Basic Brown by Willie Brown

Author:Willie Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Tricks the FBI Played to Try to Get Me

THE SUITE OF OFFICES IN the California capitol allocated to the speaker of the assembly is a group of opulent rooms painstakingly restored to their Victorian splendor—by me. The anteroom, just outside my private office, was, in my reign, also a very modern clubroom. I filled it with video games, pinball machines, TVs, comfortable chairs, refreshments. I set it up as a refuge for all the members, Republican as well as Democrat.

I wanted them to feel free to hang with me and to see me at any time. Indeed, I had a steadfast rule that I was available to any member at any time, no matter what I was doing—unless I was speaking to another member. So Her Majesty the Queen of England could be there talking with me in my office, but if a member wanted to speak to me, my staff would buzz me, I’d pick up the phone, and my assistant would say, “Mr. So-and-so from the Forty-second district would like to speak with you.” I’d turn to Her Majesty and say, “Excuse me, Madame Queen, but a member is calling,” and I’d take your call, figure out your problem. That was a hallmark of my deal as speaker: every member, Democrat or Republican, could disrupt anything that I was doing, unless I was meeting with another member. That went for members of the state senate, the other house of the legislature, as well. State senators didn’t come around in the frequency that assembly members did, but they were always welcome.

So I wasn’t surprised one day in the summer of 1991 to see a senator from Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley lurking out there among the video games with the other members. My assistant buzzed me to say that he wished to speak with me. His name was Alan Robbins.

Among his peers, Alan Robbins was probably the least-liked member of the entire legislature. He had a terrible personality. His offbeat legislation on morals matters made him seem almost like an evangelical Christian—but he was also regarded as a whitened sepulcher himself when it came to morals. In 1981, he had been acquitted of charges that he had had sex in 1978 and 1979 with two different sixteen-year-old girls.

And in the capitol he was one of the most annoyingly dogged representatives when it came to his own bills. He was always trying to horse-trade on bills, offering amendments about this if you’d do that. On the floor you’d see him sitting right on a member’s desk trying to jawbone the other member into a deal. What made it worse was that his bills were usually of low quality: special-interest legislation for land developers. Oh, he was truly disliked.

However, I treated him the way I treated every member: with respect and cordiality. I didn’t trust him at all, but I felt that every member was entitled to the deference and courtesy that membership brought them. He was really an underdog. I didn’t want to be close to him, but I tried to be respectful and friendly to him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.