Term Limits Bring a Long-Running Class Act to a Close

The quintessential insider will be outside looking in today when the new Legislature convenes, and it will be the Capitol’s loss.

Actually, scratch that. It will be all of California’s loss.

Term limits have done to Ken Maddy what the voters in his Fresno-based district never would: yanked him from office.

Not that there haven’t been victims of term limits who deserved the hook--burned out, worn out, hangers-on. But Maddy is not one of them. Ask anybody.

“Now, there is the best argument against term limits,” Gov. Pete Wilson says of Maddy. Wilson--and, I suspect, voters--supported term limits because the Legislature lacked enough Ken Maddys.

Indeed, you couldn’t name more than a dozen legislators of the last four decades who have matched Maddy’s skills and effectiveness. He’s a throwback to the best of the Legislature’s revered good ol’ days. And he’s somebody whose style this new crop of 30 rookie lawmakers would do well to emulate.

A moderate Republican--and for many years the Senate minority leader--Maddy was a legislator’s legislator: Honest. Candid. Pragmatic. Superb strategist. Student of policy. Skillful negotiator. Trusted by everyone. Classy, in action and appearance.

“He’s well liked. That reflects the fact he never had much impulse to engage in the political combat that goes on around the Capitol,” says Atty. Gen.-elect Bill Lockyer, a Democrat and former Senate leader. “He’s as close as we get to a ‘Southern gentleman.’ ”

Still handsome and athletic at 64, Maddy says he’s weighing offers from government consulting firms. “It’s lousy sitting around,” he says.

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Maddy, a lawyer, was elected to the Assembly in 1970, when Ronald Reagan was governor. “I was in awe,” he recalls. “He wasn’t nearly as doctrinaire as his image. He was tremendously pragmatic.”

In 1978, Maddy won a Senate seat during the Jerry Brown era. Now he is departing as Brown’s former top aide, Gray Davis, is about to arrive as governor. “Gray may be as conservative as Reagan was when he first ran,” Maddy observes.

But in today’s political spectrum, Davis is smack in the middle, and too many Republicans, in Maddy’s view, are over on the extreme right. GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Lungren, he says, was “the poster boy” for extremism.

Unlike most Republican politicians, Maddy favors abortion rights and gun control. He criticizes “the stupidity of, in any way, trying to defend assault weapons.”

He adds, “there’s absolutely no reason for the Republican party to be so locked in with the religious right. I mean, it’s hard to be Christian and take some of those anti-gay positions.”

He sounds more Republican on money. “Republicans are the last savior for the middle class,” asserts Maddy, who grew up middle-class in Inglewood. The GOP, he says, should focus more on prudent spending, efficient government and helping small business.

Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) says of Maddy: “If he’d ever run for governor, he would have won in a walk. And he would have been a great governor.”

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It’s not that Maddy didn’t try. In 1978, he sought the GOP nomination and finished third after opposing Proposition 13, the property tax-cutting initiative, and acknowledging he had twice--shock!--smoked marijuana.

Ten years later, that marijuana admission was cited as “a negative” by Gov. George Deukmejian when he didn’t appoint Maddy to a state treasurer vacancy. Instead, Deukmejian named a Long Beach pal, Dan Lungren. “A bitter disappointment,” Maddy remembers.

The disappointments didn’t stop. In 1995, novice Sen. Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove ousted Maddy as minority leader, convincing colleagues Maddy was too soft politically and didn’t raise enough campaign money. Maddy says he refused to “bludgeon” special interests. “I mean, it’s subtle extortion.”

Now the last laugh is Maddy’s. Senate Republicans have lost a net two seats since Hurtt’s coup. (They’re down 25-15.) And Hurtt was fired by Orange County voters Nov. 3.

Maddy’s advice for rookie lawmakers: “Have respect for the process and your colleagues. Secondly, it does pay to study the bills. Another thing: Participate. Try to solve problems. Learn what’s doable. Ideologues who just tilt at windmills, frankly, don’t contribute a whole lot.”

Says Senate GOP caucus Chairman Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga: “I don’t think Republicans have any idea how much they’re going to miss Ken Maddy.”

However, politics has taken a toll--personally and financially--on the twice-divorced Maddy. “It’s probably the best thing for me to get out,” he says.

But not the best thing for the state.