Jackson, Strickland End Terms

As Hannah-Beth Jackson, a liberal Democrat, and Tony Strickland, a conservative Republican, ended their days of lawmaking last week, they finally agreed on something: They don’t like term limits.

They’re getting better at the job every day, they said. But now it is time for the Assembly Class of 1998 to pack up and ship out.

That’s because voters in 1990 limited the time anyone can spend in the Legislature’s lower house to six years.

“Term limits are terrible,” said Jackson, 54, a Santa Barbara lawyer whose district includes part of Ventura County.

“We’re running the sixth-largest economy in the world, and the issues are enormously complex,” she said. “But we’re here for only six years. What kind of institutional memory can there be? What kind of long-term planning can we have? So lobbyists run the show.”

Like Jackson, Strickland said a 12-year limit would make more sense.

“Six years is a short amount of time,” said Strickland, 34, a former legislative aide from Moorpark, who turned over his chairmanship of the Assembly Republican Caucus in January because he was a lame duck. “It just goes by so fast. And some reforms take time.”

Even on term limits, however, Jackson and Strickland have differences: Jackson would change the system in a heartbeat. Strickland wouldn’t, unless polls showed voters concurred.

Then again, these two political bookends have disagreed so often on so many things over the years that they represent the yin and the yang of Ventura County politics -- its environmental heart versus its conservative soul.

“Tony and I have a very pleasant relationship,” Jackson said. “We talk sports a lot, and we disagree on just about everything else.”

At 6 feet, 5 inches, Strickland was a college basketball star, while the diminutive Jackson was a New England junior tennis champion. But even on that level, there is amiable conflict.

Two weeks ago, Strickland’s Republicans beat Jackson’s Democrats in the annual legislative softball game, and shortstop Strickland’s diving catch of Jackson’s line drive was a key play.

“He robbed me,” Jackson said, grinning.

“I hit a home run, and turned a few double plays,” Strickland said with a laugh. “I was the MVP.”

Both Strickland and Jackson -- if not the MVPs of their parties in the Assembly -- were certainly memorable participants, holding key leadership positions and shining brightly when the political stars aligned for them.

While championing women’s issues, school safety and the environment, Jackson chaired the 36-member Legislative Women’s Caucus and led the Assembly’s environmental and coastal caucuses. She served on the state Coastal Conservancy and Wildlife Conservation Board, powerful boards that helped spend billions of dollars in bond money in recent years.

Environmental and social service groups regularly named her Legislator of the Year.

“I think Beth was one of the best-qualified freshmen I’d ever seen,” said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica). “People did give her a hard time [because of her aggressive style], but she stuck to her guns.”

Strickland, a leader in the Assembly’s Republican minority, made a name for himself as a thorn in the side of former Gov. Gray Davis, even suing Davis to force the release of energy contracts during the power crisis. And he helped block tax increases even when the state faced a $38-billion revenue shortfall in 2003.

California’s conservative Young Republicans honored him with special awards.

“He was a strong leader in the minority party,” said Herb Wesson of Los Angeles, the top-ranking Democrat in the Assembly during the two years Strickland headed the Republican Caucus. “We did pass some Republican bills. And he tried to unify his caucus. I like him. He’s my friend.”

A contrast in style and perspectives, Jackson and Strickland stood out in their Assembly class from the first day.

Strickland was a head taller than his colleagues and, at 28, the youngest member of the Assembly. He remains the youngest Republican. And with an easy friendliness, he hugged Democrats and Republicans alike. Almost immediately he was named to his party’s leadership circle.

Jackson was striking because of her cool, precise demeanor, nailing every word like a tennis serve. Democratic colleagues anointed her the first in her class to preside over the Assembly just six months after being elected.

During their six years, Jackson and Strickland took very different paths. She focused on policy, he on politics.

Always a member of the majority, she was among the Assembly leaders in bills passed into law. He sought leverage not through lawmaking, but in budget and tax measures that required a two-thirds vote, since Democrats never reached that super-majority.

In the end, colleagues said, both were effective, sometimes prompting caustic comment by rivals.

Critics said early on, and still say, Jackson needs to ratchet down her passion so she can make points without offending conservative colleagues. Strickland, some colleagues said, tended to speak before he had the facts, and then faltered on his delivery. But many say he’s gotten better with experience.

Jackson and Strickland pulled no punches when evaluating each other.

She considers him a simple ideologue.

“I think Tony really reflects the intractable view that government is bad and that taxes should just go away,” she said. “Just recently he got up to oppose a fee increase on polluters. He thinks they shouldn’t clean up their messes. I like Tony, but he misses the mark as a representative of the people.”

He considers her an enemy of business.

“I can’t think of more of a job killer in the Legislature than Hannah-Beth Jackson,” he said. “She’s from the extreme left.”

Is he from the extreme right? “No. I’m a Reagan Republican. I believe tax cuts keep the economy going. We have nanny government here in Sacramento that says legislators know more than people do.”

Strickland took pride last year when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first act as governor was to roll back a $4-billion car tax, a move Strickland and his mentor, state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), had advocated for years. The couple of hundred dollars a car owner gets back each year “is enough to buy kids Christmas gifts,” Strickland said.

On the Assembly floor one recent morning, Strickland, now out of the leadership, never spoke publicly. But Jackson confronted Assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) and corrected what she perceived as errors in comments by another colleague on whether state fisheries are depleted.

“I oppose this attacking of trial lawyers,” Jackson said to Mountjoy, trying to keep him on the point of a bill. “Let’s focus on what this issue is.”

Retorted Mountjoy: “The last time we had an attack ... it was Miss Jackson on [GOP Assemblyman] Ray Haynes.”

Later, Mountjoy, an affable conservative, said he has been called on a point of order perhaps 25 times in four years in the Assembly, and at least 20 were by Jackson.

“I do not agree with Hannah-Beth most of the time,” he said. “But she has the conviction of her principles. I think everyone here could learn from Hannah-Beth Jackson. In fact, I invite her fishing all the time. She tells interesting stories. And she’s a real lady.”

Jackson and Strickland arrived at a time that might be called the Era of Good Feelings in the Assembly. Since then, partisan bickering has increased, especially during the recall of Davis and during budget deliberations in 2003 and this year.

“The partisanship is just mind-boggling; we’re moving backward,” Jackson said, citing a recent vote against a Women’s Equality Day resolution by Haynes, a former senator from Riverside who moved to the lower house in 2002.

“The ideological intractability of neoconservatives up here is very scary,” she said.

Haynes, also a lawyer, said Jackson “demonizes” those who oppose her positions. He said he objected to the women’s day resolution because it contained factual errors.

“She tends to attack the person,” he said. “And that’s harmful.”

But to Wesson, that same Jackson passion is an asset. “She’s brutally honest. Hannah-Beth leads with her heart, and that’s refreshing.”

It’s also history.

Both Jackson and Strickland return to their private lives in December. She would like to run for Congress when Democratic Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara retires. And he’s eyeing a state Senate seat if McClintock runs for lieutenant governor or controller in 2006.

But for a while both will head nonprofit think tanks aimed at forwarding their political beliefs.

“We want to articulate what the priorities of California should be,” said Jackson, who will lead the Institute for the Renewal of the California Dream. “We’re always reacting to things instead of being proactive. Special interests always have greater impact on legislation; we want the people to, instead.”

Strickland has been named president of the California Club for Growth, an offshoot of a national anti-tax organization co-founded by economist Arthur Laffer, known for his supply-side theories. The group expects to raise millions of dollars to support conservative Republican candidates in California -- and to oppose moderate Republicans as well as Democrats, Strickland said.

“We’ll make sure we have people in Sacramento who remember the taxpayer,” Strickland said. “We’re for less regulation and against higher taxes. We’re going to go after candidates who don’t represent those values.”

One who does is Strickland’s wife, Audra, a private school teacher who hopes to replace him in the Assembly after the November election. She was in Strickland’s office in the Capitol last week, making telephone calls while he gave an interview in an aide’s cubicle.

“I’m just up visiting my husband, being supportive in Tony’s last week,” she said.

And he needed it. He was becoming sentimental about leaving 17 colleagues who have remained with him in the Assembly since 1998, and whom he now considers friends.

“We’ve already had our going-away breakfast and we just had our dinner two nights ago,” he said. “Last night, we had our last Governmental Organization Committee meeting. And I’m thinking to myself it may be my last committee meeting ever.”