‘Work Hard and Good Things Will Come’

FRESNO —  Have you ever met a politician who called himself a “plodder?” Have you ever heard a politician admit he “wasn’t the smartest kid in the class?”

Ask Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante to describe himself and those are the self-appraisals he offers up. He appears uninterested in boasting, a hobby enjoyed by many who practice his trade.

Such humility is disarming--and quite useful. It masks a calculating mind and inexhaustible drive that have propelled Bustamante from obscurity to the near-pinnacle of state politics in 3 1/2 years.

On Monday, this stout, contemplative Democrat from Fresno is all but certain to be elected speaker of the California Assembly. The moment will be historic: Bustamante, 43, would become the first Latino to hold what has been the second most powerful political job in the state.

For a man who picked cantaloupes while growing up in poor farm towns around the San Joaquin Valley, this is nothing short of a triumph. A grandson of Mexican immigrants, Bustamante embodies the classic story of the disadvantaged kid who, through sweat and sheer grit, beats the odds and excels in life.

“My parents always told me, ‘Work hard, and good things will come to you,’ ” Bustamante said. “It sounds simple, it sounds like a cliche . . . but they were right.”

Bustamante will become the fifth speaker to govern the unruly Assembly in less than two years. His ascension will cap a period of unprecedented turmoil in the lower house, where Republicans grabbed the majority in 1994--for the first time in nearly 25 years--but lost it when Democrats made a surprisingly strong showing in the November election.

The last Democrat to hold the post--Willie Brown--reigned for almost 15 years, building an imperial speakership of legendary proportions. Bustamante’s tenure will be short (term limits will force him from office in 1998), but he will nevertheless command an $84-million budget, shape the Assembly’s legislative output and make appointments to influential panels such as the state Coastal Commission.

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For Californians who prefer flamboyance in their Assembly speaker, Bustamante will disappoint. Unlike Brown, a loquacious showman who loved an audience, Bustamante shuns attention and has a pensive, almost Buddha-like bearing. There are no Jaguars, no Brioni suits. In politics and his personal life, he is measured and moderate--with red wine and an occasional cigar his only indulgences.

Although Brown was a Machiavellian master of the political game, engineering head-spinning moves to gain and keep power, Bustamante earns his prizes mostly through hard work, loyalty and goodwill.

“Cruz is not a guy who lunges for the brass ring,” said Tim Baker, a Fresno dentist and Democratic fund-raiser who has known Bustamante for 20 years. “He just puts one foot in front of the other and gets the job done.”

Assemblywoman Martha M. Escutia (D-Huntington Park) uses a fable to describe the colleague she cherishes for his “quiet dignity.”

“You know the story of the tortoise and the hare? Well, Cruz is the tortoise. You may think he’s moving slow, but look out, because he’ll beat you to the finish line.”

To his family, it seems as if Bustamante has been inching doggedly toward that finish line throughout his life.

The eldest of six children, he bore weighty responsibilities during his youth--and bore them well, prompting his mother, Dominga, to call him “my little man.”

“He scrubbed the toilets, cooked the tortillas--did whatever was needed, usually without complaining,” recalled one of his three sisters, Dorothy Arroyo. “It seems like he’s been a grown-up forever.”

His father, also named Cruz, was a barber in the family’s tiny hometown of San Joaquin and held two other jobs as well. To help pay the family bills, Bustamante and his siblings worked in the fields that encircled their home, cooling off with dips in an irrigation ditch.

One memorable summer day, as he was pulling weeds amid the cotton plants, Bustamante heard a shout from his father.

“He asked me if I wanted a job as a box boy at the local market,” said Bustamante, 13 at the time. “I think it was about 105 that day. I ran out of the field and started work that afternoon.”

Despite such demands, Bustamante found time for Boy Scouts, a hobby--collecting coins--and his studies. At Tranquillity High School, he played football, wrestled and was a trumpeter in the band. In his senior year, he was elected student body president, promising to relax the student dress code. The required slacks and button shirts were items the farm kids could not easily afford.

“In a small school like this, you remember kids like Cruz--the active ones,” said teacher Lloyd Talbot. “He had that extra something. You just knew he was going to get out.”

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Getting out of San Joaquin was never in doubt. Bustamante’s friend John Navarrette said the two boys made a pact to go off to college in the “big city,” Fresno, and they did.

His first year away from home, Bustamante won a summer internship in Washington with the local congressman, B.F. Sisk. With savings pooled over several years, he bought a used Toyota and drove across the country, sleeping in his car and eating food packed by his mother. It was his first big adventure; he was 19.

“We all worked extra hard that summer and sent our money to him,” his sister Dorothy said, recalling her family’s pride in Cruz’s achievement. “He never asked, but we knew he needed it.”

From that point forward, Bustamante had the political bug. With a wife and young daughter to support, he dropped out of Fresno State--a move he regrets--and went to work, landing a job with a youth employment training program. His first political post was with former Fresno Rep. Richard Lehman. He went on to serve as district director for former Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan (D-Fresno).

“One thing I valued in Cruz was his amazing ability to give people bad news and make them appreciate it,” said Hillary Ross, Bronzan’s chief of staff at the time. “That talent will serve him well as speaker.”

When Bronzan resigned in 1993, Bustamante seemed a natural to succeed him. But he hesitated, Navarrette said, because “he’s so darn humble he had always viewed himself as the mechanic, the guy who belonged behind the scenes.” Encouragement from Bronzan finally persuaded him to run.

Once in Sacramento, Bustamante established himself as a moderate with a cautious legislative agenda. He is most proud of a series of bills aimed at improving farm worker housing, in part by awarding tax credits to developers, and of legislation to speed the purchase of textbooks--a rare commodity in some of the poorer corners of the San Joaquin Valley.

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Colleagues praise him for remaining attentive to his district even while rising through the Democratic leadership ranks. Republican Assemblyman Jim Cunneen of San Jose was struck last session by Bustamante’s tenacious pursuit of money to fix a leaky community swimming pool in the farm town of Dinuba.

“What that tells me,” Cunneen said, “is that even when he’s in the thick of power politics in Sacramento, he doesn’t forget the kids back home.”

Critics, however, say Bustamante too often sells farm workers short to side with growers on important legislation.

They note that Bustamante voted to permit the continued use of the pesticide methyl bromide, despite evidence that the chemical is a health menace to fieldworkers.

On another bill--which reduced fines slapped on farmers who fail to provide portable toilets for crop pickers--Bustamante abstained.

Since 1993, agriculture has been one of Bustamante’s largest financial backers, accounting for 8% of the $1.1 million he has raised for himself and other Democrats.

Colleagues say he won the speakership with the stamina and persistence that have characterized his life. Just a year ago, he lost a bruising fight for Democratic leader to outgoing Assemblyman Richard Katz of Sylmar.

“He only got eight votes, and some people would have been humiliated, demoralized by that,” said Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles). “But Cruz just built on it. He just plowed on ahead.”

When the November election results made it clear that Democrats would retake the majority in the Assembly, Bustamante began lining up support. Gradually, his bank of votes prompted his many rivals to bow out.

“I think he’ll be a good daddy for us,” said Sheila J. Kuehl, a Santa Monica Democrat who was perhaps his top competitor for the job. “He’ll be a steady hand on the wheel.”

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Aside from his steadiness, Bustamante has a warm heart and a dry wit that make him fun to be around, lawmakers say. At a Latino caucus dinner heavily lubricated by tequila, he charged around like a bull while Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles) played the role of matador.

For a Tahitian-style fund-raiser he hosted, Bustamante sent out an invitation featuring his head atop a buff, half-naked surfer’s body--a body considerably leaner than his own.

In Fresno, Bustamante is notorious for wild canoe trips he organizes on the San Joaquin River. “It’s crazy,” said fellow paddler Tom Bohigian. “There’s a lot of flipping over--on purpose.”

So far, power has not changed the fellow some call “Cruzman” or the “Cruzmeister.” Relatives say he has become a bit more polished but remains the same old Cruz--great fun at a Fresno State Bulldogs game, a gourmet in the kitchen. Friends say he continues to quote Mark Twain: “If you always tell the truth, you’ll have nothing to remember.”

Despite a comfortable salary--he will make $90,720 annually as speaker--he still lives in the same house he bought in 1980, a nondescript, $96,000 stucco home in a neighborhood no one would mistake for Fresno’s finest.

Vacations are rarely more grand than a weekend trip to Disneyland with his wife, Arcelia, and two of his three daughters, ages 3 and 15. His eldest daughter is married with two children.

Despite his modest tastes, Bustamante does covet some of the perks available to the rich and famous.

One day last summer, Assemblywoman Escutia took him to dinner at Morton’s of Chicago, a pricey Sacramento steakhouse. As they were leaving, Bustamante paused by the restaurant’s private wine lockers, where sports figures, celebrities and other bigwigs keep a personal collection in a cabinet graced by a brass name plaque.

“Willie Brown had some bottles there, so Cruz was anxious to look at his choices,” Escutia recalled. “And then he said, ‘One day, maybe I’ll have a locker here too.’ ”

Times staff writer Dan Morain contributed to this story.