The Capitol is atwitter over a confrontation between Richie Ross, an influential lobbyist and campaign consultant, and the aides to two legislators, in which Ross allegedly threatened career retaliation if the lawmakers didn't vote as he wanted on a controversial bill affecting farmers and farm workers.
Ross, representing the United Farm Workers union, was seeking votes for a measure that would repeal a recently enacted sales tax break on farm equipment purchases and use its tax proceeds to provide health care coverage for farm workers.

The clash between Ross and chiefs of staff of Assemblywomen Gloria Negrete-McLeod, D-Chino, and Lois Wolk, D-Davis, resulted in two closed-door meetings of the Assembly's Democrats and a pledge by Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson to appoint a committee that would look at changes in rules governing lobbyists.

There's more to this saga than those involved will acknowledge (Ross said it was just a momentary pique and apologized), but how much more is uncertain.

It could be a manifestation of the lingering displeasure with Wesson's leadership within the caucus. Wesson was chastised for loading up his payroll with out-of-work politicians, embarrassing Democrats as they confronted Republicans over the state's severe budget crisis, and was forced to fire the payrollers.

Ross is a one-time aide to Willie Brown, the legendary, long-serving Assembly speaker who is now mayor of San Francisco, and has enjoyed extraordinary access to the speaker's office under Wesson, who openly emulates Brown. Ross, some lawmakers contend, has wielded his closeness with Wesson arrogantly in seeking votes for or against bills on behalf of his lobbying clients.

It could be a manifestation of the simple fact that Wesson is beginning to wind down a speakership that, under legislative term limits, will end sometime next year. Those who would succeed Wesson are already jockeying for position.

More than anything, however, the Ross incident reflects a cultural change in the Capitol wrought by term limits, a redistricting plan that designates the partisan ownership of legislative districts and a new political campaign finance system. The three systemic changes have dramatically weakened legislative leaders' role in both political campaigns and legislative decision-making.

Building on the powerful speakership that Jesse Unruh created 40 years ago, a leader such as Brown could amass huge sums of campaign money, single-handedly anoint legislative candidates and decree the fate of legislation. Brown, in fact, once referred to himself as the "Ayatollah of the Legislature." But Brown's successors have wielded a fraction of that power, creating a vacuum into which special interest lobbyists and campaign consultants have stepped. They have become the anointers and financiers of legislative candidates in the primary elections, the only elections that really count under term limits. Indeed, far-seeing Sacramento interest groups now cultivate their own candidates for local offices to groom them for stints in the Legislature.

Ross' unusual status as both special interest lobbyist and campaign manager essentially doubles his kingmaker role in the process. When Ross was demanding compliant votes from the two legislative aides, therefore, he was merely acting as his mentor, Brown, might have acted in years past. Nor was it the first time that Ross had functioned as a surrogate speaker.

Two years ago, this column described how Ross, as a campaign consultant, had gotten Barbara Matthews elected to the Assembly from the Tracy area, then persuaded Matthews to carry a questionable bill on behalf of a Ross lobbying client, UST, the largest maker of smokeless tobacco products.

The UST-backed bill was aimed at changing the method by which California taxes chewing tobacco and snuff, effectively raising the taxes on the products marketed by UST's competitors. Matthews' cover story was that her bill would "discourage the use of these products by children," but it was conceptually identical to legislation that UST had sponsored in other states.

The incident embarrassed Matthews because it implied that she was a tool of a tobacco company and/or a toady for the man who got her elected.