Speaker Puts Squeeze on Constituents

When Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg visited two San Fernando Valley farmers markets Sunday to chat up constituents, he handled the people he represents like produce.

He thumped them. He massaged them. And he poked.

Known in Sacramento as “Hugsberg,” the Sherman Oaks Democrat is hands-on in the most literal sense.

Like it or not, he will bearhug you, rub your shoulder or--if he really knows you--put you in a headlock.

“Don’t give me a hug,” Robert Rappaport of Van Nuys told Hertzberg at the Studio City Farmers’ Market, before complaining to him about high property taxes and a lack of government oversight.

But by the end of their conversation--which included an offer by Hertzberg to button Rappaport’s collar--the constituent had given in. There was an embrace.

“Here I was, to complain to him,” Rappaport said later, while Hertzberg was laying hands on someone else, “and here he was hugging me.”

Given California’s energy crisis, there might not have been so much love for Hertzberg--or at least submission to his hugging habit--if he represented an area of the state where power prices are peaking.

As it is, the residents of the 40th Assembly District get their electricity from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The DWP produces its own power and, therefore, can avoid the super-high prices that wholesale producers are charging California’s other energy companies. Still, energy was on the minds of Hertzberg’s constituents Sunday at the farmers markets in Studio City and Encino.

While Valley residents bagged their bok choy and licked the foam from their lattes, their representative in the statehouse opened for the fourth year his “mobile district office” to hear gripes, take suggestions and hand out pamphlets and potholders stamped with his name.

Deregulation ‘Screwed Up’

How did the energy crisis happen, many asked Hertzberg.

“It’s a hard question for me to answer,” he said, adding that his crash course in California’s energy problems has revealed to him that the rules of the state’s deregulated utilities market are “screwed up.”

“He seems like a very nice man,” said Hannah Beerman of Studio City, who met Hertzberg on her weekly trip for herbs.

“I just hope that he can help us with this electric situation.”

“We’re in the area of DWP, but we still should be concerned,” added Beerman’s daughter, Beverly Witt. (Both women got hugs.)

Indeed, even though Hertzberg’s constituents probably won’t face the rate hikes other Californians will, “You can’t have a famine three blocks away from where you have feast,” he said. DWP should sell even more of its surplus electricity to other areas to help bring prices down, he said.

In addition to talking about energy, Hertzberg’s constituents criticized the Department of Motor Vehicles, sounded off about sound walls on the freeways and lamented losing film production to Canada.

Standing by to take their complaints were no fewer than nine of Hertzberg’s field-office staff, looking ready for a regatta in matching wind jackets, hats and polo shirts monogrammed with their boss’ name and the state seal.

For the first two years of these annual meet-and-greets, Hertzberg set up his card table at grocery stores. Few people approached him, he said, particularly the year he did it around Thanksgiving. “People were on a mission,” he remembered. “They were racing in to get their turkeys.”

But at the open-air farmers markets, where shoppers can sample crisp Asian pears and grapefruits as big as a baby’s head, people are more chatty.

“Are you my representative?” asked Matthew Wolfson, a Van Nuys mortgage broker, attorney and accountant. “And speaker, too? Wow, two for one.”

Term Runs Out in 2 Years

Yes, but not for long. Hertzberg, who became Assembly speaker in April, must leave the Legislature’s lower house in two years because of term limits.

“I’m sorry to hear about that,” Wolfson told him. “We’ll have to get you elected to something else.”

After going over a list of her concerns with a Hertzberg aide, constituent Kristine Chinn seemed reluctant to meet the man himself.

Frankly, she knew he was touchy-feely, so she plotted how to approach him. “I’m going to put my hand out first,” she said. “It’s nothing personal against him. I’m just not a huggy person.”

And so Chinn walked toward Hertzberg, arm rigidly outstretched--a gesture that the 46-year-old assemblyman knows means no hug, please.

Hertzberg shook Chinn’s hand and looked her straight in the eye. They chatted briefly.

Then, yes, he hugged her.