California Assembly speaker seeks compromise but ready to fight

By: MICHAEL R. BLOOD - AP Political Writer | Monday, February 16, 2004 9:55 PM PST ∞

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Fabian Nunez calls himself a lucky guy.

The son of an immigrant gardener and maid was sworn in last week as speaker of the state Assembly, one of the most powerful political leadership positions in the nation's largest state.

But the freshman Democrat's rise from the barrios of Tijuana to smoking cigars with a celebrity governor also is more than luck. A former amateur boxer, he graduated from college and worked his way through the political ranks of the Los Angeles labor movement before being elected to the Legislature.

It's clear that climb from poverty to power has given him enough confidence to run the notoriously partisan chamber.

Faced with a multibillion dollar shortfall in the state budget and a Republican governor who is the most recognizable state executive in the country, Nunez said he is eager for consensus and for changing Sacramento's famously partisan atmosphere.

Calling on his background as a boxer, he also said he won't back down from a fight. He said he is unwilling to gut core Democratic programs in the effort to balance the state's books.

"I'm not intimidated by him or anyone else," he said of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who became governor in last fall's recall election and enjoys immense popularity. "It's knowing how to fight and when to fight."

After a revolving door of relatively anonymous and short-lived speakers, Nunez, 37, could hold the Assembly's most powerful post until 2008, when term limits will end his tenure.

Unless ousted along the way, some say he could rewrite the job description and become the first speaker since Willie Brown to bring stability to the chamber and clout to the title.

Brown was California's longest-serving Assembly speaker, spending 14 years in the post before being ousted by term limits. During his reign, he became one of the most influential politicians in state government.

As speaker, Nunez will wield the same type of power that Brown did, leading the Assembly's majority Democrats in the 80-member house. He will determine committee assignments and which members get the best offices.

Nunez takes charge of the Assembly at a time when calling the job a challenge would fall short of understatement.

In addition to the budget problems, the governor and Legislature are trying to compromise on a fix to the state's costly workers' compensation system, which has been blamed for driving businesses out of state.

Democrats are trying to hold onto their majority in both the Senate and the Assembly at a time when Republicans feel emboldened by the voter recall of Democratic governor Gray Davis.

Democrats now hold 48 of 80 Assembly seats, and it will be part of Nunez's job to make sure they maintain that edge in this year's elections.

"The major challenge is going to be Schwarzenegger. It's a divided government now in a time of crisis," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California. "He's going to have to compromise due to the political realities of Sacramento."

The personable Nunez, who plays drums and still dreams of being a soccer star, said he will strive for bipartisanship.

He has developed a friendship with the Assembly's Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, and so far has an affable relationship with Schwarzenegger.

Nunez praised the governor's commitment to education and after-school programs when both visited a Southern California school last week.

At one point during the stopover, Schwarzenegger encouraged a young student government leader. After Nunez interjected by saying the student could grow up to be the next governor, Schwarzenegger turned to the Assembly speaker and joked, "Oh, I thought you were going to be the next governor."

Last month, Nunez found himself a dinner guest at Schwarzenegger's lavish Brentwood estate.

"You walk in his house and he's got Maria Shriver and him and Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman there," Nunez recalled. "At one point he said, 'Let's go out to the back and smoke a cigar.' And DeVito looks at me and says, 'Can I come, too?' I'm like, 'You're Danny DeVito, come on!"'

Nunez was born in 1966, the 10th of 12 children, and split his childhood between Tijuana and a San Diego neighborhood distinguished by its junkyards and liquor stores.

As a teenager, he engaged in a short-lived career as an amateur boxer. Asked about that during an interview at his district office in downtown Los Angeles, the taut-framed Nunez suddenly popped out of his chair, feet planted. His fists moved in a whirlwind of jabs and uppercuts as he provided a tutorial on the mechanics of power punching.

"The blow comes in the movement with the body ... it's all in the hips," he said.

The fighting has become a metaphor for his political career.

He said he might have become a mechanic but was steered to higher education by an older brother, who ran away from home to attend college.

His interest in politics and social justice partly grew out of a fascination with the unrest of the 1960s.

He pursued those interests after college, first as political director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor from 1996 to 2000 and then as government affairs director for the Los Angeles Unified School District. He was elected to the Assembly in 2002.

"He's a hustler... He's a street-wise guy," said Miguel Contreras, executive secretary of the labor federation, who admired Nunez's strong organizing skills.

But it is that background in the largely Democratic labor movement that has made some of Nunez's opponents wary of claims that he can strike compromises with Republicans.

"He cut his political teeth in labor," said Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the California Republican Party.

Is he "going to work with the administration in a bipartisan manner, or is he going to be true to the labor movement and those interests?"

Although he wants a more diplomatic tone in the Legislature, Nunez jumped on Schwarzenegger last year for remarks he said blamed the Democrats for the state's fiscal crisis.

"If I were speaker today, I wouldn't negotiate with him until he changes his tune," he said at the time.

Despite his early friendship with the powerful governor, Nunez said Democrats want "somebody who, when necessary, can go toe to toe with a governor who is laying a vision on the table.

"If we go into a fight with Schwarzenegger, it's a David vs. Goliath fight," he said.

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