O.C.’s Bill Campbell Ousted as Assembly Republican Leader

Assemblyman Bill Campbell of Villa Park was unanimously ousted as Republican leader by his GOP colleagues Monday, becoming the most high-profile political casualty of the energy crisis.

Republicans replaced the soft-spoken, conservative Campbell with scrappier, more moderate Assemblyman Dave Cox, a former municipal utility board member from the Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks.

The coup--sudden if not unexpected--came amid mounting criticism by Republican lawmakers that Campbell had been too timid in his response to the power crisis and too reluctant to take on Gov. Gray Davis and the Democrats who run the Legislature.

Republicans were worried that his nonconfrontational approach would continue during state budget deliberations and the vital redrawing of legislative seats for the next decade, which will take place this year.

Campbell, who joined in the vote for Cox but appeared shaken by his ouster, did not elaborate on the reasons for his removal or the different direction Republicans planned to pursue, saying only, “You’ll have to ask Dave.”

Cox declined to discuss how his tenure would be different, saying only that he planned to be “more proactive” on energy issues. He said that he would present a detailed Republican solution to the energy crisis--a response to criticism by Democrats that the GOP has done nothing but knock down their efforts to forge a solution.

“The majority determines who the leader is,” Cox said. “I am not going to assess Mr. Campbell’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Two local Assembly members, John Campbell (R-Irvine) and Lou Correa (D-Anaheim), had praise for the ousted leader, but added that the usual rough-and-tumble politics in Sacramento has become more so because of the debate on energy.

“This energy thing has been all-consuming and a difficult . . . intense thing,” John Campbell said. “There are people who aren’t happy with the way it’s been managed.”

The direction that state government has been going “has been awful,” he added, and “certainly the feeling among some Republicans is we should have stopped it but it continues to be going in a crash and spin mode.”

As for Correa, the debate has become a challenge for all legislators--including Democrats, despite the fact they are in the political driver’s seat.

“The Democrats may control the Assembly in terms of a majority, but the Republicans continue to play an important role in votes that require a two-thirds vote,” Correa said. “The Republicans are very important in that process, and working in a bipartisan manner is the way to be.”

Assembly GOP leaders are notoriously short-lived--Cox becomes the fifth in the last four years--and rumors of a leadership challenge had swirled around Campbell almost since he won the job last November.

Republicans have for years been engaged in a debilitating internal conflict between conservative and moderate factions in the lower house, and now hold just 29 of its 80 seats. But Campbell’s ouster had nothing to do with ideology, fellow Republicans said--it was leadership style and probably would have occurred sooner or later, regardless of the energy crisis.

Nonetheless, it was clearly the energy crisis that became Campbell’s undoing, as he acknowledged.

“The Legislature was trying to do the leadership job that the governor should have been doing,” Campbell said. After the November elections brought a dozen new GOP legislators to the lower house, “we [Republicans] were all in a crisis mode without having a chance to develop the relationships.”

He was one of two Republicans in January to initially vote for the Davis-backed bill that placed California in the electricity buying business and retained his leadership post.

However, Campbell’s response last week to legislation dealing with alternative energy producers that was opposed by Republicans was apparently the final straw.

GOP lawmakers, who scuttled the alternative energy bill by Democrat Fred Keeley (D-Boulder Creek) last week, met Monday morning and again in the afternoon to debate Campbell’s leadership, and eventually elected Cox as his successor.