Column: Outgoing Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon on why politicians won't save California

June 24, 2023 5 AM PT

Next week, Anthony Rendon will step down as speaker of the California Assembly and enter the political record books.

The 55-year-old is the third-longest-serving speaker in California history, behind only legislative titans Willie Brown and Jesse Unruh. Rendon’s tenure is even more remarkable considering he did it in an era of term limits, with a personality far more cerebral and subdued than the Machiavellian volubility of his predecessors.

Rendon and I first met about four years ago, and we’re friendly enough that we text each other about once a week — rarely politics, mostly food and literature. He’s running for state treasurer and will continue to represent his district until he terms out in 2024.

I think he would have more fun teaching philosophy at his alma mater, Cerritos College. Yet he’s no shrinking violet.

The Rendon I’ve known is a funny, profane guy who lives to learn and takes lessons even from humiliations. Like the first time he sat down with Brown, at an old-school steakhouse in San Francisco soon after becoming speaker.

“He’s way in the back, and I see him holding court,” Rendon told me last Friday as we enjoyed a delicious lunch at Str8t Up Tacos in Lakewood, a favorite of his. Old-school funk played in the background as zillennial eaters chatted away around us. “Everybody said, you know, ‘He has cataracts, his vision is terrible.’ I waited for like 20 minutes.

“And then finally I’m like, ‘I’d better go tap him on the shoulder so we can have dinner,’ ” he continued. “And he said, ‘I was starting to wonder if you were just going to stare at me all f— night.’”

Rendon helped win back a Democratic supermajority in the Assembly, allowing the chamber to embark on an ambitious liberal remake of the Golden State that’s the envy of progressives nationwide — and that turned us into a conservative punching bag. That’s what makes his political denouement so surprising — Assemblymember Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) will replace him after a yearlong struggle that split California Democrats.

If the outgoing speaker is bitter, he sure didn’t show it during our lunch.

He wore his usual uniform of jeans and ironed white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A black leather bracelet was clasped around his left wrist. I didn’t want to go through the greatest hits of his career, because that would’ve been boring. Instead, I tossed random questions, and he offered answers short and long and always thoughtfully entertaining.

Rendon said that Dadaism is a better guide on governing well (“it’s all situationism”) than political biographies (“intolerably boring”). He ridiculed L.A. Councilmember Kevin de León’s performative politics: “You spend 30 minutes walking through Skid Row — I don’t care. That doesn’t impress me.”

Rendon characterized a recent L.A. Times investigation into how the income of his wife — a consultant and nonprofit executive — grew as his power rose in Sacramento as “sexist.” The continued political scandals coming out of Los Angeles City Hall? “Stunning, depressing and unconscionable.”

What was most interesting about our one-hour chat was Rendon’s skepticism about his profession’s role in creating a better future for the state.

I asked how he feels about California right now.

“The same way I thought about it coming in. It’s, um …”

He chewed on his taco for a bit.

“A lot of good and a lot of bad. I think we failed to inspire ourselves in the same way that we inspire others. It’s amazing the extent to which California has the sort of psychic pull on people. And I don’t know that we feel that way about it ourselves.”

He blamed politicians for deflating public optimism about the state, mostly by trying to hog the definition of the California dream. As an example, he cited a speech by a well-known legislator whom he declined to name on the record.

“My fellow politicians were like, ‘Oh, he’s so good. He’s so good.’ And I thought, ‘He’s kind of boring.’ And he’s better than most! But it just sounds like boosterism. In California, I mean, the boosterism has at times been deadly.”

He name-dropped William Mulholland, the Los Angeles civil engineer whose creation of a massive aqueduct that took water from the Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley forever changed the state’s water policies. Mulholland was also the architect of St. Francis Dam, which collapsed in 1928, leading to the death of more than 450 people — the second-worst loss of life in California history after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

“It’s best for politicians to give voice to others,” Rendon concluded. “I think that’s the best thing we can do.”

Rendon has every reason to be suspicious of his peers. A #MeToo scandal among Assembly Democrats led to resignations that temporarily ended the party’s supermajority. Closer to home, so many public officials in the Southeast L.A. County cities Rendon represents were charged, arrested or convicted of political crimes that he memorably described the area in 2021 as a “corridor of corruption.”

It was non-politicians who brought the region back from the brink, he said — by eventually running for office themselves when they didn’t like what they saw.

“Do you want to hear my perverse theory?” he said with a smile. “Twenty years ago, you’re a good student from a Southeast [L.A. County] high school, and you go off to college. And then you graduate and you go live in Pasadena or Westwood, wherever. Housing prices then made it prohibitive for people to do anything other than to move back with Mom and Dad.

“And then you buy the house or you see the house across the street and you buy that, which is way more affordable than, you know, where your college-educated peers live. So you live in the community, and then you discover you don’t have the amenities, the whatevers that everybody else has, and you decide to run for office.

“There’s still a couple of knuckleheads” in Southeast L.A. County government, Rendon concluded. “But there’s a whole new generation. They’re not ‘in’ politics yet. And they’re good. They’re really, really good.”

What advice would he give Rivas, his successor?

“I’m from Western California, and so is he,” he said. “We’ve done a s— job with Eastern California. You draw a straight line through California. Coachella, Inland Empire, Central Valley up to Redding and up. We’ve done a s— job of making sure there’s anything close to equity in terms of resources on their side of the line.”

During one election cycle, Rendon remembers barnstorming the state to support candidates with multiple speeches a day — “and sometimes you recycle s—, right? And I’m giving a speech in Westwood. I’m giving a speech in San Francisco, giving a speech to Santa Barbara, and then I don’t know where I was — maybe near Hanford. I started giving this speech about the California dream.

“I looked around and I was like, ‘F—.’ This is not the place for that. It’s incorrect. It’s lying to people.”

He described his ignorance as typical of the “internal colonialism” that governs California politics, a sin made worse for him because the cities he represented have long lived in the shadow of Los Angeles.

“You have to have this sense of a kid in Bell or Walnut Park, and just like, looking down” at the Alameda Corridor “and seeing like, ‘Wow, look at that. There’s a job there. There’s a job there. And it’s going right under me. And it’s just passing me by.’

“What happens in Sacramento is important from a symbolic standpoint,” Rendon continued. “It’s important in terms of formalizing things. Politicians can sometimes stand in the way of change. But if culture changes, then everything changes.”

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon with ice cream

I asked the last, obvious question: How would history remember him?

“My chief of staff recently said, ‘You were a wartime speaker’” — referencing the famous “wartime consigliere” line in “The Godfather,” with the smartest advisors being those who rise to face problems and know how to fight.

Rendon rattled off just a few of the travails California has experienced since 2016, when he assumed the speakership: Donald Trump. Drought. COVID-19. Civil unrest during the summer of 2020. Election misinformation ever since. A multibillion-dollar budget deficit that Rivas must now confront.

“So we faced a lot of tough s—,” he said. “And rather than crawling into a ball and just trying to protect what we had, we were aggressive and tried to do even more.”

Rendon got up. A meeting with constituents beckoned. He began to walk out the door, then remembered a pack of tortillas he had left on the table. He grabbed them, grinned and offered me one final “Godfather” quote.

“Don’t forget the cannoli.”

Column: Outgoing Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon on why politicians won’t save California

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