Outnumbered, Republicans Showed Strength

One-party rule in Sacramento? Don’t tell that to Gov. Gray Davis. His fellow Democrats, either. In the end, it was the lowly Republicans whom Davis had to deal with to attain the water bond bill he craved to crown a triumphant legislative session.

All in all for Davis, his first lawmaking session wound up an unqualified success--one whose end-product mostly reflected the governor: moderate, cautious and incremental, from bills on education to HMOs to water.

More than one-party rule, it was Gray Davis rule. The centrist governor held a brake on the Democratic Legislature’s liberal tendencies. “He regulated our appetites,” says Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek).

“Listen, I don’t take big, bold steps,” Davis told several Republicans as he lobbied them Friday night on the water bond, after Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) had urged him to be as bold on water development as Gov. Pat Brown was 40 years ago.

“I believe in incremental results. I plod along methodically. I’m the patron saint of plodders.”

Davis’ two toughest victories of the 1999 session came on its final day after intense, tenacious negotiations--Indian gambling at 1 a.m. and water at 10 p.m. In each, so-called one-party rule--Democrats controlling both the Legislature and the governor’s office--was practically irrelevant.

It is a two-party system, after all. And even the weaker party occasionally gets to flex its muscle.

Assembly Republicans--outnumbered 47-32--got their opportunity Friday on a bill the governor desperately needed.

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Davis has this recurring nightmare--stemming from real life experiences--that California, on his watch, will suffer another devastating drought or flood. Probably both, based on history. And he doesn’t want to be seen as asleep at the switch.

But as Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno), a 20-year veteran of the water wars, noted: “He knows that the water issue is full of mines.”

Costa and Assemblyman Michael Machado, a San Joaquin County Democrat and rancher, packaged the $1.97-billion water bond proposal now destined for the March ballot. They sponsored a similar version last year, but Machado’s adult son died in a tractor accident near the end of the session. That scuttled crucial negotiations and the bill. So the passage of a revised bill one year later was especially meaningful for Machado.

The trick for Costa and Machado in avoiding the killer mines was to write a proposal that contained enough water development and local projects to attract Republicans and farmers, without alienating liberal Democrats and environmentalists with reservoir construction.

Environmentalists are adamantly opposed to building new reservoirs--they’ve got their heads in the sand and can’t see the millions more people coming--and Senate leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) is solidly with them.

The Costa-Machado bill contains no reservoir money. But it does include hundreds of millions of dollars for developing new water supplies through underground storage and infrastructure fix-ups--enough, the authors say, to substitute for a moderately sized dam. There also are many millions for flood control, watershed protection, conservation and a water cleansing.

That was enough to sell Senate Republicans and Democrats alike. In fact, a Republican--Sen. Chuck Poochigian of Fresno--was one of the bill’s leading salesman.

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In the Assembly, however, Republicans balked. They demanded money for off-stream reservoirs to hold surplus flood waters. The measure needed a two-thirds majority vote--54--and fell three short.

After hours of GOP caucuses, rumination and milling around, Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) called Davis and said, “You’d better talk to these people.”

Davis did--to a dozen--for two hours. And this is what the GOP got: a written promise to budget another $20 million next year for reservoir studies, plus a wink for $25 million in local pork. The clincher was Davis’ promise that if the studies concluded more reservoirs were needed, he’d fight for them--and fight Burton. Then the water bond sailed out of the Assembly, 65-11.

“The governor was pleasant, methodical and direct,” said Assembly GOP leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach. “We’ll hold him to his promises.”

It capped not only a victorious session for Davis, but a week of relevancy for Assembly Republicans. Earlier, they had blocked a proposed package of new money for highway construction, insisting on more pay-as-you-go financing rather than bonds.

Davis ran for governor as a man with “experience money can’t buy.” He now has profited from a new experience and learned a lesson: Despite all the one-party hype, Republicans have some power, too. They may be few, but they’re feisty and can’t be ignored.