Willie – The Man, the Myth and the Era
Conspiracy and The Sting
By
Marcus McGee
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Willie – The Man, The Myth and the Era
Conspiracy and The Sting
Copyright © 1995, 2011 by Marcus McGee
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ISBN 978-1-4524-6295-0
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Willie – The Man, the Myth and the Era
CONSPIRACY!
I’m fifty-four years of age, and I’ve been around much too long to be upset about those kinds of things. You understand that when you look through the crack in the door long enough, you’re going to see the hearse taking every one of your enemies to the cemetery.1
WILLIE BROWN, April 1988
[Commenting on the Gang of Five]
1988. It was the best of years. It was the worst of years. Willie Brown had been Speaker for seven years and was all set to break Jesse Unruh’s record, making him the longest-tenured Speaker in the history of California.
His political star continued to twinkle in 1988, as that year he was named national chairman of Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. In that year, he jetted back and forth across the country. One week, he was in New York doing David Brinkley’s show, in another week, meeting in Washington D.C. with convention chairman Ron Brown.
In San Francisco, his law firm prospered, representing huge clients who, with his assistance, embellished that familiar bay skyline with ambitious architecture. But 1988 was also the year that the FBI broke into Capitol offices and revealed an investigation into political corruption that they were conducting on the California legislature.
Indeed, Willie had enemies in the legislature, one in particular who had sought his friendship and trust only to betray him, and then there was the “Gang of Five.”
The exact moment the five Democrat assemblymen became this “Gang of Five” against the Speaker is difficult to ascertain, but in terms of Assembly arithmetic, the possibility for such an existence came in the wake of the 1986 Assembly elections. George Deukmejian won re-election as Governor, McCarthy won as Lieutenant Governor, Gray Davis as Controller, and voters ousted State Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird and two others who were loath to carry out the death penalty.
The State Assembly Democrats, who had maintained forty-seven seats since 1980, lost three, bringing their numerical advantage down to four, and the margin stood at forty-four Democrats to thirty-six Republicans.
Lobbyist Nicholai Konavaloff was one of many Capitol insiders who told me that one of Willie’s greatest strengths lied in his “holding the group of Democrats together,” shoring up their many and diversified needs. The Assembly Democrats had always been a varied lot, with those on extreme ends often fighting with each other over policy issues. The liberal majority generally represented constituencies from large urban areas, but the more moderate members represented rural and farming communities.
Occasionally, the needs and challenges of one group came into direct conflict with the issues concerns of the other. It had always been, for the minority among Democrats, a prescription for frustration. Even with the best compromise, they could not always be satisfied.
While within the ranks of the moderates there was obviously a degree of frustration with the decisions and methods employed by a somewhat “liberal” Speaker Willie Brown, it seemed this Gang was made of one part frustration, but five parts ambition. A hypothetical scenario involving a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans, working together advancing a shared moderate agenda, was whispered about and hinted at in private meetings of the conspirators at first and then shared with trustworthy allies from across the aisle.
With seeming support from Republicans, confederates Gary Condit (D-Ceres), Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista), and Charles Calderon (D-Los Angeles), all from the California Assembly Class of 1982, devised the plan: a group of five moderate Democrats could vote with Republicans on specific issues to thwart the Speaker and modify his agenda.
Their ultimate ambition was to produce a Speaker from their own ranks. But the margin in the Assembly was four. That meant five votes would be required to create a swing voting bloc. In other words, it would take a gang of five Democrats voting with thirty-six united Republicans to produce forty-one votes and advance any specific cause or agenda.
To their ranks were added Rusty Areias of Los Banos, another Class of 1982 Assemblyman, and Gerald Eaves of Rialto, who had been elected in 1984. Thus circa August 1987 was born the so called “Gang of Five, who became both celebrated and infamous in 1988. Had minority leader Patrick Nolan only willed it, the five conspirators could have destroyed the speakership of Willie Brown.
THE CONSPIRATORS
1) GARY CONDIT
He was born in 1952 and raised on a farm in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by his grandparents, and he worked in an oil field as a roughneck before moving west to California to live with his parents. His father, who had been a dairyman, was a minister who had ventured to the tiny, agricultural town of Ceres, California to lead a congregation.
Gary finished high school in Ceres, thinking he would go back to Tulsa, but he ended up enrolling at Stanislaus State College. While in college, he ran for the City Council and won, and then, two years later, became mayor of Ceres at the age of twenty-two. In time, he became close to physically ailing Assemblyman John Thurman, who in 1982 when retiring, suggested that Gary Condit fill his 27th District Assembly seat.
With Thurman’s blessing, Condit won and went to Sacramento, where he became close to Willie, who had named him chairman of the key Government Organization Committee.
2) STEVE PEACE
Born in San Diego in 1953, he had been there all his life, attending Bonita Vista High School and later the University of California, San Diego, where he got his degree in political science. Before becoming actively involved in politics, he co-starred in and was part of the team that produced the camp film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
He was elected to the Assembly in 1982, filling the seat of Waddie Deddeh, who had moved to the Senate. During his freshman year in Sacramento, he and Gary Condit, according to Condit, became “immediate friends.”
He had served the Assembly as Majority Whip from 1983-86 and, until being stripped of the job in January 1988, served as a subcommittee chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in addition to having seats on other key committees.
3) CHARLES CALDERON
Thirty-two year-old Charles Calderon became the eventual beneficiary of Jack Fenton’s seat in the 59th District. Fenton had lost the seat in 1980 to Marty Martinez in the battle between Leo McCarthy and Howard Berman. Martinez had been a Berman man, but when Berman left to run for the U.S. Congress, Martinez was on his way out. Willie replaced him in 1982 with Calderon, an attorney who had attended California State University, Los Angeles, for political science and law school at the University of California, Davis.
Some insiders believed he was resentful toward Willie because the Speaker wouldn’t name him chairman of the Finance and Insurance Committee. When initially approached by Condit and Peace on the compact, Calderon thought they had been sent by Willie to set him up. He was the only attorney in the gang, and from that vantage point, spoke for the group on most issues.
In the Assembly, he had replaced Steve Peace as Majority Whip, and he had held that position until the group stepped up their challenges to the Speaker in early 1988.
4) RUSTY AREIAS
Rusty was the fourth member in the gang belonging to the Assembly Class of 1982. Born in Los Banos in 1949, he attended California State University, Chico, where he got a B.S. in Agriculture. By profession, he was a dairy farmer in the San Jose area who was very involved and concerned with the farming industry and its issues. He succeeded no one for the 28th District Assembly seat as the district was created as a result of the 1980 reapportionment.
Willie had made Rusty chairman of the Committee on Government Efficiency & Consumer Protection and had given him a place on the Agriculture Committee. Of all the members of the renegade group, it seemed Willie liked Rusty best.
5) GERALD EAVES
Though the least tenured individual of the group, Gerald Eaves was a full ten years older than any of the others. A former steel worker and former mayor of the city of Rialto, he claimed to have joined the group because the five shared a common bond of conservatism. Elected in 1984, Eaves was another individual who had replaced a Berman supporter, in his particular case, former San Bernardino District Attorney Jim Cramer, who had been elected in 1980 to defeat the McCarthy speakership [see chapter 21]. Eaves was an insurance agent who had attended high school in San Bernardino and had also attended California State University, San Bernardino.
Soon after arriving in Sacramento, he made friends with the 1982 gang, based on what he considered this bond of conservatism, and he worked with them against the Speaker, who had made him Assistant Majority Leader.
It is hard to establish whatever powerful bond brought the group of five together and the causes that made them resolute in the political assassination of a man who had extended to them position and, in some cases, friendship. I found no external factor except that they were all men.
Four were white, but one was Latino. Four were elected in 1982, but one in 1984. Four represented agricultural areas, but one’s constituency was urban. All had been included in the Assembly process.
So why was it that they banded together against Willie Brown? At one point, various members of the group would say they had come together to reform the powers of the speakership itself, but that was only after they had been “punished” by the Speaker. Before that, the cause was public policy and the suggestion was that Willie had supported a “60s liberal agenda.”2
When in 1987, they were asked if they sought to oust the Speaker, they denied it, but the end of Willie’s speakership was clearly one of their objectives in 1988. The group failed to win support from many key backers, who said the group had no clear-cut agenda of their own.3 There was also at issue a replacement. With Willie gone, just who would be Speaker? Certainly not a Republican in a Democrat-dominated Assembly. This is why it seems the group may have been motivated by ambition.
It seemed to many insiders, including Maxine Waters,4 that they wanted to replace the Speaker with a man from among their ranks. That audacious man who outsmarted and outmaneuvered the wily Willie Brown would have a secure place in Sacramento lore and California history. But which of the five? Initially, moderate Gary Condit, for his perceived appeal to Republicans, seemed to be the group’s choice.
SCENARIO
California Magazine writer Richard Trainor, in an August 1988 article entitled “Et Tu, Gary?” made an interesting analogy in likening Willie Brown and the Gang of Five to Julius Cæsar and the conspirators who assassinated him. The parallels, upon examination, are interesting to consider.
While Trainor does not go into any detail beyond casual reference, I will attempt to present a few of the peculiar similarities. First, there is the relationship between Julius Cæsar and Marcus Brutus contrasted with the relationship between Willie Brown and Gary Condit. Caesar and Brutus shared a very special bond (it is hinted at by Plutarch that the two were father and son) and Cæsar took an active interest in the advancement of Brutus.
Now, it would take a profound stretch of imagination to suggest that Willie and Gary were related, but the two did share related geographical roots, as Willie Brown was raised in Texas and Gary Condit grew up in next-door Oklahoma. A natural friendship grew from that Southwestern familiarity.
When Condit came into the Assembly in 1982, Willie went out of his way to befriend the young assemblyman from obscure Ceres, taking him in, like a son, and teaching him the ins and outs of the Sacramento political structure, showing him fancy restaurants, the mechanics of his lavish fundraising efforts, and exclusive parties.
By the end of Condit’s first term, Willie had made him assistant Majority Leader and chairman of the Governmental Organization Committee by the end of his second term. According to Willie,
I helped him get elected. I appeared with him at fundraisers. I provided tickets to 49ers and Giants games. I extended to him far more opportunities than I did to other members [at the same level]. He moved in five years to the category of people who had been there ten years or more, and that can only come about by virtue of a close personal association with me.5
History informs that what Willie Brown gave was not enough. To many, the problem was that the Speaker was too powerful, too invulnerable, too good at politics. The same was said of Cæsar by Plutarch.
But that which brought upon him the most apparent and mortal hatred, was his desire to be king; which gave the common people the first occasion to quarrel with him, and proved the most specious pretence to those who had been his secret enemies all along.6
Brutus, conjunct with the other conspirators, claimed that he acted for the good of Rome, while Condit said,
It has nothing to do with personality and likes or dislikes, but public policy and the way the house had been operating.7
If indeed Condit could be compared to Brutus, then Steve Peace, the group’s “philosophical leader,”8 should be compared to Shakespeare’s Cassius who said,
Men at some times are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings...
Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
When in it there is but one only man.9
He was the first to speak out against Willie Brown, charging publicly that the Speaker was too influential, too powerful – telling members in certain committees how to vote on legislation, asserting,
This house should be operated on a level playing field, in which each and every member has a right to vote their own conscience and their district...10 I will continue to speak out on how I feel about the issues, regardless of the Speaker, the caucus, or anybody else.11
I’ll leave off the comparison here for the moment, but members of this Gang of Five gave “discontent with public policy and Assembly operations” as their rationale for voting with Republicans on issues. At immediate issue in 1987 were the Speaker’s opposition to the state income tax rebate and his opposition to laws requiring parental consent to teen-age abortions as well as the authority of the speakership itself.
Members of the future Gang invariably complained that the Speaker was using his powers to bottle up major bills favored by conservatives in Democratic-dominated committees where the bills would die. It seems the compact publicly became the “Gang of Five” in August 1987 however, when Steve Peace, Charles Calderon, and Gerald Eaves, all members of the Ways and Means Committee, teamed up with Republicans to defeat legislation vital to consumer groups.
The Speaker was upset with them, other Democratic members were upset, and consumer groups were upset. In spite of pressure by caucus members and outside interests to do something drastic about the rebels, Willie played down concerns and sought to deal quietly with individual members of the gang in order to weaken the group, but with little effect.
The bad spirit was evident throughout 1987, as members of the band constantly challenged the Speaker and argued with other Democrats, but it came to a head immediately after the Interim Study Recess in January 1988.
On Tuesday, January 12, Willie Brown stripped Gary Condit of his chairmanship of the Government Organization Committee, Steve Peace of his Ways and Means Subcommittee chairmanship, and Charles Calderon of his Majority Whip status, saying,
They aren’t being punished at all. Every now and then it’s necessary for the operation around here to utilize the talent of everybody.12
In addition, he cut their staffs and reassigned them to smaller offices. The truth of the matter was, Willie gaveth and Willie taketh away. It was, and had been before Willie, the Speaker’s prerogative.
The three reacted angrily and served notice that they would attempt to withdraw three bills “pigeonholed” in committees; these were bills that had failed to gain enough votes for policy committee approval: one required a fifty percent reduction in automobile liability insurance rates, another proposed a state health insurance program and the third dealt with AIDS testing of arrested prostitutes.
The respective merits of the bills were not at issue, but the action of withdrawing the bills was meant to be an embarrassment to the Speaker, as no one had succeeded in such a move for twenty-eight years.
Steve Peace claimed that two of the bills were stalled because Willie had told committee members how to vote, to which the Speaker countered that Peace had insulted the house, all its members, and the members of every committee involved with the bills, declaring at a press conference,
You can’t remember when I have in any manner twisted anybody’s arm or leg or gouged their eyes out to get them to cast a vote.13
Next, the Gang of Five, still stinging from the pain of being stripped of respective Assembly roles, drafted legislation which would disallow the Speaker from punishing those who might oppose him. They proposed a rules change which would make the Speaker file a “cause for removal” subject to review of the house ethics committee after a full hearing.
Further, they sought to make it illegal for any legislative leader to use political pressure to influence the vote of any state lawmaker. They had produced a ballot measure that stated,
It is specifically unlawful to offer or accept, threaten to withhold or take away campaign contributions, committee assignments, office space, staff assistance or any other inducement, for a vote on any measure or measures before the state Legislature.14
Finally, they wanted to introduce a six-year term limit for the Speaker. Neither the rules change nor the proposed amendments to the constitution had much of a chance as they would require a two-thirds vote in both houses and voter ratification, but they brought speakership reform to the front of the struggle.
Until that time, Willie Brown had played down his own concerns about the Gang of Five, but 1988 was an election year. Many, by that point, had already predicted his demise, had suggested that he had lost his edge and would lose the speakership. One of these soothsayers was former San Bernardino County Assemblyman and lobbyist John Cumby, who said,
I don’t think it’s any great, courageous, insightful statement to say that by the first of 1989, Willie won’t be Speaker. The man’s time has gone. I think he’s been a great Speaker, but times are changing.15
Many years later, a somewhat apologetic Mr. Cumby told me he had misspoke in idle speculation, unaware he was in the presence of a L.A. Times reporter. But his reflection was indicative of popular opinion as others chimed in from all around with dismal predictions of their own. As reported in the Sacramento Bee,