Senator Pays Price for Defying GOP

Since he cast the lone Republican vote needed to approve a state budget in the Senate nearly two months ago, Sen. K. Maurice Johannessen of Redding has been booted from his party caucus and stripped of his leadership role.

He is no longer welcome at GOP lunches. He’s not provided official copies of party briefing papers on upcoming bills. And today, when members of the Senate pause to give a send-off to Johannessen, who is termed out, Republicans are not expected to speak up for him.

All of that has made the 68-year-old lawmaker nicknamed “Mojo” a walking warning sign of what can happen to a legislator who breaks ranks, particularly in the increasingly tense brinksmanship over the long-stalled budget. Defy leadership, Mojo’s plight attests, and isolation can be the price.

“When you get into a real budget battle, it becomes a test of character,” said Sen. Bill Morrow (R-Oceanside). “Maurice didn’t measure up. It becomes an issue of integrity and trust.”

Still, Johannessen says he has no regrets over his decision to vote for the budget, a vote he said he cast because he was convinced it was best for his constituents and for California. His district cuts through the middle of the state from the outer reaches of the Bay Area on up to the Oregon border, covering many of Northern California’s rural communities.

“I’m a conservative,” Johannessen said. “But I am not a demagogue.”

Johannessen’s unwillingness to stick with his party leadership was evident in his recent vote to approve a $99-billion spending package that includes about $4 billion in new taxes and other revenues. Johannessen’s vote gave Democrats just the number they needed to pass the budget out of the Senate and back to the Assembly, where it remains stuck.

It was not the first time Johannessen voted for a budget that his fellow Republicans opposed. He played a crucial role last year in passing a budget that contained a quarter-cent sales tax increase. His vote helped Senate Leader John Burton (D-San Francisco) move the spending package onto the desk of Gov. Gray Davis.

His conservative colleagues pinpoint that act as the moment when they began to have serious misgivings about Johannessen.

Morrow recalled that before voting for the budget last year, Johannessen had encouraged his fellow Senate Republicans to fight for a key list of GOP priorities. But in the end, Morrow said, it was Johannessen who gave Democrats the decisive vote they needed to approve the plan.

When Johannessen repeated the act this year, Morrow and his conservative counterparts moved swiftly to oust him from their caucus and remove him as assistant leader.

Johannessen disputes Morrow’s portrayal of events and contends that in both cases he voted for the budget only after his caucus failed to propose solutions.

Burton says the Republican banishment of Johannessen is “unworthy.”

“He put his people and his district ahead of his party,” Burton said. “Where I come from that’s not necessarily a sin. He’s always been an independent guy.”

Johannessen bargained for his budget votes, securing deals on issues he cared about and nabbing plums for his district.

Among other things, he got money for rural law enforcement programs and extracted some concessions on taxes. Closer to home, Johannessen got the support of Democrats for construction of a veterans home in his hometown of Redding. That was an important coup for Johannessen, a Korean War vet and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

Johannessen counts the number of bills dealing with veterans affairs that he has managed to pass in his nine-year stint in the Senate as edging somewhere close to 40--an accomplishment he credits to his ability to work with Democrats.

“I’m more people-oriented than some of my colleagues would like me to be,” he said during an interview last week in his Senate office. The room is decorated with photos of Johannessen and Republican leaders, along with one of him and Gov. Davis.

Establishing a veterans home in Redding will allow vets who hail from his district to receive more visits from nearby family members. The same goes for a veterans cemetery, he added, that has broken ground in his district.

Johannessen says he is proud of the achievements, and he is quick to respond to his Republican critics. There’s a news ticker running across his Senate Web site that reads: “Senate Republicans Cover Up True Budget Negotiation Intentions.”

The headline leads to a lengthy essay by Johannessen in which he contends that he was booted from his caucus in retaliation for his vote on the budget. He also laments the old days when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle came together to work through difficult issues.

He contends his negotiations were carried out with the silent approval of GOP leaders and that he’s been made to be the party fall guy.

“Maybe the Republican Caucus should have cast one more vote before they left town and voted themselves hypocrites of the year,” he wrote.

Caucus Whip Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside) describes those events differently. Haynes said Johannessen wasn’t ousted for voting for the budget, but rather for negotiating with Democrats outside the caucus.

Had Johannessen stuck with the caucus, Haynes contends, Democrats would have been forced to negotiate with GOP leaders from both houses on a compromise spending package.

What has happened instead, Haynes explained, is that after the Democrats who control the Capitol secured the one Republican vote needed to approve the budget in the Senate, they embarked on a similar approach in the Assembly.

So far the approach has failed, resulting in the continuing standoff.

“He essentially neutered all 13 of us because he cut the deal on his own,” Haynes said. “He got everything he wanted, and we all got screwed. If Mojo had stuck with us, we could have had a budget.”

Johannessen, who was born in Oslo and entered the United States 1952 by leaving a merchant ship docked in San Pedro, said he is not bothered by his exclusion. The caucus lunches, for instances, he said he can do without.

“Sometimes we had some pretty good Frank Fat’s food, but other than that, I don’t miss it at all,” said the senator.

As for no longer receiving the bill analyses prepared by the Senate Republican fiscal staff, Johannessen said he does not need them. Besides, he added, other caucus members have offered to let him look at their copies.

“They’re still my friends,” he said of most. “A couple of them won’t talk to me. I suppose they really believe that politics is more important than policy.”

Even Haynes, who has expressed disappointment with Johannessen’s votes, acknowledges that he likes him. Still, politics requires loyalty, Haynes said, and Johannessen has not measured up.

“I used to play football, and I understand the concept of a team,” Haynes said. “The biggest deal in a team is when a play is called, everyone runs the same play. Senate Republicans lost the game because Mojo called his own play. In those instances, the rest of the team says, ‘Try and run the ball on your own’ .”