ShareThisAs John A. Perez became speaker of the California Assembly on Monday, the Los Angeles Democrat remarked that his first political campaign, 20-plus years ago, was as a teenager opposing construction of a prison in East Los Angeles.
"To my young mind, it was the last thing I needed," Perez said, "so I got active. I registered voters. I attended rallies and handed out fliers.
"I learned many lessons from that early effort. I learned the power of community, the power of organizing and the power of perseverance."
Perhaps Perez was unaware that the man who brokered the political deal to build that prison was then-Speaker Willie Brown, who was sitting just a few feet away during the ceremony.
It was another example of the old Capitol axiom that "what goes around comes around," as is the fact that when Perez and other opponents stopped the East L.A. prison project, it contributed to overcrowding of the state's penal system -- a crisis that is even worse today, with federal judges threatening to seize control if the state doesn't sharply reduce its inmate population.
The Capitol is a far different place than it was when Brown reigned as the self-proclaimed "ayatollah of the Legislature" for 14-plus years, single-handedly dictating which bits of legislation would become law.
Perez is the 10th legislator to wear the title in the 15 years since Brown left the Capitol to become mayor of San Francisco, which means his immediate predecessors have averaged barely 1 1/2 years each.
Term limits, gerrymandered legislative districts and the ideological polarization they spawned have devalued the speakership, once the state's second most powerful political office.
Post-Brown speakers have tried to emulate his influence on events, but have mostly been coordinators and representatives of their partisan flocks, rather than powerful policymakers.
Perez, of course, thinks his tenure, however long it lasts, will be different, telling those in the Assembly chambers that when he's done, "I intend to look back and say we delivered. That we put California to work. That we fixed the broken budget system and helped restore the trust and the confidence of the people in this great institution."
Good luck on that, John.
Recent polls, including a new Field Poll, have found deep-seated disgust among voters about the performance of Capitol politicians. While Perez wants to do away with the two-thirds vote on the state budget that Democrats say gives minority Republicans too much power, changing it would require a constitutional amendment whose passage is, to say the least, uncertain.
Republicans would block such a measure in the Legislature. Were it placed on the ballot via initiative, the Field Poll indicates that voters would reject it, as they have in the past.
Perez, it could be said, is losing in that effort even before he begins.
(E-mail Dan Walters at dwalters(at)sacbee.com. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
ColumnMust credit Sacramento Bee
