He was 37, with just a year's experience in the 80-member Assembly, when he won a three-way race for speaker. Democrats gambled that he would learn the job quickly and be speaker long enough to accrue power equal to that of the governor and Senate leader.
The risk paid off. Under Nunez, the Assembly has upstaged the more staid, experienced Senate.
Last July, for example, Nunez cajoled Republicans into approving a state budget, then dismissed the Assembly for summer recess, leaving the Senate to debate the $145-billion spending plan for another month in the Sacramento heat. The final budget was two months late and virtually the same as that passed by the Assembly.
Democratic colleagues praise Nunez's energy, passion and quick grasp of policy. He ruled with a strong hand -- and, occasionally, a temper.
Kevin McCarthy, a Bakersfield Republican who led the minority caucus during the early years of Nunez's tenure and is now a congressman, remembers the speaker slamming his office phone hard enough to break it after McCarthy refused to follow an order.
But "he's incredibly charismatic," said Assemblyman Mark DeSaulnier, a Concord Democrat. "He's what some people would call a vitalist, full of energy and life, and he's strong-willed, so naturally you're going to have some friction from some members and some people outside."
People embraced Nunez, and he returned the favor, said former Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez, a Norwalk Democrat who served under Nunez for two years. He noted that Nunez entrusted important posts to then-Assembly members Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach) and Dario Frommer (D-Los Feliz) after he outmaneuvered them to become speaker.
"He didn't have people back-stabbing him," Bermudez said, "and a lot of it was because of how he mended fences."
Republicans described Nunez as a "bare-fisted partisan." But they also said he aggressively defended the prerogatives of the institution.
When one state senator broke a promise to the Assembly to make changes to a bill he was sponsoring, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine) remembered, retaliation from Nunez was immediate: He killed the senator's bill.
Like several other members, DeVore said Nunez's staff used threats and intimidation when necessary to advance an agenda. "You can either be a doormat or a dictator," he said, "and I think he chose the latter route."
Nunez cultivated at least one Republican: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the bond was not instant. Initially, Nunez once said, the two mixed like "oil and water."
