Willie Brown today is known as a former mayor who dated Kamala Harris. In his prime as Speaker of the Assembly in California he was a giant force, more powerful than the governor. He had a huge campaign fund, effectively the source of money for CA assembly candidates. In return for the money he demanded loyalty. For Republicans, Brown was the devil. They wanted him gone more than anything. The state was still competitive then. Republicans got elected governor. They were close in the Assembly. Brown ruled for a long time.
Not well known is how Willie Brown first got the job of speaker. The tradition was the party would have a private vote to pick the leader, then vote as a block in the public vote. That was just a norm though which Brown didn’t need. In 1980 the Democrats had a fierce battle for Speaker between Howard Berman and Leo McCarthy. Berman was winning. Then Willie Brown got creative:
Unbeknownst to all but a handful of Brown’s Democratic friends – and most of them did not know all of the details – Willie Brown was negotiating with the Republicans. Horrified at the prospect of Berman as Speaker, the Republicans began to see Brown as an alternative.
Brown actually began talking with the Republicans in the summer of 1980, participants say. The talks were kept very secret. Brown, after all, was still McCarthy’s second-in-command.
There would be endless arguments in the years ahead about who agreed to what. But for now, the Republicans were satisfied.
Why did Republicans cut a deal with Brown?
“We really believed that Willie would self-destruct,” said former Assemblywoman Carol Hallett, who was the Republican Minority Leader presiding over negotiations with Brown. “We really felt that Willie’s flamboyant approach would get him into so much trouble with his own caucus that he wouldn’t last. And we were certainly wrong on that one.”
The most conservative of the Republicans had been elected two years earlier – dubbed the “Proposition 13 babies” – and they had no memory of Brown’s heavy-handedness as Ways & Means chairman. If anything, they liked his style.
Berman was in shock. The speakership fight would have to come to the Assembly floor where he was in for a bigger shock. On the floor, 28 Republicans voted for Brown, for a total of 51 votes to Berman’s 24.
“This could not happen and therefore I just assumed this would not happen,” Berman said this year, still incredulous. “What I never believed was that Willie --Willie Brown, the San Francisco liberal-left activist legislator – could get that hard-core Republican vote to go for him.”
But Willie Brown did just that. And now he owned the place.
https://aliciapatterson.org/stories/willie-brown-play-power
Many years later the Republicans got a slim majority in the Assembly and with it their prize of outing Brown as Speaker. Only Brown convinced 2 GOP members to vote his way and Brown remained Speaker of the Assembly while Democrats were the minority.
Can history repeat itself? The margins are closer. All the republicans + the expanded squad = AOC, Speaker of the House.
It’s unlikely but I could see Republicans thinking it would work out great for them.