The Sacramento Bee: Opinion: California Capitol is isolated island with two tribes

Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
June 13, 2015

• Anthropologist would find Legislature fascinating
• Its two houses have distinct cultures
• Senate now the bastion of bad behavior

Anthropologists probe the evolution of primitive societies, which makes the Capitol a perfect laboratory.

It’s an isolated island occupied by two tribes with distinct cultural attributes. Sometimes they cooperate to pursue common goals but often are rivals.
Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles talks to members of the Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau on Monday, March 2, 2015 in Sacramento.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, D-Los Angeles talks to members of the Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau on Monday, March 2, 2015 in Sacramento. | Hector Amezcua hamezcua@sacbee.com

You might think this description refers to Democrats and Republicans. But it’s really about the Assembly and the Senate.

An anthropological study would reveal that the two tribes’ cultural differences evolve constantly but are never reconciled.

One house is always dominant. For most of the 20th century, the Senate and its long-serving, even elderly, members called the shots, but professionalism and the one-man, one-vote decision shifted the balance of power in the mid-1960s.

The Assembly dominated during the lengthy, authoritarian speakerships of Jesse Unruh and Willie Brown, but Brown’s departure and the advent of term limits in the 1990s shifted power back to the Senate as the lower house raced through a series of weak, short-term speakers.

At the moment, the two tribes are in rough parity, each jostling for dominance. But that’s not the only point of friction.

Historically, the Senate has been the more conservative of the two, but in recent years, with the advent of a bloc of moderate Democrats in the Assembly, it may be a little less liberal.

Finally, there’s the behavioral gap.

The Assembly long had the image of freewheeling, somewhat raffish and even semi-corrupt demeanor while the Senate was a bastion of probity – a little boring, perhaps, but collegial and less overtly partisan.

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