’re still in office, and they’re still in control of the state party. In my eyes, they’re still getting away with it.”

The woman who nibbled a Reuben sandwich in the lobby restaurant of the Hyatt hotel, just steps from the Capitol, appeared completely different from the embattled politician in the closing months of 1995.

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Trim and fashionable, she sported a new haircut. Around her neck hung a delicate gold elephant on a filigree chain. Her face showed none of the worry lines and puffy dark circles obvious in the photos she likes to share of the day she became speaker--to highlight the pained looks captured on the faces of her GOP colleagues.

At the time, Allen was branded as shrill, undeserving, stupid and worse. Assemblyman Bill Morrow quipped, “The first thing she ought to do is her hair.” One particularly pointed cartoon showed Allen as a prostitute, wiggling an ample backside as Reform Party leader Ross Perot propositioned, “Hey, Doris, you wanna party?”

But she wasn’t the only casualty from the election, which has continued racking up a body count. The winner, Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach), has spent about $300,000 fighting multiple felony and misdemeanor charges alleging that he failed to report thousands of dollars in campaign loans and contributions. One-time recall organizer Rhonda Carmony faces three felony charges for her alleged role in helping place a spoiler Democrat on the winner-take-all ballot to replace Allen. Both maintain their innocence.

Three GOP campaign aides--two of whom worked for Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove)--pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in the spoiler scheme. Jeff Flint, Pringle’s chief of staff who took over the recall, has been dogged by court testimony that he promoted the spoiler candidate to mollify conservative campaign donors who were nervous that a Democrat might win, upsetting the GOP’s razor-thin Assembly majority.

The final insult to Republicans was the 1996 elections, in which state voters returned control of the lower house to Democrats, yanking Pringle from his speakership.

Allen continues to insist that running for speaker was the only way for a Republican to replace Brown, because none of her conservative colleagues could put together enough votes themselves. Her critics say she sold her political soul to avenge her GOP colleagues’ failure to support her during a 1993 special state Senate election won by then-Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Fullerton).

The Senate election was a turning point, Allen said, because she realized that no matter how good a Republican she had been or how long she had represented her district, none of it mattered when she stood in the way of the candidate anointed by party bosses. She remains a Republican and loyal to conservative beliefs, she said, including opposition to abortion and support for replacing bilingual education with English instruction only.

Allen’s only guest appearance on the political scene came in April when the city notified her and other homeowners in her Swallows Nest neighborhood that they each would be charged a $2,747 assessment for a new storm drain. Residents protested, arguing that they had been using an existing storm drain for 18 years.

Led by Allen, 150 residents hopped aboard rented buses and descended on a Sacramento City Council meeting. When the shouting was over, the council backed the homeowners.

The battle “was good for my brain,” Allen said. “One thing I miss is the problem-solving.”

Still, the blip of activity didn’t escape notice. A short item in the statewide political magazine California Journal accused Allen of being more interested in her pocketbook than her neighborhood.

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With improving health, Allen said she hopes to land more consulting jobs, though the work she has done has been outside Sacramento and beyond the reaches of those who still regard her name as an epithet. She said she never considered asking for help from Brown, now San Francisco’s mayor, because “that’s not my thing.”

Former Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), who lost in the same Senate race to Johnson, said he still keeps in touch with Allen when he’s in Sacramento. He was her staunchest local defender against the recall, accusing the GOP leadership of alienating female voters by targeting one of only four women out of 40 Republicans in the Assembly at the time. Allen also was the state’s first female Assembly speaker.

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“I just view the whole thing as a great tragedy for the Republican Party and a minor tragedy for her,” Ferguson said. “It was such a great, gigantic waste of time and opportunity and money. Hate managed to focus them more than anything else. If she was who they said she was, she’d be working for $100,000 a year for Willie Brown, but she never was that person.”

After Allen left office, she was rumored to be moving to Montana, but that turned out to be wishful thinking among her enemies. She said she never owned any property there and only visited the state because that was where her daughter lived.

Her daughter and family have since moved to Las Vegas, where Allen will spend Christmas this year; her son and his family live in Folsom. She also remains a friend of Sacramento lobbyist Harold Cribbs, whose advisory role with Allen during her speakership drew criticism.

“I was a darn good Republican, and I didn’t deserve what happened to me,” Allen said. “I really want my name cleared. I had a good reputation for 20 years. I didn’t break any Republican bylaws. I didn’t go against the Republican platform. I didn’t vote for Willie Brown--I took him out.

“I’m not a monster. I wanted to run things in a bipartisan way while we were split [between Republicans and Democrats]. I was the one who got an extra Republican on each committee, not them. It was their horrible nastiness, their lust for power. I’d like to see them answer for that.”

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Allen in Office

A brief history of former Assemblywoman Doris Allen’s tenure:

* November 1982: Elected to state Assembly, representing northwest Orange County. A former school board member, she focuses on education and child-development legislation.

* January 1990: Drafts an initiative, Proposition 132, to end use of gill nets in coastal waters (her bill had failed in the Legislature). Voters pass initiative, designed to stop marine mammal deaths.

* March 1993: One of three Assembly incumbents vying for state Senate seat vacated by Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach); she loses to then-Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-Fullerton).

* June 1995: Elected Assembly speaker with 38 Democratic votes. She replaces longtime Democratic Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco). One day later a recall campaign against her is launched.

* September 1995: Writes one of three bills providing financial relief for Orange County bankruptcy. Gov. Pete Wilson snubs her at a bill-signing ceremony, saying she was “irrelevant” to recovery negotiations.

* September 1995: Resigns as speaker to concentrate on fighting recall.

* November 1995: Recalled by 2-to-1 ratio in low-turnout election; she is replaced by Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach).

Source: Times reports; Researched by JEAN O. PASCO / For The Times