Brown Dazzles Both Sides With Survival Skills

SACRAMENTO â€”  As Willie Brown’s Assembly Democrats gathered Monday to discuss the imminent vote for the leadership of the Legislature’s lower house, one of Brown’s longtime allies said privately that he wished the Speaker would simply give up, gracefully.

A few minutes later the same lawmaker emerged from the Democrats’ closed-door strategy session grinning sheepishly.

“They’re pulling a rabbit out of the hat,� he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

A rabbit indeed. The hare Brown yanked from his figurative fedora Monday only added to his legend as a magician at manipulating the levers of power in Sacramento.

No one who has watched Brown for the past 14 years had truly counted him out, even when Republicans amassed a seeming majority, with 41 seats in the 80-member house. One GOP lawmaker, praising the Speaker’s survival instincts, termed him a political Houdini.

But seeing a master at work can still amaze, even when you know his abilities.

“He is the smartest person you are ever going to meet in this business,� said Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg, a Sacramento Democrat.

The Assembly chambers on Monday took on the aura of an arena before a championship fight. Packed with television reporters who rarely visit the Capitol for a battle over policy, the floor buzzed with conversation as Republicans prepared--they thought--to seize control for the first time in a generation.

Some of Brown’s old friends were there to witness the event.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) stood in the back of the chamber, second-guessing the Democrats as they clumsily tried to oust Republican Richard Mountjoy from the house because he was elected simultaneously to the Assembly and the Senate. Standing next to Waters was Alice Huffman, longtime political director for one of Brown’s biggest campaign contributors, the California Teachers Assn.

Mike Roos, a former assemblyman now running an education reform effort in Los Angeles, came, he said, to witness history. Roos, as Democratic majority leader and later second-in-command to Brown, was one of the Speaker’s most trusted lieutenants when they served together.

“This is a monumental moment for a true legend in American politics,� he said.

Perhaps more confident than others of his ability to hang on, Brown spent the weekend before what was supposed to be his political execution just the way he spends most of his time off--in his hometown of San Francisco. Brown returned to Sacramento Sunday night for a dinner with Assembly Democrats at Biba, a fashionable Italian restaurant near the Capitol.

Shaking off an inner ear infection, Brown breakfasted Monday morning on a banana and a glass of apple juice, then arrived at his office for meetings with his top deputies. After one final strategy session with Democrats--one also attended by four or five young children who were here with members for the swearing-in ceremony--Brown went to the floor, where as the senior member of the house, he led the newly elected members in the pledge to the flag.

When Assemblyman Paul Horcher of Diamond Bar bolted from the Republicans and voted for Brown, the Speaker seemed less surprised than anyone.

Brown had been wooing Horcher since the Nov. 8 election, though the Speaker says he never offered Horcher anything in return for his vote. Brown’s top aide said the Speaker never knew how the vote would go until Horcher announced it Monday, slamming his fist on his desk as he did so.

Since the first time he ran for the post 20 years ago--and lost--Brown has known that the vote for Speaker is something that rests on more than ideology.

Given a good shot to win the job at that time, Brown lost in part because he had not cultivated personal relationships with his peers. He spent the next six years doing just that, and in 1980 won the job when a coalition of Democrats and Republicans voted for him.

Brown never condoned the sort of ugly treatment of a member that Horcher received at the hands of his fellow Republicans after he accepted the Speaker’s offer to serve as vice chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee. One Republican called Horcher a “political whore� after Monday’s vote.

“Willie Brown learned the lesson in 1974--how you treat people as human beings is more important than political philosophy or anything else,� said state Sen. Steve Peace of Chula Vista, a former Assemblyman and member of a group of five rebel Democrats who tried and failed to oust Brown in 1988.

Brown, Peace noted, is known as a “members’ Speaker.� He sees as his constituency the 80 members of the Assembly more than the people of California. This fact has frustrated foes to no end but served Brown well for 14 years--a tenure nearly twice as long as anyone else who ever held the job.

Even the opposition was left in awe on Monday.

“He’s a very adroit, clever politician,� said newly elected Republican Chuck Poochigian of Fresno.

Times staff writer Jerry Gillam contributed to this story.