Leadership Door Revolves

One Southern California Democrat succeeded another this week as speaker of the 80-member state Assembly, but the comparison pretty much ends there. Herb Wesson, a native of Cleveland who once sold pots and pans door to door, will direct the sometimes-unruly house with a far different style from that of predecessor Bob Hertzberg of Sherman Oaks.

Wesson, 50, of Los Angeles, is offering members a more collaborative manner of leadership than Hertzberg, known as a micromanager who sometimes did not listen well enough. Part of the job is to mediate disputes within the Assembly and the Democratic caucus and to bring competing parties toward compromise. It’s not a duty for the impatient.

Wesson’s collaborative style helped win him election to the speakership by acclamation, only the second time that has happened. Of course, this initial popularity does not tell how effective a speaker Wesson will be, as a leader and chief legislator in a painful time of shrinking resources. He spent much of his career in government as a subordinate, first as an aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden and later to county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

Wesson was elected to the Assembly in 1998 and was chairman of the Governmental Organization Committee, a position that allowed him to raise lots of money to help fellow Democrats because the panel receives legislation that affects well-heeled special interests. Such fund-raising has unfortunately been a key for anyone aspiring to be speaker.

Wesson’s honeymoon will be short. With term limits allowing Assembly members just six years in office, a speaker serves two years at most. Wesson must deal immediately with the state budget crisis. He will have to negotiate with Gov. Gray Davis and Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, both of whom far surpass him in elected political experience.

Wesson sometimes exudes the air of a wheeler-dealer, a sort of “Guys and Dolls” character. But colleagues so far like his outgoing leadership style. “He has an iron fist in a velvet glove,” the ability to be congenial even in addressing tough decisions, said one.

Assembly speakers aren’t the ruling powers they were before term limits: Think Willie Brown. Think Jess Unruh. But the effectiveness of a legislative session still greatly depends on the speaker. Wesson will need lots of both iron and velvet to succeed.