Lawmaker’s Star Rises in Fight to Keep the Lights On

At the center of the imbroglio over how to protect California from the ravages of a runaway electricity market is a smooth-talking liberal from Santa Cruz County who is rapidly emerging as one of the Legislature’s brightest stars.

Eloquent and erudite, with a relaxed manner of speaking that allows him to communicate complex ideas, Assemblyman Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek) has emerged as the key player in the Legislature’s efforts to craft a solution to the state’s power woes.

Keeley, who wields the gavel in the Assembly as speaker pro tempore, is carrying the legislation that would allow California to buy electricity through long-term contracts with power plant owners.

The bill is seen as a critical step in moving California away from buying power on the expensive spot market, as it is doing under the state of emergency declared by Gov. Gray Davis, and into a more financially reasonable power buying arrangement.

If the plan fails, California could find itself in the disastrous predicament of committing far more than the $400 million it has already allocated to keep the lights on.

“I’m just an Assembly member,” said Keeley, 50, on Friday as he presented his legislation to the Senate Energy Committee. “I am not an energy expert.”

It is not the first time Keeley has risen to prominence in a time of crisis.

When the lower house held an extraordinary series of hearings last year into the questionable activities of former Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush after the Northridge earthquake, it was Keeley who became the most probing, meticulous questioner.

A former member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, Keeley was one of the few legislators on the revamped Assembly Insurance Committee who did not possess a law degree.

Nonetheless, he was chosen as one of the lead players by Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) and the lawyers counseling the quasi-judicial oversight hearings, repeatedly yet politely serving up incisive questions.

“Does this refresh your memory about any conversations you or any others might have had with the commissioner?” Keeley said during one pointed exchange with political consultant Joel Shumate.

Keeley was clutching an e-mail that showed Shumate had been talking with Quackenbush about how the politician’s screen time could be enhanced in a series of television commercials funded with secret insurance company settlements--if earthquake victims were cut out.

“He was entirely nonpartisan, methodical and very accommodating to every member of the committee,” said Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Northridge), one of the hearing’s other prominent actors. “He was impressive.”

Quackenbush resigned before the hearings were over, rather than endure the probe into his controversial handling of Northridge earthquake claims and related secret settlements with insurance companies. The fallen GOP politician now lives in Hawaii, and two people entwined in the scandal were charged with felonies last week in federal court.

Keeley, a lanky, bald man who bears a physical resemblance to the character Capt. Donald Cragen from the television series “Law and Order,” is no stranger to intricate, divisive political issues. Often, they pertain to preserving the environment.

Two years ago, Keeley successfully shepherded a coastal protection bill to better manage fisheries that brought together environmentalists and fishermen. Last year, he advocated a moratorium on timber clear-cutting. His legislation fizzled amid opposition from the logging industry.

It was another failed environmental bill, a measure last year to have the state purchase the massive network of hydroelectric power plants owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, that apparently brought Keeley into the forefront of the current energy crisis.

Keeley wanted California to buy PG&E;’s network--a vast array of 174 dams, 68 powerhouses, 99 reservoirs and 382 canals and pipes that stretches from Redding to Bakersfield--because he feared that the utility’s proposal to sell it to the highest bidder would have serious consequences on water, power and the environment.

It is the largest privately owned network of dams in North America.

Viewed as farfetched by many of his colleagues last year, the proposal looks farsighted now. But Keeley has had little time to push for it. PG&E; withdrew its sell-off proposal last year. Last week, lawmakers passed a law banning utilities from selling power plants in the next five years.

Keeley was been entrusted with the power-purchasing legislation for a variety of reasons, Capitol insiders say: He has a background in utilities, he is regarded as a diligent worker and, most important, he has earned the trust of Hertzberg.

The usually well-tailored lawmaker has been working brutal hours to craft the Legislature’s plan; on the Martin Luther King holiday, he was seen walking around the Capitol rotunda in a rumpled Gold’s Gym sweatsuit.

It’s the most challenging task Keeley has faced in the Legislature. It could serve as his defining moment, or his biggest failure.

Keeley is in his final two-year term in the Assembly because of term limits. He is increasingly seen by some politicos as a candidate for statewide office.

Whatever the case, even his polar political opposites say Keeley has already made his mark in Sacramento.

McClintock, who served 14 years in the Assembly before moving to the upper house in November, said that in his role of shepherding the Assembly, Keeley was “head and shoulders the finest presiding officer I’ve ever had the pleasure to watch. He’s scrupulously fair, evenhanded. And the hotter the rhetoric on the floor, the cooler he became in managing it.”

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Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this story.