SACRAMENTO — There'll soon be a new face of the Legislature: a nice-guy face, the look of a wholesome policy wonk, the image of anything but a backroom boss.
This couldn't come at a more opportune time for the disrespected institution -- its stature scraping the bottom of polls, voters having just rejected its desired term limits change in a slap at legislative leadership.
Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) won't take over as Senate president pro tem until after the current legislative session ends around Labor Day. But he'll increasingly be in the public eye, I expect, starting to polish the Capitol's image.
In the Assembly, eight potential speakers have officially begun jockeying for votes in a leadership election to be held by Democrats on March 11.
Current Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) and Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland) became descending lame ducks as soon as the votes were counted on their failed term limits lifeline, Proposition 93.
The consensus around the Capitol is that change will be good.
Perata and Nunez can be effective leaders. Passage of the much-needed 2006 infrastructure bonds is the best example. But the two haven't been getting along recently. Nunez has been rocked by questionable spending of campaign funds. Perata has been under the dark cloud of an FBI investigation into possible corruption. And both got hammered by the nasty anti-93 campaign.
Steinberg, 48, may be exactly what the Legislature needs: a leader without hubris, with a dash of humility. Smiling, smart and substantive. Squeaky clean, by all appearances.
The rap on him is that he may be too nice. Too soft. Not at all cutthroat.
"It'll be interesting to watch," says Riverside County Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco, the Assembly Republican leader when Steinberg was an influential Assembly committee chairman. "That's kind of a rough-and-tumble place up there.
"He never stabbed me in the back. I never saw him stab anybody else in the back. I never saw the kindergarten gamesmanship from him that goes on up there constantly. . . .
"He's an exceptionally nice guy."
Over breakfast at a Capitol hangout, I asked Steinberg whether he was tough enough to discipline troublesome senators.
"Damn right," he said. "I'm willing to do what I need to do. . . .
"People make a mistake equating being nice with lack of steel. . . . You can be firm and resolute, but do it with a smile on your face."
