2 Speakers Offer a Study in Contrasts

One is a flashy, carefully coiffed former ACLU board member prone to impulsive political decisions.

The other is a frenetic, obsessively organized former bond lawyer who preaches “the process” at every opportunity.

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and the man who today will succeed him, Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg, share many traits, most notably a workaholic streak that stands out even among the ambitious, term-limited politicians of Sacramento.

But in ways both personal and political, the powerful Democrats could not be more different. Whereas Villaraigosa, a passionate liberal from central Los Angeles, touts his speakership tenure as having provided an opportunity to speak for the poor and powerless, Hertzberg, a pragmatic moderate from Sherman Oaks, likens his challenge in leading the lower house to a company’s quest to reinvent itself in the dot-com age.

Though the formal hand-over of power will take place this morning with pageantry on the Assembly floor, it really occurred last November.

That is when Hertzberg, a student of history who knew well what could happen if he hesitated, convinced Villaraigosa, a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, to leave his political perch earlier than he had wanted.

A quarter-century ago, Assembly Speaker Bob Moretti was running for governor and wanted to hand the speakership to his ally, Willie Brown. But he waited until June to do so. By then, his power had waned and he had gone “in the tank,” as Brown colorfully told it. Brown lost the vote, and was not elected speaker for another six years.

So a rare unanimous vote made Hertzberg’s ascension official in January, setting up today’s transfer. And Hertzberg has been running the show ever since, zipping around the Capitol with his color flow charts and statistics and unleashing his trademark bear hugs on friends and strangers alike. Villaraigosa increasingly spends his time stumping for votes in Los Angeles.

“Hertzberg is on the case, and he will leave no stone unturned!” the new speaker quipped this week during an interview in his office.

Inevitably, given the way they decided to handle the transition, there is now tension between Villaraigosa and Hertzberg, his former consigliere and detail man. They no longer share a Sacramento house, and they have begun differing on key political points.

“It’s like breaking up with a girlfriend--it’s always cleaner to just do it right away,” said one lawmaker, who requested anonymity. “They chose to drag it out for months, and so it should not be surprising that they began to get angry with each other, because it was not clear who had the power after a while.”

Publicly, both continue to express fondness for each other. Villaraigosa says Hertzberg deserves credit for much of what the outgoing speaker accomplished. Hertzberg says Villaraigosa should get some of the credit for what the new speaker is about to do. Hertzberg will get the speaker’s historic quarters, an office filled with antiques off the Assembly floor. In a nod to Villaraigosa, Hertzberg is ceding his former office to his old roomie. It’s a smaller but similarly stately office in a restored section of the Capitol.

Earlier this week, Hertzberg’s office was even more abuzz with activity than usual--and so was he, as he sat in the ornate chambers, unraveling pieces of chocolate from their golden foil and popping them into his mouth as if they were pieces of popcorn as he nursed a diet cola.

“This is a business where you are known for the last thing you did,” Hertzberg said, reiterating that for him, streamlining and strengthening the workings of the Assembly are a top priority. “I want to be known for making this institution work.”

He made clear he did not mean to disparage Villaraigosa, or those who came before him.

“Even if Willie Brown and Jess Unruh were serving today, without term limits, they would have to do things a different way,” he said. “The world has changed. You are judged much faster now. We live in a world of quarterly reports and daily stock prices.”

Those who know Hertzberg jokingly shudder when pondering just how many ideas he has. He said his other main priorities include improving public education, funding transportation projects and finding ways to keep California’s new, Internet-spurred economy chugging along. He also said he will fight to reduce the number of Californians without health insurance, currently more than 7 million, and improve services for the mentally ill.

Meanwhile, Villaraigosa’s office was much more subdued than usual, but was buzzing with a different kind of activity, as a group of strikers from the “Justice for Janitors” campaign in Los Angeles dropped in for a visit. Villaraigosa posed with them on the Capitol steps, and afterward a janitor told him the speaker had become one of her heroes for always wading into la lucha, or the struggle. Villaraigosa appeared moved by her remarks.

As he rode up the Capitol elevator, he joked to Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes (D-Fresno) that he was “riding into the sunset,” humming a western tune for emphasis. “But you are riding into a sunrise” in Los Angeles, Reyes retorted.

“I walked in here as a snot-nosed kid,” Villaraigosa said. Senate President Pro Tem John Burton of San Francisco made his disdain clear, Villaraigosa said, “but I earned his respect, even if I had to pop him in the nose a couple of times” on major issues.

He ticked off accomplishments, including the Healthy Families program to provide health care to children of the working poor, a $9.2-billion school construction bond and a $2.1-billion parks bond. But he said his legacy, if a speaker in the term limits era can be said to have one, is that he helped bring “dignity and respect” to a lower house that had seen its share of partisan Romper Room theatrics.

Assembly Minority Leader Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) agreed, noting that Villaraigosa for the first time in years let Republicans choose their own committee vice chairmen and expanded their budget rather than using his position to relegate them to a corner.

“There were still disputes, but there is no question he was gracious to me and the Republicans in giving us the resources to do what we wanted,” Baugh said. “He took hostility out of the equation.”