IT’S BEEN A better-than-average day for John Vasconcellos. The tempestuously moody state assemblyman, a Democrat from Santa Clara, has spent the morning conducting hearings of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, which he chairs, and has managed to dispose of more than 80 bills without a hint of discord from any of its 23 members. Since amiability is not always the hallmark of the committee’s deliberations, this is something of a victory, albeit one easily obscured by exhaustion. Vasconcellos’ committee considers 2,900 bills a year, six times more than any other assembly committee, and the volume of legislation weighs on him so much that at the hearing’s conclusion he confesses to Sam Yockey, the committee’s chief consultant: “Geez, I remember now why I hate Ways and Means.”
As Yockey relates later, he answered Vasconcellos with a pep talk: “Look at it this way, John. We did 80-something bills today, and the session’s half over–that’s positive!” Heartened, Vasconcellos replied, “You’re right!” and walked out briskly.
To Yockey, this is evidence that Vasconcellos, 55, a longtime psychotherapy patient and psychological workshop participant, has developed a sunnier outlook. Two years ago,Yockey says, the assemblyman would have responded with an expletive.
Later that day, Vasconcellos (Vass-con-SELL-ose) is hooked up by phone to Phoenix, where he’s the guest on a radio talk show. Ahead of him lies half a day more of Capitol routine–a meeting with a delegation of pest-control operators who wish to express their legislative concerns; a conference with Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, an ally and fellow Democrat; an appearance at a Sacramento bar where a Ways and Means staffer is being given a farewell party; a two-hour interview conducted by a reporter over dinner, and, finally, late-night legislative homework–but for now Vasconcellos is enjoying himself. After all, the talk-show topic is self-esteem, and Vasconcellos is, if not the George Washington of self-esteem, at least its Johnny Appleseed, dedicated to spreading word of its power to cure social ills.
Last September, Gov. George Deukmejian signed legislation bringing into existence Vasconcellos’ pet project, the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, Personal and Social Responsibility, but it wasn’t until February, when cartoonist Garry Trudeau devoted three weeks of “Doonesbury” to imaginary task-force proceedings, that publicity about the task force gathered momentum. Since then Vasconcellos has been profiled in People magazine, and he has been a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows. “I’ve gotten more attention here in the last several weeks than in the (previous) 20 years,” the assemblyman says. Never mind that some of the attention, particularly Trudeau’s, was derisive; Vasconcellos says Trudeau “helped us enormously (by giving) us national recognition.” And perhaps inevitably, the fanfare has provoked speculation that Vasconcellos, who is in his 21st year as an assemblyman, would like to run for governor. The talk-show host asks him: “Is (the task force) part of an effort to obtain for yourself a higher office that might add to your self-esteem?” Vasconcellos’ delighted laugh is his loudest of the day.
While Vasconcellos would be a long shot in a gubernatorial race, merely being questioned about whether he intends to run gratifies him, for he has struggled with self-doubt all his life. Mitch Saunders, a San Jose marriage- and family-counseling intern who is Vasconcellos’ best friend, says: “Two years ago we were joking about the notion that ( John) would be struck dead if he let anybody know that he ever entertained thoughts about running for governor. Now he answers questions about where he stands on that quite deftly, with no problem about confidence at all.”
Vasconcellos’ efforts to soothe his tormented psyche have led him into realms of exploration that few politicians have entered and fewer still will admit to having entered. He began psychotherapy during his first campaign for the assembly, in 1966, and won anyway. Since then he has participated in an array of “human potential movement” therapies, including bioenergetics, psychosynthesis and gestalt, all of which purport to release submerged tensions and fears. During one three-year period he attended workshops once a month at places such as Esalen, the Big Sur center of “New Age” consciousness. Among his workshop leaders were movement luminaries Abraham Maslow and Rollo May; Carl R. Rogers, the father of “self-actualization,” became Vasconcellos’ mentor and friend. Now Vasconcellos calls his politics “the Carl Rogers insight carried into the public arena.” The insight, the assemblyman explains, is that “people are basically decent, and given the right kinds of recognition, nurturance, love, and support, will live in constructive ways.”
As a result of such pursuits, Vasconcellos long ago was dubbed “the touchy-feely assemblyman,” a phrase that in conjuring up images of a hug-prone Pollyanna is thoroughly misleading. Some of the adjectives commonly used to describe Vasconcellos are shy , sensitive , intense , self-absorbed and gloomy ; laid-back and mellow are not among them. Mellow? Since enduring a heart attack and seven-way bypass operation at the relatively young age of 52, Vasconcellos has followed a salt- and cholesterol-free diet, but he has not slowed his pace, which verges on frenetic; acquaintances even suggest that he has increased it, since for health reasons he now plays racquetball six days a week instead of two or three.
It is tempting to hypothesize that Vasconcellos’ political efforts are designed to give other Californians what he has spent a lifetime struggling, not always successfully, to attain for himself. The title of one of his political brochures, “Toward a Healthier State,” has an obvious personal correlation, as does the self-esteem task force. A man who professes to value intimacy and relationships, he has fought for legislation to expand child-rearing education, encourage natural birthing and revamp licensing laws for marriage and family counselors–yet he has never married. He attributes this to “an inordinate timidity and fright, for a long time, with respect to women.”
Vasconcellos, in fact, is a man of contradiction. He is that rare politician who declines to wield power when doing so would conflict with his idea of fairness, yet who, as Ways and Means chairman, holds the second most powerful position in the assembly–indeed, he has occupied the post for seven years, by three years the longest tenure of any Ways and Means chairman since the committee was created in 1897. His political program focuses on what he calls “human development,” yet it is chiefly the nuts-and-bolts committee work he has done in crafting the state’s $38-billion budget and its fiscal legislation that has secured his stature. He is considered a masterful negotiator and conciliator, often in the process able to produce superior legislation, yet many of his staff members think him so emotionally volatile that Yockey says: “You walk around here on eggshells–’Is John in a good mood today or a bad mood?’ ”
VASCONCELLOS attributes much of his tension to his strict Catholic upbringing. He was raised in East San Francisco Bay small towns, following his father, a schoolteacher and administrator, from job to job. He was so close to his mother, he says, that his father considered the relationship unhealthy and, when John was 14, tried to sever it with one dramatic act: On the day before the school year began, his father announced that John would be attending Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, a Catholic boarding school, and told him to pack. “I hated him for it, for a while,” Vasconcellos says.
Vasconcellos describes himself then as “shy as could be, little sense of myself, very dutiful, very Catholic,” but he was also an excellent student: He was either first or second on the honor roll every six weeks for four years. He also ran for student-body office twice, but lost both times after succumbing to stuttering during his campaign speeches.
At the University of Santa Clara, Vasconcellos was more successful: He was the first person in the history of the institution to graduate as student-body president, valedictorian and recipient of a medal given to the outstanding member of the senior class. After a two-year stint in the Army, he returned to attend University of Santa Clara law school and again was class president and top student. Though Vasconcellos still takes pride in these accomplishments, he doesn’t respect the motivation behind them. He was, he says, “driven to be recognized, which is what you do if you don’t have self-esteem.”
Vasconcellos practiced law for a year at a leading San Jose law firm, and later became then-Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown’s travel aide. Because the decision to work for Brown marked his first break from the safe path he’d followed since prep school, he agonized over it. Now he calls the job “a remarkable coming-out experience. As shy as I was, I had to deal with lots of people. It was a provocative and growthful time.”
Vasconcellos went back to his law practice after a year, but by then he knew he was headed toward politics. He still had to be pushed to run for office, however. In 1962 a state assembly seat for San Jose became vacant, and after considering making the race, he “panicked” and didn’t run. Instead, a year or two later, he made an agreement with Robert J. Miller, who wanted to run for the San Jose city council: If Vasconcellos managed Miller’s campaign, Miller would return the favor when Vasconcellos ran for the assembly.
With Vasconcellos as his manager, Miller won the city council race; then, in 1966, a San Jose assembly seat fell open because of reapportionment. “I was anguishing my way about it, and my friend Rob called one day and said, ‘What are you doing Sunday?’ I said, ‘I’m going to the beach.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve invited 12 of your closest friends to our house for brunch to run your campaign. You’d better (be) here.’ ”
Vasconcellos says his politics at the time consisted of “the standard liberal proposals, not particularly well thought through.” His appearance also was standard-issue, from his Army crew cut to his conservative suit and tie. But if his appearance was mild, his frame of mind was turbulent. “Some situations just blew out my belief system,” he says, but declines to elaborate on what prompted the personal crisis. It led, he says, to his rebelling against Catholicism and its emphasis on “self-denial, guilt, sin.”
During the campaign Vasconcellos began seeing a Jesuit psychologist who’d been trained by Carl R. Rogers, and Vasconcellos continued the therapy after he became a legislator. Over the next several years he became caught up in what he calls “a search for myself.” Referring to the difficulty of carrying on such a quest while in the public eye, he says, “It’s a wonder I made it. At times I was just totally lost and totally angry.” The man who grew up in a household where anger was not permitted now went for three years without a haircut and stopped wearing ties. He lost his temper so often during assembly sessions that other members were designated to “come hold my hand and say, ‘It’s OK.’ ” One reason why Vasconcellos kept his seat through those times is that he didn’t conceal his psychological pursuits, and thus defused them as a political issue.
Vasconcellos says that his turning point finally arrived in the late ‘70s, which happens to correspond with his selection in 1979 as Ways and Means chairman. Today, for perhaps for the first time in his life, he sounds satisfied with his accomplishments, both personal and political. “I’ve overcome a lot of demons,” he says. “I think part of my political success is on account of having struggled with those demons. I have much more of a sense of other people’s individuality and their struggles. I’m much more likely to approach somebody in a way that is inviting rather than condemning. . . . Right now I’m having a very good time with my life, comfortable and easy and lots of satisfaction, lots of good friends and lots of richness.”
His staffers, however, say they didn’t see a change in him until a year or two ago–and they attribute it not to therapy but to the changes in diet and exercise following his heart attack. Yockey says he used to consider Vasconcellos a “borderline manic depressive. (He can be) just pumping all day long and you can’t stop him, and then suddenly he’s in the toilet. Up and down.” The difference, Yockey says, may be that whereas Vasconcellos used to subsist on sugar (“He’d sit in committee and eat 1,100 cookies”), he’s now eating substantial, if bland, meals.
It may be indicative of the change in Vasconcellos that a few years ago he reacted angrily when Robert Naylor, then the assembly’s Republican floor leader, dared to suggest during a debate on the budget bill that the two men differed in approach but shared the same values. “Mr. Naylor, one correction,” answered Vasconcellos. “Your values and mine are not the same. They are radically different. Please don’t ever claim they are the same.” But the “new” Vasconcellos sounds a bit like Naylor, at least when he talks about his similarities with the governor: “George Deukmejian and I and you, whatever you believe, and everyone else have the same goals in mind–a peaceful world, good families, education and health. Politics is not about the ends, it’s about the means.”
Eleanor Pett, who worked in Vasconcellos’ San Jose field office from 1981 to 1983, remembers the time he berated her because she spent $14 of office money to replace a California flag stolen from a housing complex for seniors in his district. She arranged for him to present the flag at the complex, but when he found out the reason for the visit, he “raved on and on about how we never should have done this,” Pett says. “ ‘A flag? We are buying a flag for other people? How much did the flag cost?’ ” When the assemblyman arrived at the center, the residents were thrilled that he’d taken the time to come and invited him to speak to them. Still upset, he declined, saying, “No, no, I just want to bring you this flag,” and he left within two minutes. “I was furious with him for behaving that way,” Pett says.
Such incidents occur less frequently now, as Vasconcellos has shed some of his gloom and anger. In the past staffers say that he was so self-absorbed that he never thought to thank them for their work; now, occasionally, he does. Nevertheless, the same staffers who acknowledge the change in Vasconcellos say he remains a socially graceless, fundamentally melancholy man. In fact, to an extent greater than in most other politicians’ offices, his staffers speak negatively about their boss. On one hand, this indicates he has failed to establish the kind of rapport with his staff that he tries to promote through speeches and legislation. On the other, it suggests that they trust him enough not to fear for their jobs.
LACKING A FAMILY of his own, Vasconcellos calls his best friend, the 29-year-old Saunders, and his wife, Cindy, “my immediate family.” Saunders says he became fascinated with Vasconcellos after discovering that the two men had much in common, including similar political views, Catholic backgrounds and the same therapist, and in 1982 a mutual friend introduced him to the legislator. Vasconcellos responded by inviting Saunders to spend some time with him. The pair, in Saunders’ phrase, “hit it off.”
Now, “the three of us do a lot of things together,” Saunders says. “John and I are pretty intense, so we spend a lot of time trying to, for example, teach each other how to play, something neither of us did a whole lot (while) growing up. We make trips to the beach and throw a Frisbee around, consciously knowing that we’re stretching each other and having fun at it.”
Saunders says that the assemblyman “is one of the most committed people I’ve ever met to his own growth” but that Vasconcellos is leery of those who have not made the same kind of personal commitment. He believes Vasconcellos has succeeded in reducing his fits of temper, which Saunders attributes partly to the “crazy” environment of the Capitol. “I think there are lots of times when John really doesn’t know how to treat people with the values he espouses,” Saunders says. “It’s easier to go back into old patterns than to use ones that he’s trying to adopt as his own, especially in the pressure cooker of the Capitol.
When the pressure cooker goes up, a lot of his ideas about how to be a person fly out the window.”
IN A SURVEY published by the California Journal in January,Vasconcellos was listed as one of 19 assembly members, all Democrats, with a 100%-liberal voting record on important bills during the previous legislative session. It’s not through voting, however, that Vasconcellos registers his greatest impact, but rather through the hard work, obvious sincerity and mastery of negotiating skills that are on display as Ways and Means chairman. Consultant Yockey vouches for Vasconcellos’ work habits, saying, “John doesn’t know how to not work.” And Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who chairs a Ways and Means subcommittee, says of Vasconcellos’ sincerity: “Even if people don’t agree with John’s approach to life, they respect him. People around here don’t like people who do things for appearance’s sake or for political reasons only. They do respect people who pursue their issues because they truly believe them, and he falls in that category.”
Vasconcellos’ winning traits are most apparent when he’s in the midst of negotiations. Having abandoned what he calls “the language of righteousness,” he says, “I’ve learned to honor other people’s individuality and experience and to try to figure out what is important to them and then to speak to it in ways that honor their integrity and don’t compromise (mine).” Last fall, for example, he stepped into a crisis affecting the state’s 14,000 foster-parent homes that few assembly members thought could be resolved before the legislative session ended. The crisis resulted from a decision made by insurance companies in 1985 to cancel or dramatically raise the rates of homeowners’ policies held by families with foster children. After trying without success to get the State Department of Social Services to intervene, the foster families went “on strike,” declaring in May, 1986, that they would accept no new foster children until the insurance issue was resolved. That meant that children needing foster care would have to remain in dangerous settings or be institutionalized.
The threat of institutionalization was “the thing that drove John crazy,” a staffer says. With little to gain politically, he took action when legislation to alleviate the crisis reached the Ways and Means committee. He held a meeting at his office with representatives of all the affected parties: the insurance industry, the Foster Parents Assn., the County Welfare Directors Assn., the State Department of Social Services, the California Children’s Lobby and others.
Until then, insurance-company representatives had refused to give reasons for the rate increases and policy cancellations. Vasconcellos got them to reveal that the insurance industry assumed that foster children were more likely than natural children to cause damage in homes, and that they also posed a liability risk because their natural parents sometimes filed lawsuits against the foster parents. In meetings that went on for a week, Vasconcellos convinced the insurance companies to stop discriminating against foster children, effectively invalidating the companies’ argument that foster children were more dangerous than natural children; at the same time, a state fund was established to protect the insurance companies from the threat of lawsuits involving foster children. Then, when the Trial Lawyers Assn. objected, Vasconcellos negotiated another compromise, this time putting a time limit on a provision barring one kind of lawsuit. By the time Deukmejian signed legislation incorporating the agreements, the foster parents had called off their strike.
Lee Kemper, executive director of the County Welfare Directors Assn., who was present at the meetings, says: “I’ve never been on more of a roller-coaster ride. We’d sit down with the Department (of Social Services), we’d finally reach agreement on what we could do, and then we’d meet with the insurance companies and they’d hate it. Then we’d get together and talk about what we could do, and then we’d meet the insurance companies again, and it would be a little bit better, and then they’d go back and talk to their principals, and they’d come back and they’d hate it again.” Throughout the negotiations, Kemper says, Vasconcellos’ approach was “very artful.”
Vasconcellos fashioned an even more improbable success when he joined the battle over California’s unitary tax, by which multinational corporations were levied a portion of the earnings they obtained not just in California but throughout the world. Under pressure from the Reagan Administration and subjected to exhaustive lobbying, Deukmejian and leaders of the legislature agreed two years ago to abolish the unitary tax for foreign multinationals. Provoking his colleagues’ wrath, Vasconcellos objected. He argued that local multinationals would be placed at a disadvantage if the tax was retained for them but not for foreign companies, and over the next year he negotiated a complicated compromise. The new legislation, enacted in 1986, phased out the unitary tax entirely while requiring affected companies to pay fees to make up for some of the resulting $500-million revenue loss to the state.
Since Vasconcellos has been reflexively anti-business for most of his career, his stand on unitary tax was surprising. “That ironically took me from being an anti-business liberal to the American multinationals’ champion,” he says. The fact that his district includes Silicon Valley, headquarters of many U.S. multinationals, unquestionably influenced his position, but he and his staffers argue persuasively that he would not have adopted it if he had not been convinced of its fairness.
COURAGEOUS and petulant, Vasconcellos walks a tightrope. “We must realize that each of us is a politician,” he has said, “for politics truly consists of how each of us treats the person next to us–in every relationship and situation–in bed, next door, cross-town or around our world.” Because he endorses philosophies that argue for man’s innate goodness, many people look to him to personify goodness; because he speaks of the interrelatedness of politics and personal behavior, his personal life seems fair game for scrutiny in a way that other politicians’ lives are not; because he advocates openness as a way of coping with life’s dilemmas, candor is forever expected of him. If the standard is uncompromising, at least Vasconcellos has chosen it himself. It is both his burden and his grace.