Assemblyman Leads GOP Forces in War of Words

SACRAMENTO — By definition, Democratic and Republican members of the California Assembly don’t agree on much that is controversial, but they do agree that one silver-thatched presence among them is controversy personified.

Both sides can count on Bernie Richter of Chico, a onetime San Fernando Valley farm boy, to stand and deliver as the Republicans’ star flame-throwing debater on the lower house floor.

A Democrat turned Republican, he does battle for a wide assortment of conservative causes, notably his campaign to end affirmative action policies for women and minorities.

Once seen as a maverick who was allied for a time with former Speaker Doris Allen, he is now chairman of the Assembly’s Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee and head of an Assembly education budget subcommittee. Just last week, he was in the news when Assemblyman Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles) blew up and called him an “[expletive] moron” in public because of Richter’s attempt to officially salute U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, who spoke out against racial injustice 100 years ago.

Murray, who is African American, said he was frustrated and angered by Richter’s use of Harlan’s message while at the same time working to dismantle affirmative action, which Murray strongly supports. Murray later apologized for his remark.

Possessed of an independent streak, Richter caught the attention of Democrats in 1994 and briefly entertained an offer to seize the Assembly speakership with their connivance.

These days, though, Democrats want to rein in his tongue.

Trying to shut him up recently during a diatribe against welfare, and failing, Democrats had to listen as Richter delivered one of his classic orations, declaring his rivals just couldn’t stand to hear his version of the truth.

Welfare was not just a policy in need of reform, said Richter, 64, dressed in his standard dark suit and tie and starched white shirt. It was government destroying families by supplanting the male role and producing “this oozing misery . . . that is destroying America.”

Republican Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle said of Richter: “For decades we had hard rhetoric from the left, and very seldom has this house seen someone who has the ability to make the same type of rhetorical hard-hitting comments from the right. Bernie Richter is that person.”

In his speeches, Richter often says what colleagues “are only willing to privately think,” said Assemblyman Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga).

Nothing approaches the zeal Richter brings to his impassioned crusade to wipe out enhanced job, school and business opportunities for women and minorities, all the while proclaiming himself a lifelong battler against racial injustice. His rhetoric often turns explosive, and he welcomes the combat.

Years before the current initiative campaign seeking an end to gender- and race-based preferences, Richter was pushing a similar agenda.

“It’s on the ballot now because I raised the issue when no one else would, including my Republican colleagues,” he said. As early as June 1994, Richter was introducing anti-affirmative action measures containing language almost identical to the initiative on the November ballot.

Besides spending $5,000 from his campaign funds to advertise the measure, Richter is pushing a bill that calls not only for ending affirmative action but criminally fining those who would defy the ban.

He has added to his bill similar penalties for University of California and California State University administrators who waive admissions requirements on the basis of requests from influential supporters, such as politicians or university donors.

Whether preferences work for or against people, Richter said, “it’s just something I feel inside my bones--that you cannot take note of people’s race, ethnicity, whatever, in making government policy.”

Critics accuse Richter of turning the preferences argument on its head to reach his conclusions.

“Shame on him,” said state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who defends preferences on grounds that plenty of discrimination still exists. He pointed to the ranks of business managers and college professors dominated, he said, by white males.

Shot back Richter: “That’s what the Germans said in 1930. They said it’s very hard to go to a big company in a big industry and see anything but Jewish faces, dominating totally out of proportion to their numbers. [Polanco makes] exactly the same argument. It’s identical.”

Born in Los Angeles, Richter grew up on the family’s 10-acre farm in then-bucolic Reseda. He attended UCLA on a football scholarship, and tells of walking out on Coach Red Sanders after one season as a running back for the 1950 freshman team. He said his conscience finally got the better of him for taking money under the table--”not very virtuous of me, I’ll admit.”

Richter moved to the Chico area, about 100 miles north of Sacramento, in 1966. He taught high school civics and then ran family owned retail stores, which he advertised on television calling himself “Crazy Bernie” for the low prices he charged. It’s a handle that sticks with him for his flamboyant ways as a politician.

He served on the Butte County Board of Supervisors from 1974 to 1978 but failed in his bid for a second term. Raised a Democrat, he switched to the GOP in 1990, won a race for the Assembly in 1992 and was reelected in 1994 with 64% of the vote.

Richter said he always championed minority rights. While running the family carwash business in Reseda, he said, he raised hell with local merchants over discrimination shown to his African American employees.

As a lawmaker, he has urged passage of legislation barring liquor licenses to private clubs that deny membership on the basis of race.

Today, he sits on the California Commission on the Status of African American Males, a state commission he defended when other Republicans opposed its formation. But he has disagreed publicly with the group’s African American chairwoman, Assemblywoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), over how to improve opportunities for black men.

All of which should make clear, he said, that his quarrel with affirmative action “has nothing to do with gaining advantages for white males.”

But Assemblywoman Marguerite Archie-Hudson (D-Los Angeles), who is black, called Richter a spreader of “dangerous cynicism,” relying on “snippets of history taken out of context” to justify his stance.

Archie-Hudson said that when black Assembly members met with Richter during the speakership battle in 1994, “he looked at us and said it was the first time he’d ever had a sustained conversation with black people. He seemed to be amazed at how intelligent we were.”

Replied Richter: “I would never question her sincerity. I would hope she would not question mine.”