Political Middle Ground Is Fertile for Pair

These are lonely times in the capital’s political middle. So it was that Keith Richman and Joe Canciamilla, assemblymen from opposing parties and opposite ends of the state, found each other.

Now this unlikely duo, their friendship forged out of frustration with what they see as Sacramento’s stubborn partisanship and gridlocked governance, are taking aim at the state’s daunting budget mess.

Canciamilla, a Democrat from the Bay Area city of Pittsburg, and Northridge Republican Richman are pushing for that rarest of events: timely, bipartisan approval of the state’s spending plan.

Starting in January, they pulled together a few like-minded Republican and Democratic colleagues, meeting weekly to talk over the nuts and bolts of the budget in a cooperative attempt to close the state’s $35-billion shortfall.

In a town where toeing the party line and deferring to political leaders is de rigueur, the mavericks risked being branded as traitors and targeted come election time.

Republicans, dominated by the party’s conservative wing, worried that the moderate Richman might do the unthinkable -- support a tax increase. Democrats, led by liberals, grumbled that middle-of-the-roader Canciamilla was legitimizing the GOP’s hard-line calls for spending cuts.

“We’re viewed with suspicion from both sides,” Canciamilla said. Richman said: “Initially there was some mistrust.”

As it has turned out, the Assembly’s Republican and Democratic leaders have embraced the pair’s freelance efforts -- at least publicly. Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City) views the cross-party conversation as “possibly an invaluable resource at the end of the day. The mind-set behind this was to get more people engaged in the budget earlier, and they have definitely accomplished that.”

In some ways, the two men leading this rebellion of the moderates seem oddball allies.

Richman, 49, is a physician from an affluent San Fernando Valley community and a political novice, though he did win the mayoral nod in the failed Valley secession vote.

Canciamilla, 48, is a lawyer and career politician -- most recently a county supervisor. He is from a blue-collar town where his family owns a mortuary.

With thick, graying hair swept back, Richman projects a country club style. Canciamilla comes off as quieter, wears a bracelet of Buddhist meditation beads and shocked his Assembly colleagues two years back by returning from a Hawaii vacation with his hair dyed blond. Richman was an all-conference baseball pitcher with a nasty slider, while the bespectacled Canciamilla is more wonk than jock.

But both boast resumes of high achievement early in life. Canciamilla landed a seat on the local school board at age 17; Richman earned admission to UCLA’s medical school during his junior year in college.

Unafraid of Dissent

Colleagues use similar terms to describe them -- bright, studious, thoughtful and committed. Neither shies away from voicing dissenting views. Both tend to be perfectionists. When they traveled at spring break to vacation three blocks apart at Poipu beach on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Canciamilla carted along a stack of budget material, “much to my wife’s chagrin,” to wade through with Richman.

They arrived in the Assembly at the same time -- January 2001. And both quickly ran aground on a common frustration: the wide partisan gulf and the Legislature’s seeming inability to get tough business done. Canciamilla says the Assembly is “less deliberative than the Pittsburg school board.”

Both men cited three reasons. Stricter campaign fund-raising rules, they said, make legislators more beholden to party leaders and less independent. Redistricting has created safe harbors for each party, pushing Republicans further right and Democrats further left as candidates strive to prove their ideological purity in pivotal primary elections. Finally, term limits have created a perpetual election season, prompting legislators eyeing their next step up the ladder to aim for quick victories instead of tackling more complex, politically risky problems.

“We shared similar frustrations with the place,” Canciamilla said. “It just seemed a natural fit. It’s hard to find people here who you mesh with, because a lot of your colleagues will view you as a potential competitor at some level or another.”

But it has been this year’s budget fight that truly unleashed their compatibility.

In a typical year, the party in power -- for more than a quarter of a century, the Democrats -- conducts a war of attrition, waiting out foes and picking off stray members of the opposing party to reach the two-thirds majority threshold for approval of a spending plan. A select few leaders handle negotiations, and the final assent by members usually occurs in chaotic fashion well beyond the constitutional deadline.

Richman and Canciamilla hate that approach. And with the huge budget shortfall the state is facing, they said, it is irresponsible at best. The choices are far harder and the long-term stakes are much higher. Negotiations are trickier than ever, and from the outset, party leaders talked as if a budget wouldn’t be delivered until October, November or maybe ever. Richman confessed that he was “personally embarrassed being part of an organization that was not doing its job.”

Interest Grows

Late in January, the two decided that they could stand idly by no more. They collected a few sympathetic legislators and met “off campus,” in one member’s home.

There were 10 or so at first, but of late the bipartisan working group has swelled to 18 members. Ten are Democrats, eight Republicans. Richman sweetened the early meetings by handing out small boxes of raisins.

The group wrote a letter to the two parties’ leaders, declaring that California needs to fundamentally reform its fiscal affairs and that the traditional method of preparing the budget would not work this year. They urged that a spending plan be adopted by June 15, the constitutional deadline that legislators routinely miss.

Canciamilla and Richman initially heard grumbling, but that paled compared with the fallout for three GOP legislators from Orange County branded in Orange County Register editorials as sellouts for participating in the group.

Of late, Republican leaders have been more kind. Assemblyman Ray Haynes (R-Murrieta), a conservative and a key GOP budget architect, called the bipartisan effort “a great back channel that brought a focus.”

But some Capitol insiders, particularly on the Democratic side, are privately skeptical.

“They’re not doing any damage, and they may in the end prove mildly helpful,” said one legislative veteran of many budget battles. “But their ideas aren’t nearly as new and magical as they think they are.”

Bruce Cain, a UC Berkeley political science professor, praised the bipartisan effort, saying that the “top-down” budgeting process that has prevailed since the late 1980s discourages rank-and-file legislators from truly understanding the state’s spending practices.

“It takes away the incentive for other members to get involved and really do their homework,” Cain said. “That breeds a certain irresponsibility on the part of members. The more you understand the complexities, the more you understand the hard choices.” And though there is political risk for the mavericks, Cain said, they could win points with voters by taking on the mantle of problem-solvers.

Canciamilla summed up their effect this way: “We’ve injected a little bit of uncertainty into the process, and that has kept people moving.”

Richman, meanwhile, said a prime accomplishment has been a refocusing on June 15 as a critical date for closure.

Not There Yet

There remain many miles to travel. But movement is afoot.

Last week, Republicans acknowledged for the first time that the state can’t simply cut its way out of this crisis, putting forth a plan that includes borrowing billions of dollars.

Richman and Canciamilla were in many ways at the center of it. For weeks, Richman prodded Republican leaders to let Canciamilla offer feedback and take back credible word to the Democrat leadership of the GOP’s serious intentions.

Finally, Canciamilla was ushered into the Republican budget meeting April 21, getting a look at the proposal before some members of the GOP rank and file. It was like taking a McDonald’s executive into a Burger King corporate meeting.

A huge chasm remains, but Richman and Canciamilla believe it can be bridged in the bipartisan middle. Canciamilla, half-owner of the family mortuary business, compares this evolution in budgetary thinking to the grieving process.

“People have to go through the different stages to reach a place where they can make tough decisions,” he said. “They get angry, they get frustrated, they get resentful, they deny the reality of the situation. We’re working through all that. This is not a place where people like to make difficult decisions.”

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Times staff writers Evan Halper and Nancy Vogel contributed to this report.