Chapter Twenty-One—
Deukmejian

I recognized early on the highest priority issue for Willie Brown was that he remain Speaker. He would be willing to negotiate and try to resolve differences, provided he not lose the confidence of his caucus, and remain as Speaker.
George Deukmejian
Governor of California,1983–1991

George Deukmejian, the new Republican governor, did not get off to an auspicious start with Willie Brown and his Democratic colleagues in the Capitol. Soon after he took office in January 1983, they sold the governor's mansion out from under him. The eleven-thousand-square-foot, eight-bedroom Spanish-style house in Carmichael was commissioned by Governor Reagan because Nancy Reagan detested the Victorian mansion in downtown Sacramento that had been the traditional residence of California governors for generations. Jerry Brown, who grew up in the old house, called the new mansion a "Taj Mahal" and refused to live in it.^[1] Deukmejian had no such compunctions, but he never got the chance to move into the new mansion. The place was sold, and Deukmejian lived in a high-rise condominium at 500 N Street, five blocks from the Capitol, until rich friends bought him a townhouse in the suburbs.

Deukmejian never quite got over his irritation at being locked out of the governor's mansion. But in January 1983 Deukmejian had bigger worries than where he lived. Jerry Brown had left a $1.5 billion deficit in the $27 billion state budget, handing his successor a fiscal crisis of unprecedented proportions.^[2] The surpluses of the 1970s were gone, and a recession in

the early 1980s had cut deeply into state revenues. The state stood on the verge of bankruptcy, unable to pay employees and creditors or to distribute money to schools, local governments, and the poor.

Over the course of the next six months, Deukmejian found his way out of the fiscal quagmire by forging a pragmatic alliance with Willie Brown. The crisis forced the two politicians to cooperate; their alliance was to last most of the next eight years. Their uneasy partnership brought tangible, though limited, results for both. To be sure, the 1980s were marked in large measure by political gridlock in Sacramento, mirroring a similar situation in Washington, D.C., with the Democrats controlling the legislative branch and the Republicans controlling the executive branch. California's biggest needs went largely unmet, both in Washington and in Sacramento. The quality of elementary through high school education in California declined precipitously as reading scores for fourth-graders sank to the lowest in the nation by the mid-1990s. An influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, strained an already overtaxed welfare system, and the state's once-proud transportation and water systems decayed badly, falling behind the pace of population and urban growth. Nonetheless, whatever progress was forged during the era came from the unlikely partnership between the very conservative governor and the very liberal Assembly Speaker. That they accomplished as much as they did was, in retrospect, remarkable.

By the standards of a later day, the 1983 budget deficit was not huge; closing a billion-dollar gap became weary routine in the Legislature in the 1990s. But in the early 1980s, after years of budget surpluses under Jerry Brown, the billion-dollar-plus deficit was incomprehensible to the state's political leaders. The budget mess forced the first policy crisis for both the new governor and the still relatively new Assembly Speaker. It took time for them to discover the threads that bound their political fate together.

Deukmejian came into office more attuned to legislators and their egos than any of his modern predecessors or his successor, Pete Wilson, who had been a legislator only briefly. He was one of them. But, on the surface at least, Deukmejian and Brown had little in common. Deukmejian was the antithesis of the Sacramento politician, the exact opposite of Willie Brown. Deukmejian's idea of a great weekend was to clean out the garage in his Long Beach home. He could not name the hottest four-star restaurant, and his clothes were strictly off the rack. He drove a station wagon, and unlike Jerry Brown's trademark Plymouth, it really was all he could afford. While his colleagues boozed and whored their way through legislative sessions, Deukmejian went home to his wife, Gloria, and their three children. The only weakness he would admit to was for Jamoca almond fudge ice cream.

Courken George Deukmejian . His wife and childhood friends called him "Corky," but campaign managers insisted his nickname was "Duke."^[3] They were so concerned that voters could not pronounce his surname that they purchased billboard space to spell it phonetically: "Duke-may-gin." Reporters constantly misspelled it, particularly those from the East Coast. His rhetorical skills were so leaden that he took speech lessons, which improved him from frightfully awful to merely bad. But those who underestimated George Deukmejian's political skill, and his shear tenacity, vastly miscalculated.

In 1955, fresh out of law school, Deukmejian tried his hand as a corporate lawyer for Texaco, and then he became a Los Angeles County deputy counsel. After a brief stint in private law practice, Deukmejian won a seat in the Assembly in 1962. He was not much of a standout in the Assembly, and his voting record reflected his white suburban constituents. He voted against Byron Rumford's landmark open-housing law, which prohibited discrimination against blacks. Deukmejian stepped up to a Senate seat in 1966 during the first election for a full-time Legislature. He eventually rose to Republican floor leader in the collegial Senate, and he unsuccessfully led the fight against Willie Brown's bill legalizing homosexuality.

There was really only one issue that interested Deukmejian—fighting crime. He made the death penalty into a personal crusade, making speeches laced with phrases about "punks and hoodlums."^[4] Deukmejian authored the state's 1977 law restoring the death penalty and the "use a gun, go to prison" sentencing law, successes that a year later catapulted him into the job of California attorney general, the most visible statewide office besides governor.

Deukmejian appeared content to run for reelection as attorney general in 1982. But influential Republicans were uneasy with the likely Republican nominee for governor, Mike Curb. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a mild-mannered, moderate Democrat, was strongly popular in the polls and stood a good chance of being elected the first black governor of California, especially if his opponent was Curb. Deukmejian got into the race late as an underdog. Although Curb was backed by many of Ronald Reagan's key supporters, Deukmejian proved an energetic campaigner and beat him in the June 1982 gubernatorial primary. Deukmejian was again rated as the underdog in the general election against Bradley. Indeed, exit polls on election day showed Bradley the winner, Deukmejian the loser. But a strong absentee vote against a handgun control measure propelled Deukmejian to victory over Bradley. Deukmejian was elected the thirty-fifth governor of California by a margin of six-tenths of 1 percent.

By the time he became governor, Deukmejian's ideas on crime were mainstream. His enthusiasm was for building prisons, appointing tough judges, and lengthening prison sentences. However, he was out of his depth on fiscal issues and had only a superficial understanding of the state budget. Deukmejian's approach to the budget was simple—he pledged not to

raise general taxes. Once in office, Deukmejian's tax pledge proved exceedingly hard to keep, especially with all the new prisons he wanted to build. The Democrats pushed hard for a tax increase to offset revenue losses for welfare and education programs, but were held back by the constitutionally required approval of two-thirds of both the Assembly and the Senate. The Democrats simply did not have fifty-four votes in the Assembly or twenty-seven votes in the Senate for a tax increase. By the same token, Deukmejian did not have the two-thirds vote needed to balance the budget only with cuts.

At first Deukmejian and Brown hurled insults at each other in public. "The relationship started out rocky in the sense that Governor Deukmejian and Willie Brown had a fundamentally different agenda," recalled Steve Merksamer, Deukmejian's politically astute chief of staff. But Deukmejian and Merksamer also grasped that if they were going to get anything done, they needed to understand what made Brown tick. "I personally spent a lot of time trying to figure out Willie Brown because I believed early on that Willie is certainly the key to the Assembly, and certainly to some extent, the key to the Legislature," said Merksamer.^[5]

The governor and his staff secretly sought the advice of two men who knew better than anyone else the political perils Brown faced: Jesse Unruh and Robert Moretti, the former Assembly Speakers.^[6] Few in the Capitol were aware of the extent to which Deukmejian and his aides relied upon Unruh and Moretti, or just how much time Unruh and Moretti spent helping the Republican administration figure out the Democratic Assembly Speaker. Their groundwork, although frequently frustrating, paid off and proved crucial to Deukmejian's successes as governor. Unruh and Moretti tutored the governor and his men about the pressures and conflicts facing Brown as he continued to solidify his hold on the Speakership.

Unruh was in his element helping Deukmejian. Unruh thrived as a power broker in Sacramento. As state treasurer, he transformed the sleepy outpost in state government into an empire with tentacles in every corner of state finance. Unruh built his power by setting up dozens of boards and commissions with oversight over state and local bonding and finance authorities, and then he mined the boards for patronage jobs he could dispense or give away as state treasurer. Unruh especially enjoyed working the Legislature, and he was frequently seen hovering in the Assembly chambers buttonholing a legislator for a vote on yet another bill creating yet another new state board or commission with himself as the chairman. As a former Assembly member, Unruh had the full privileges of the Assembly. As a friend of Willie Brown, he had full access to the Speaker's office. And helping Deukmejian with his problems paid off with signatures on bills creating new boards and commissions for Unruh to chair.

Merksamer spent hours talking with Unruh about Willie Brown, and he got an education from a master.

"Lookit, the guy is like an onion," Unruh told Merksamer. "And you peel off a layer, and there's another layer, and you peel off that layer and you find another layer. And you can keep peeling off layer after layer after layer, and you're still going to find layer after layer after layer. You're never going to get to the core, you'll never get to the bottom of it, so don't even try because I'm his best friend and I can't."^[7]

That did not mean, however, that Brown was impossible for Deukmejian.

"Recognize that you can deal with Willie Brown," Unruh told Merksamer. "He's an easy guy to deal with if you're willing to play by certain rules. He likes to share in the credit, and to the extent that he can get all the credit, it helps. He's not ideologically driven. He is result driven, and he likes to be in play. He likes to be the key player. If you're willing to permit him to be the key player, and share in some of the credit that goes with that, all kinds of good things can happen."^[8]

Meanwhile Deukmejian asked Moretti to serve as a go-between with Brown. "He did undertake to establish a bridge between us to bring us together on the issues," Deukmejian recalled.^[9] Deukmejian was more comfortable dealing with Moretti than with Unruh. Moretti had been a peer in the Assembly, but Unruh had been Speaker. Unruh was now a state office-holder representing the opposing party, and that made direct communication more awkward. But Moretti was a private citizen, and Deukmejian found him easy to work with. Moretti found ways to connect the Democratic Speaker with the Republican governor, and few inside the Capitol knew about it. Conversely, Moretti and Unruh both could also explain Deukmejian's problems to Willie Brown. The two were among only a handful Brown would listen to as an equal.

Deukmejian learned that the key to Willie Brown was in protecting his position as Assembly Speaker. As long as Deukmejian did nothing to endanger Brown's standing with the Democratic caucus, all things were possible. "I recognized early on the highest priority issue for Willie Brown was that he remain Speaker," Deukmejian observed. "He would be willing to negotiate and try to resolve differences, provided he not lose the confidence of his caucus, and remain as Speaker. We always tried to work with him so we would not jeopardize his position in his caucus."^[10]

For Brown, getting along with Deukmejian was not always easy. His Democratic colleagues disliked Deukmejian, both politically and personally, and that constrained Brown's room to negotiate. Brown personally found Deukmejian rigid, overly formal, and not particularly personable. Negotiating with Deukmejian was frustrating; he was slow to commit and was suspicious that Brown might be getting an advantage. As frustrations among rank-and-file Democrats mounted, Brown lashed out in public at the governor: "My guess is if Deukmejian's son was to get married tomorrow, there probably wouldn't be three members with whom he served that he would invite to

the wedding, or that would attend if they were invited."^[11] Brown's jab was below the belt, but it was also preposterous on its face. Deukmejian indeed hosted parties for legislators, and most came, including Willie Brown. The comment was meant to placate the Deukmejian-haters in the Democratic caucus.

Like Ronald Reagan a decade earlier, Deukmejian learned to ignore Brown's posturing in public. "Very often, in his rhetoric, he gets carried away with himself as he hears himself speaking," Deukmejian said. "I found that, unlike his public comment, Willie was very practical in his approach. He was not an ideologue."^[12]

Within four months of taking office, Deukmejian formed a durable working relationship with Brown. It started with the budget crisis. "After the skirmishing, the Speaker was very helpful in resolving the situation," Deukmejian remembered.^[13] They began meeting for lunch once a week, an appointment they kept up for the next eight years. Brown usually came alone, while Deukmejian had Merksamer at his side, or in the second term, Michael Frost, who replaced Merksamer as chief of staff.

During the winter of 1983, budget negotiations went on around the clock while state finances remained frozen. The government of California ran out of money and started printing registered warrants—IOUs. Of all the political leaders, Brown was the only expert in how the state budget worked. Brown's years as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee gave him a huge advantage over David Roberti, the Democratic leader in the Senate, and the Republican leaders in either house. "It was essentially a two-way conversation between Deukmejian and Brown, with comments from all the rest of us," said Merksamer. "The leadership did not come from the Senate, who were essentially nonparticipants. The leadership came from Deukmejian and Willie."^[14]

Deukmejian and Brown came up with a novel solution to the budget crisis.^[15] First, they agreed to $638 million in immediate budget reductions. There was really only about $100 million in real cuts; the rest came from raids on special funds and delays in construction and maintenance projects. Second, they agreed to an automatic 1-cent sales tax increase that would be triggered on October 1, 1983, if revenues fell below projections. Both leaders got bragging rights, and both shared in the political risk. Brown could tell Democrats that a tax increase was in place if it was needed to protect schools and welfare. Deukmejian could keep his no-tax promise by working to keep the budget under control for the rest of the year and prevent the sales tax from automatically going up. The Senate Democrats went along grudgingly. In its cleverness, the plan had Willie Brown's fingerprints all over it. It balanced the state budget, and it gave all but the most stubborn—or ideologically correct—an opportunity to save face. "It would not have been

put together but for the active involvement and leadership of the Speaker," Merksamer recalled a decade later.^[16]

The biggest obstacle to passage was the Assembly Republican caucus and the 1978 class of hard-right conservatives.^[17] They considered the cuts as phony, which they were, and the sales tax trigger as a remote-control tax increase, which it was. Furious at what they viewed as a sellout by Deukmejian, the conservatives dug in their heels.

"This is the Duke's program," Brown implored his colleagues, squarely aiming to embarrass Republicans for not supporting their governor. "Give the Duke a vote."^[18]

Finally, under pressure from banks and the governor of their own party, enough Republicans caved in to enact the fiscal rescue plan. On February 16 the Senate voted first, approving the plan by a 33-6 vote. Two hours later the Assembly voted 60-17, sending the bill to Deukmejian's desk.

Within two months the governor and the Legislature were plunged into a new budget crisis over the 1983–84 fiscal year plan. The timing could not have been personally worse for Brown. That April Phillip Burton died of a ruptured artery in his abdomen, his years of chain-smoking, heavy drinking, and compulsive work catching up to him.^[19] He had just come off the toughest reelection campaign of his career, and he was preparing to run for Speaker of the House of Representatives either by challenging Majority Leader Jim Wright in 1984 or by running for the job in 1986 when Thomas "Tip" O'Neill planned to retire. The combination of Phillip Burton as Speaker in Washington and Willie Brown as Speaker in Sacramento would have greatly magnified the power of their San Francisco organization and made them the most powerful Democrats in the nation. But it was not to be.

A few days after Burton's death, on a stage near San Francisco Bay, Willie Brown gave a eulogy for his most important political mentor. Sitting to Brown's right that day was House Speaker Tip O'Neill, who brought with him 117 members of Congress, and San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein.^[20] Nearby was an even earlier mentor, the Reverend Hamilton Boswell from Jones Methodist Church. Then Brown returned to business.

The new fiscal crisis was an emotional roller coaster for Brown. He was in a terrible mood that spring, and it showed. One week into the newest round of budget negotiations, Brown declared "It's awful. It's the worst experience I've ever had."^[21] It was not, of course, the worst experience of his life, but he seemed to be struggling to come to grips with the death of Phillip Burton.

Deukmejian and Brown remained at loggerheads, $1 billion apart in balancing the budget. Deukmejian wanted to cut schools and welfare programs and impose a first-ever $50 per semester fee on community college students. The governor's proposals were unacceptable to Democrats. "We've got to play hardball," Brown declared, aware that some of his colleagues believed

he had been too conciliatory towards Deukmejian during the earlier fiscal negotiations. Deukmejian proposed a spending cap of $22 billion for the fiscal year, which Brown labeled as "impossible" to live with because "there just isn't sufficient number of victims to allow that luxury."^[22]

The June 15 deadline for passing the budget came and went. The stalemate dragged on through most of July, setting an ignominious record for legislative inaction. During the impasse, Brown and Deukmejian stopped talking directly to each other; the lunches were put on hold. Then the budget impasse got tied to reapportionment politics. Brown and the Democrats swore they would not vote for a budget until Deukmejian agreed to prohibit a special election on a Republican reapportionment proposition.^[23] As all sides hardened, the state stopped paying its bills, paychecks stopped, and the state government of California ground to a virtual halt.

To outsiders it looked like a clash of two over-sized egos. But the posturing gave Brown's Democratic colleagues what they wanted most of all—cover. They could go back to their districts and blame Brown for the mess-up in Sacramento, and then go back to Sacramento and hold out for concessions from Deukmejian. Playing flak-catcher to protect his members was not an easy role to play. Despite all his years in public life, he remained remarkably thin-skinned. But Brown played the role to the hilt. It was part of the job of being Speaker.

The $26 billion budget was finally approved and signed on July 21, 1983, ending the longest budget crisis in the state's history up to that time.^[24] In political terms, everyone won something and lost something. Instead of cuts, the state's 1.6 million welfare recipients got a 4 percent raise. Deukmejian dropped his proposed college fee and left in place the stand-by tax trigger approved earlier in the year. The governor got to cut more than $400 million out of the budget, and the Democrats quietly dropped their demand that Deukmejian scuttle the special election on reapportionment. On the day he signed the budget bill, Deukmejian boasted that it was balanced without raising taxes. He acted like a winner, while the Democrats acted like losers, grousing about the cuts. However, with the exception of comparatively mild cuts to schools, traditional Democratic programs, including welfare and regulatory agencies, remained intact.

By fall Deukmejian had lucked out. Revenues rebounded, and the sales tax trigger was never pulled. By the end of the fiscal year, Deukmejian sat atop an amazing $1.2 billion surplus. By his second term Deukmejian was mailing rebates to taxpayers. For most of his two terms, Deukmejian kept a $1 billion–plus surplus in the state treasury and could brag that the state went from "IOU to A-OK."^[25] The fact was that the Reagan military defense buildup did more to catapult the California economy out of the doldrums in the 1980s than anything done by the state government in Sacramento. By the end of the decade, California was receiving $51 billion a year in Department

of Defense appropriations—21 percent of domestic military expenditures—despite having 12 percent of the nation's population.^[26]

The partnership of Deukmejian and Brown, born in the 1983 fiscal crisis, gradually expanded to include other policy areas. "In the course of that first year, a bond developed so that we were able to deal with the Speaker on a wide variety of issues," Merksamer observed. "If you look back on those years, you'll see that the governor got a lot of his legislative program through, and got most of it through the Assembly."^[27]

To be sure, Willie Brown was never going to embrace Deukmejian's conservative agenda, especially his stance for tougher criminal laws and more prison building. Deukmejian and Brown frequently sparred in public over everything from welfare to taxes to schools. And there were times when Deukmejian's frustrations exploded: "They opposed us from the minute right after I got into office," he said shortly before leaving office, alluding back to the vote to sell the governor's mansion. "We were constantly confronted with that kind of strong, hostile opposition."^[28]

But as much as Brown disliked Deukmejian's agenda, Brown did not stand in the way of most of it, particularly crime bills. In a favorite Brown phrase, he did not "orchestrate the house" against Deukmejian's key crime bills. The voters favored tougher laws, even if Brown did not, and Brown needed to let his Democratic members vote for them. Hidden in the political heat and smoke of the 1980s was a simple fact: Deukmejian accomplished much of his conservative agenda in his first term, and he could not have done so without help from the liberal Democratic Assembly Speaker. Deukmejian built more prisons in eight years than California had built in the previous one hundred years. He toughened sentencing laws and doubled the number of convicted felons behind bars. He kept his pledge to hold the line on income taxes, although other taxes gradually crept upward. Funds for schools doubled under his care, although not nearly enough to keep pace with the needs of the state's children. The state's colleges and universities flourished after eight years of miserly stewardship under Jerry Brown. Deukmejian could rightfully claim to stand next to Pat Brown as one of the two governors who most advanced California's nationally recognized higher education system.

Outwardly, Deukmejian's relations with legislators and other politicians were poor. As governor he vetoed more than four thousand bills and axed more than $7 billion in proposed state spending. Democrat John Vasconcellos spoke for many at the end of Deukmejian's eight years when he said the governor was "bad history." Legislators considered the governor "miserly" and called him "the Iron Duke," and they resented his aloofness. He fought endlessly with Bill Honig, who was elected as the state's superintendent of public instruction the same year Deukmejian was elected governor. Deukmejian's relations were coolly correct with the Democratic lieutenant governor, Leo McCarthy, and the Democratic attorney general, John Van de Kamp.

Even the most starchy Republicans found Deukmejian almost impossible at times. "He remains a sphinx, patiently waiting in the corner office to see what develops in the legislative branch," said Assemblyman Tom McClintock, a miserly Republican himself. "We will occasionally receive a cryptic indication of how he might be leaning, in the vaguest of terms. We get a hint here and a scrap there and try to interpret what they mean."^[29] Deukmejian kept a strict calendar and never pulled out a bottle of booze from his desk drawer for legislators after hours. He preferred to work through legislative leaders, Willie Brown in particular, and then go home for the day. And that perfectly suited Brown's quest for power.

Although Honig was difficult, the state Senate's Democratic leader, David Roberti, was far trickier for Deukmejian. Unlike Honig, Roberti had a vote, and he had a majority of the Senate behind him. Roberti was prickly to work with, and he was endlessly jealous of Willie Brown's star status. Deukmejian and Roberti never could connect, and their relationship grew worse and worse. Roberti was more inclined to stand on principle than Brown, and that made him much tougher in cutting deals. Deukmejian usually managed to find the votes he needed in the Assembly and then used the Assembly votes to pressure the recalcitrant senators.

One of the biggest fights of the decade was over Deukmejian's proposal to build a state prison near downtown Los Angeles on the edge of the Latino neighborhoods of East Los Angeles. Roberti furiously put roadblocks in the way, arguing that East Los Angeles had for too long been the dumping ground for all the state's ills. Roberti insisted that to make things fair, the prison should be built in the Republican suburbs.

Willie Brown, however, used all his powers as Speaker to advance Deukmejian's prison proposal. Brown changed the makeup of the Assembly Public Safety Committee for a single day to provide Deukmejian with a pivotal vote to advance the Los Angeles prison bill.^[30] To get the prison bill to the Assembly floor, Brown appointed to the committee Assemblyman Richard Polanco, who was formerly an aide to Richard Alatorre and had just won a special election. Once Polanco voted for the prison, Brown then pulled him off the committee. The move earned Polanco intense flak for years after from his East Los Angeles constituents. Roberti was forced to cave in, and Deukmejian got authority to build one more of his cherished prisons.

"The Republicans have tried to sort of demonize [Brown] for political purposes—and he's pretty easy to demonize," Merksamer said. "But the fact of the matter is the real Willie Brown is fundamentally different. The fact of the matter is he is not, despite the conventional wisdom, a knee-jerk liberal on all the knee-jerk type of liberal issues. I found him in my experience to be a very centrist, pragmatic Democrat."^[31]

There was one political battle, however in which Brown gave no quarter to Deukmejian and got none in return, and that was over reapportionment. The fight sizzled throughout the 1980s, with the Republicans never conceding

that the 1982 lines were final. The Republicans put a succession of proposals on the ballot for voter approval to overturn the Democratic gerrymander. The initiatives were successively more expensive for both sides to fight. By the spring of 1983, Roberti and the Senate were weary of the fight and were inclined to compromise with Deukmejian by approving a plan to have an independent commission draw the district lines in California.^[32] But Brown refused even to negotiate on the issue, perceiving that to lose power over district lines was to lose the speakership itself.^[33]

The Republican pushing hardest of all was Don Sebastiani, a small but fiery assemblyman from the Sonoma wine-growing region and heir to the winery bearing his name. In temperament and bearing Sebastiani was the perfect counterpart to the Democrats' Maxine Waters. Sebastiani qualified his own set of district lines for the ballot, and Deukmejian set a special election for December 1983—an eventuality dreaded by Democrats during the previous summer's budget negotiations. However, to the glee of Democrats, California Chief Justice Rose Bird and the state Supreme Court scuttled the special election.

Stymied by the Bird court, and frustrated with what they viewed as Brown's double-cross on sharing power, the Republicans took to the ballot box with a proposal to trim the power of the Speaker. Proposition 24 was unprecedented in its scope. The Republicans, in effect, were asking the voters to intervene in an internal legislative power struggle by rewriting the Legislature's rules to favor the minority party. The measure was officially sponsored by Paul Gann, the coauthor of Proposition 13. But unlike his tax-cutting initiative, which grew from a groundswell of taxpayers' dissatisfaction, Proposition 24 was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Assembly Republican caucus. Brown tried to forestall the measure by negotiating new rules with Naylor, but the negotiations were fruitless.^[34] Proposition 24 was placed on the June 1984 ballot.

The 1980s were marked like no other decade before by an unending stream of propositions, as politicians took their power struggles out of the Legislature and onto the ballot. The initiative soon became the weapon of choice not just for politicians but also for lawyers, doctors, insurance companies, teachers, environmentalists, lottery ticket makers, sport fishermen, and others dissatisfied for one reason or another with the Legislature. By the end of the decade, forty-six proposals had been qualified for the ballot, twice the number of the previous decade.^[35] Fewer than half were approved by the voters. The cost of fighting such battles was astronomical—more than $300 million flowed into the proposition campaigns during the decade. The money spent on lobbying the public on ballot initiatives exceeded that on lobbying the Legislature.

A month before the June 1984 balloting, Brown toughened his leadership team, turning it sharply partisan. He removed Assemblyman Richard Robinson as the Democratic caucus chairman, relieving him of direct management over the Democratic election machinery. Robinson, the only Democrat representing an Orange County district, was seen as an accommodater with

Republicans and too nice for the fight. Brown needed a war consigliere, and he turned to Maxine Waters.^[36] She was the toughest-talking take-no-prisoners Democrat in the Legislature, and she was unfailingly loyal to Willie Brown. She remained as Brown's caucus chair until her election to Congress in 1990.

To the horror of Brown and the Democrats, the voters approved Proposition 24 in June 1984. The measure required the Speaker to hand over power to the Rules Committee, imposed other rules favorable to the Republicans, and forced an immediate $37 million cut to the Legislature's $120 million operating budget.^[37] Proposition 24 forced immediate layoffs among the legislative staff, and Brown was hit hardest of all. The mandatory cuts were aimed directly at his staff, which, with a budget of $1.16 million, was the largest in the Legislature.^[38] Confronting Gann at a forum in San Francisco soon after the election, Brown lost his temper. "No one heard from Gann about the power of the Speakership when whites held the post," Brown charged. "Not until 'Double-O Soul' became Speaker did you see Gann."

But the state Supreme Court again rescued the Democrats and nullified Proposition 24, holding that the voters could not write the rules for the Legislature. Brown hailed "Sister Rose and the Supremes" for the decision. However, the power plays via initiative did not slow. Deukmejian backed a new reapportionment proposal, and it was qualified for the November 1984 ballot as Proposition 39. This time Deukmejian poured his own campaign money into the effort, dumping $1.2 million from his reelection funds into the Proposition 39 campaign, including $400,000 during the final week before the election.^[39] Deukmejian's proposal would have taken the authority for redistricting away from the Legislature and created a commission made up of retired state appellate court judges to draw congressional and legislative district lines. The Democrats were divided on Deukmejian's proposal. They were tired of fighting one ballot proposition after another. Deukmejian's idea sounded fair, and some privately believed it would depoliticize reapportionment once and for all.

Willie Brown took his Democratic Assembly colleagues to Yosemite in September to talk about it.^[40] Surrounded by Half Dome, El Capitan, and the rustic elegance of the Ahwahnee Hotel, the Democrats wore blue jeans and boots, went on hikes, played tennis, and talked. Brown convinced them to fight Deukmejian's proposal, and they hatched an inventive campaign to defeat it.

Bankrolled by Brown's campaign fund, the Democrats broadcast a series of television commercials in which actor Jack Lemmon earnestly told viewers that Proposition 39's reapportionment plan would give politicians too much power. The pitch turned the Republicans' rationale for Proposition 39 completely on its head. The Democrats' argument was this: because the proposed commission was composed of retired judges, and the Republican governor appointed judges, the Republican governor would control reapportionment.

In the closing days of the 1984 campaign, Brown made several critical moves to defeat Proposition 39 and help his Democratic friends running for the Assembly. He raised $1.44 million in campaign funds and distributed them to his candidates with the best chance of winning.^[41] Brown mobilized the Black American Political Association of California, the organization he helped found, to work actively for the defeat of Proposition 39 in the black community. Brown took one other key step: he convinced Walter Mondale to continue campaigning in California, although his presidential campaign had no chance of success in Reagan's home state. Mondale's campaigning kept the Democratic turnout high enough to defeat Proposition 39 and elect enough of Brown's friends to keep the Legislature and congressional delegation in Democratic hands. Few at the time understood why Mondale stumped so hard in California for a doomed cause. But Mondale's campaigning helped forestall Reagan's landslide from doing much to help Republicans in California. Mondale's help was in sharp contrast to that of President Carter in 1980, whose early concession speech before the polls closed in California contributed to the loss of four congressional seats for the Democrats in the state.

Deukmejian and the Republicans spent more than Brown and the Democrats—$4.7 million to $3.8 million—on the ballot campaign.^[42] But the Republican campaign was ponderous and was no match for Brown's deftness. Deukmejian's ballot proposal was defeated by a healthy margin: 45 percent to 55 percent. "In strictly California terms," wrote Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters following the election, "Tuesday's big winner was Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, the state's most powerful Democratic politician, and the big loser was Republican Gov. Deukmejian."^[43]

Brown was exultant over the election results, and he got carried away with himself. During a speech at the San Francisco Press Club, Brown described his commercials opposing Proposition 39 as "the most extensive collection of con jobs I've ever seen."^[44] Other Democrats flinched when they heard about Brown's line. "Apparently the Speaker was in his show-off mood," Howard Berman said, trying to shrug it off. Republicans tried to take advantage of Brown's flippancy as if that could reverse the election results. "Willie Brown, by his own admission, conned the people of California," Sebastiani declared.

Back in the Capitol, Brown's patience with Republican leader Robert Naylor was at a low ebb. The 1984 Assembly races were just as nasty as those two years earlier, with Republicans again trying to make Brown the issue with racially tinged ads and mailers. Brown was already nursing a grudge because at the start of the 1982 session the Republicans did not vote for him for Speaker by acclamation, a sign of respect since they did not have enough votes to elect one of their own as Speaker. Naylor tried to explain that it was only a "gentlemanly partisan division" to protect his most conservative members from taking flak in their districts for voting for a Democrat. But Naylor's political fate was sealed.

"I thought of every way possible to apologize," Naylor explained. "It truly was not intended as a hostile act. If anything I really wanted to get past the reapportionment bitterness and come up with some kind of a working relationship, but boy, I sure got off on the wrong foot."^[45] Naylor stayed on the wrong foot by sending his staff to check Brown's expense accounts at the state controller's office and then calling a press conference to complain about a $2,800 car phone Brown had purchased at the taxpayers' expense.^[46] In Brown's view it was petty for Naylor to claim that the Speaker of the Assembly did not deserve a car phone, and it was bad form to rummage through the expense accounts of another member.

Personalities aside, Brown needed a measure of procedural peace in the Assembly so that the Democrats and Republicans could battle over public policy without constantly bickering over the rules. Brown got the accommodation he needed with a new Republican leader, Patrick Nolan of Glendale. In the view of Nolan's enemies, he got the job thanks to Willie Brown. The claim is overstated, but not completely off the mark. Brown certainly helped Nolan by undercutting Naylor at every turn and making him look weak. Once Nolan replaced Naylor, Brown helped Nolan solidify his power in the Republican caucus. Nolan, in turn, helped shore up Brown's power as Speaker.

Nolan was one of the Proposition 13 Babies who came to Sacramento in 1978. Nolan had led the ultraconservative Young Americans for Freedom chapter at USC. A big, jovial man, Nolan was exceedingly serious about his politics, and he was determined to win a majority for the Republicans at the ballot box. As far as Nolan was concerned, cheap shots against Brown and squabbling over rules were not the way to get there. Winning at the ballot box was the only guarantee of success, and that called for making election campaigns the top priority of the Assembly Republican caucus. Nolan and his allies viewed Naylor as drifting in his leadership, giving no firm political direction when dealing with Brown or Deukmejian. "It was awful," said Nolan. "Willie did not respect Bob Naylor. Willie is a harsh judge of people and he saw Naylor as being weak."^[47]

One day while Naylor was downstairs in Deukmejian's office involved in budget negotiations, Nolan rounded up the votes needed to depose Naylor as Republican leader. When Naylor returned to the Republican caucus meeting room, he was presented with a letter signed by seventeen Republicans supporting Nolan as their new leader. Naylor was devastated, and he pleaded with his colleagues not to humiliate him. Several asked to have their names removed from the letter, and Nolan's coup temporarily collapsed. Naylor continued to operate as Republican leader, but in the worst possible political position. Brown gave him no say in Republican appointments to committees or in the running of the Assembly. Inevitably, Nolan deposed Naylor as Republican leader after the 1984 election.

Nolan and Brown reached a mutually beneficial accommodation on how the Assembly should operate. "My agreement with Willie was that we would fight over substance, not over procedure," said Nolan. "There were tremendous fights, but it was always over the substance. We would work out ground rules for debates on tough issues. We would agree two speakers 'for' a bill, and two speakers 'against.'"^[48]

Nolan showed Brown the respect he craved. Nolan arranged for Brown to be reelected Speaker by acclamation. In return Brown showed Nolan respect. "He agreed to give me the deference that he gave to Carol Hallett on appointment of committee members," said Nolan. Brown did not always go along with Nolan's recommendations, but he listened and he protected Nolan's backside. Republicans began chairing committees again.

However, Brown and Nolan were ideological opposites, and their accommodation did not promise to produce much consensus on issues. The political middle ground steadily shrank throughout the 1980s as each side aggressively pursued its own agendas and fought the other to a standstill. The 1981–82 reapportionment produced more moderate Democrats, like Richard Katz of Los Angeles and Steve Clute of Riverside, who had to accommodate conservative voters in districts that were barely winnable for Democrats. But the reapportionment also produced more ideologically driven conservative Republicans, who because they represented safe districts could take virtually any position they wished with little worry about their reelection prospects. Orange County Republican Gil Ferguson, elected in 1984, went on crusades to oust Tom Hayden from the Assembly and opposed every effort to make amends for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II on the grounds that Pearl Harbor veterans would be "outraged." He paid scant attention to the issues of his district. The Assembly's chemistry was increasingly volatile.

Brown and Nolan each searched for the levers to force the other into concessions, each linking passage of one unrelated issue with another unrelated issue. The end result was legislative gridlock, with dozens of major bills and hundreds of minor bills stalled somewhere in the legislative pipeline. It usually took until the last night of the legislative session to unravel the political knots as each side tried to bluff the other. Breakdown was inevitable, and it occurred on the last day of the session in September 1985.

The issue that sparked the meltdown was, on its face, not partisan. But it strained the Deukmejian-Brown partnership almost to the breaking point. The state's toxic waste cleanup program was fraught with bureaucratic bumbling, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency threatened to take it over if it was not fixed. Deukmejian tried to reorganize the hodgepodge of state agencies responsible for the program by executive order, but he was rebuffed by the Legislature. Then Deukmejian hired a retired Republican state senator, Gordon Cologne, to work it out. Cologne and Democratic

Assemblywoman Sally Tanner labored for weeks over a torturously technical bill and brought it to the Assembly floor on Friday, September 13, 1985, the last day of session for the year.^[49]

Just as Tanner's AB 650 was about to come up for a vote at 5:30 P.M., Louis Papan stormed into the Assembly chambers and exploded that Tanner's bill should be put on hold until Deukmejian and the Republicans agreed to support his bill to give a cost-of-living raise for blind, elderly, and disabled Medi-Cal recipients. Papan proceeded to destroy the work of fellow Democrat Sally Tanner. Papan was having a terrible day. Four of his appropriations bills had gone down to defeat because the Republicans would not give him a two-thirds majority. He now insisted that the Republicans were a "bunch of crazies" and could only redeem themselves by voting for his Medi-Cal bill. Faced with bullying tactics, the Republicans refused. Papan's issue was completely unrelated to toxic waste, but now the two bills were linked. Brown went along with the tactic, and the two bills languished for hours. Democrats and Republicans held lengthy closed-door caucuses into the night. "We're waiting for someone to blink," said Assemblyman Byron Sher. But no one blinked. The Assembly finally went home at 5:30 A.M. on Saturday morning, having failed to vote on either Tanner's or Papan's bill. Dozens of other unrelated bills also fell aside without being taken up for a vote. "One piece fell out and everything started crumbling. I don't recall since then a session quite like that with interlocked bills," Merksamer observed.^[50]

Deukmejian was furious the next day. "He was pretty pissed off, and I'm sure he was angry at the Speaker," Merksamer remembered. Deukmejian held a rare Saturday-afternoon press conference accusing Brown of being "totally irresponsible and arrogant" by reneging on a deal to give him the toxic waste reorganization bill. "This kind of political extortion has to come to an end," Deukmejian declared. However, the governor never got the bill, and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley made toxic waste cleanup one of the cornerstones of his ill-fated rematch with Deukmejian in the 1986 elections.

On the surface, the scuttling of Deukmejian's agency reorganization bill looked like an election-year gift from Willie Brown to Tom Bradley, with Papan providing the cover. But Brown was not close to Bradley, and the whole episode was far too messy to do the Democrats much good. Nor did Merksamer believe that Brown was helping Bradley by stalling the bill. "Now maybe it's true, but I don't believe it because I don't see why," said Merksamer. "I didn't think it was that big a deal. It wasn't like it was a huge philosophical issue."^[51]

Puzzled, Merksamer later asked Brown for an explanation. "He lost control of his caucus," Merksamer said. "Willie went in there arguing in favor of the governor, and Lou Papan went ballistic, as he is capable of doing." Liberals in the caucus bucked Brown and got away with it. The episode showed that Brown's power was not ironclad, and he began to feel the need

for shoring up his left wing. But in so doing, Brown set the stage for the most serious challenge yet to his power.

More broadly, such failures to reach a legislative consensus fed a public perception that the Legislature and the governor were incapable of managing the public's business. To an extent, the perception was accurate, and as the 1980s ground on, reaching a political consensus in Sacramento became increasingly dicey. Even so, Brown and Deukmejian were able to forge policy on a limited number of fronts. Deukmejian, who was not interested in much outside of crime and holding down taxes, was open to suggestion from Brown on a variety of issues.

Brown helped convince Deukmejian to sign a raft of environmental protection laws, including AB 2595, opposed by Assembly Republicans, to expand the authority of local air districts clamping down on smog emissions. The measure, which required a phased-out reduction of air pollutants by the twenty-first century, was certainly one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation passed during the Deukmejian years. The Republican governor also signed Democratic bills—AB 357 and SB 292—to ban the sale of automatic weapons in California over the strenuous opposition of the National Rifle Association.^[52] Deukmejian signed a bill by Brown that required drivers to wear seatbelts. And he let Democrats craft the first major welfare revision since Reagan had been governor.

When University of California researchers complained they were starved for funds to investigate a mysterious disease killing gays, Brown slipped $2.9 million into an appropriations bill for their labs in 1983. The bill was sped to Deukmejian's desk and signed, the first state funds approved for battling AIDS.^[53] Throughout the 1980s Brown was instrumental in getting Deukmejian to approve increasingly larger appropriations for AIDS research. But Brown was unable to convince Deukmejian to sign a bill guaranteeing homosexuals equal rights.

The partnership with George Deukmejian yielded one enormous, personally gratifying payoff for Willie Brown: after years of opposition, Deukmejian agreed to support withdrawing California's $11.4 billion pension fund portfolio from investments in companies conducting business in racially divided South Africa.^[54] Getting Deukmejian to that position took Deukmejian's entire first term, and ranked as one of Brown's chief accomplishments as Assembly Speaker.

At first, Deukmejian was flatly against the South Africa boycott. When Maxine Waters succeeded in putting a South Africa boycott bill on Deukmejian's desk in 1985, he vetoed it.

After the veto, the battleground over investments in South Africa switched to the University of California, which had $2.4 billion of its $6.4 billion portfolio invested in companies with ties to South Africa. The stodgy Board of Regents, led by UC President David Gardner, was reluctant to withdraw the investments, fearful it would endanger the university's financial health. The board and Gardner came under intense pressure from legislators and protesters. Then Willie Brown entered the fray. When the university's imperious president came to testify at a May 1985 legislative hearing, he was interrogated by the Assembly Speaker for nearly an hour.^[55]

"Now, Dr. Gardner," Brown began, "we are very concerned by the university's attitude. Specifically, I want one scintilla of evidence that the atrocities of the South African regime present a problem to you personally, not as president of the University, but as a human being."

Gardner replied that, as a Mormon, he was familiar with discrimination. He told how his grandfather was driven to Utah by religious bigots. But Gardner maintained that the university could not take moral stands.

"I abhor oppression," said Gardner, "but I don't choose to advertise it."

Brown found the answer unsatisfactory.

"You can end discrimination against you by changing your religion. Blacks in South Africa cannot," Brown shot back. "Willie Brown cannot change his skin as he could his religion. There are no Utahs for Bishop Tutu."

Brown also went to work convincing Deukmejian that it was morally imperative for California to keep its money from supporting apartheid. Brown appealed to Deukmejian's Armenian heritage and the oppression suffered by his relatives at the hands of Turks. Brown used one more argument: it was good politics. The city of Los Angeles had enacted a South Africa investment boycott ordinance, and Mayor Bradley was preparing to bludgeon Deukmejian with it in their 1986 rematch. Brown told Deukmejian that he did not have to take the chance.

Finally Deukmejian became a convert. He began throwing his weight behind the push to pull the University of California's investments out of South Africa. The governor even offered to lobby Congress and President Reagan, who had vetoed a boycott bill.^[54] The showdown came at a Regents meeting at UC Santa Cruz in July 1986. Faced with a united front from Deukmejian and Brown, the board voted to become the first major institutional investor in California to join the South African boycott.

Taking advantage of the political momentum, a new bill was prepared to pull the state's huge pension fund from South Africa.^[57] With Maxine Waters still as the official author, the bill reached the Assembly floor in August 1986. As television cameras lined both walls of the chamber, Assembly members sat in unaccustomed silence and listened to the debate. The usual joking and jibing were put aside. Every member seemed to sense it was a rare moment. The debate over AB 134 surged for three hours, and the speeches were passionate on both sides.

Willie Brown spoke last, and as he raised the microphone at his desk signaling he was ready to speak, sergeants-at-arms scurried to close the doors. They need not have bothered; the chamber fell silent and no one moved. Brown gave one of the most emotional speeches of his career, and as his voice rose, he stood on his toes. He finished with a tribute to George Deukmejian:

"It takes a big man to recognize that circumstances and information should now dictate a different decision."

The bill was approved 50-26, with four Republicans joining all but one of the Democrats.

A month later, as a tribute to the Speaker of the California Assembly, Governor Deukmejian signed the South Africa bill in the city of San Francisco. As Waters and Brown looked on, Deukmejian condemned South Africa for its "racism and brutal oppression." Then he put his pen to the bill. Those close to Deukmejian later said he never would have signed a South Africa boycott bill but for Brown's intervention.

Four years later, as apartheid was crumbling in South Africa, newly freed black leader Nelson Mandela visited the San Francisco Bay Area.^[58] Speaking to fifty-eight thousand people in the Oakland Coliseum, Mandela paid a special tribute to those who had put pressure on the white government of his nation. He said the investment boycott was a vital weapon helping to bring down the system of racial oppression in his country. "We also salute the state of California for having such a powerful principled stance," he declared.

Willie Brown stood nearby that evening and smiled.