Next week, Anthony Rendon will be on the political record when he steps down as Speaker of the California Legislature.

At 55, he is the third-longest-serving president in California history, behind legislative giants Willie Brown and Jesse Unruh. Rendon’s tenure was all the more remarkable given that he did it in an era of term limits, showing a far more intelligent and composed personality than the Machiavellian flexibility of his predecessor. had.

Rendon and I first met about four years ago. She is friendly enough to exchange emails about once a week. Very little politics, mostly food and literature. He is running for state treasurer and will continue to represent his district until the end of his term in 2024.

I think he would enjoy teaching philosophy at his alma mater, Cerritos University. Still, he’s no curly purple.

The Rendon I know is a funny, irreverent guy who lives to learn and takes lessons even from humiliation. Like the first time he sat down with Brown at an old-fashioned steakhouse in San Francisco, not long after he became a speaker.

“You can see him in the far back holding his coat,” Rendon told me over a delicious lunch at the restaurant last Friday. Str8t up tacos at his favorite Lakewood. Good old funk was playing in the background and mouthwatering people of over a hundred years chattering around us. “Everyone said, ‘He has cataracts and his vision is terrible.’ We waited about 20 minutes.

“And at the end I thought, ‘I should go tap him on the shoulder so he can have dinner,'” he continued. “And he said, ‘I started to wonder if you were going to stare at me all night.'”

Rendon helped regain a Democratic majority in Congress, enabling Congress to embark on an ambitious liberal remake of the Golden State, the envy of progressives across the country, which turned us into conservatives. I turned it into a punching bag. That’s what makes his political denouement so amazing. Rep. Robert Rivas (D. Hollister) will replace him after a year-long struggle that split the California Democratic Party.

If the speaker who spoke was bitter, he would not have revealed it during our lunch.

He wore his usual jean uniform, an ironed white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A black leather bracelet was wrapped around his left wrist. He didn’t want to hear the biggest hits of his career. Because that would make him bored. Instead, I threw random questions at him and he always provided thoughtful and funny answers, both short and long.

Rendon said Dadaism was a better guide to governing well (“It’s all situationalism”) than a political biography (“It’s excruciatingly boring”). He ridiculed Los Angeles City Councilman Kevin De Leon’s performance politics. It doesn’t impress me. ”

Rendon called a recent LA Times investigation into how his wife, a consultant and nonprofit executive,’s income increased as his power grew in Sacramento as “sexist.” characterized. Political Scandal Continues From Los Angeles City Hall? “Amazing, depressing, and unconscionable.”

The most interesting part of our hour-long conversation was Rendon’s skepticism about the role of his profession in creating a better future for the state.

I asked him how he feels about California now.

“I thought the same about it coming in. That’s, uh…”

He took a bite of the taco.

“There are so many good things and so many bad things. It’s amazing how powerful you are, and I don’t know if we feel that way ourselves.”

He accused politicians of stifling public optimism about the state, largely by trying to hog the definition of the California dream. As an example, he gave a speech by a prominent member of parliament that he refused to document.

“My fellow politicians were like, ‘Oh, he’s so good.’ He’s so good.’ And I thought, ‘He’s kind of boring. And he is better than others! But it just sounds like boosterism. So, in California, boostalism has become deadly at times. ”

He named William Mulholland, a Los Angeles civil engineer who built a giant aqueduct to bring water from the Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley, forever changing the state’s water policy. Mulholland was also the designer of St. Francis Dam, which collapsed in 1928 and killed more than 450 people. The dam was the second deadliest loss of life in California history, after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

“It’s best for politicians to voice the opinions of others,” concluded Rendon. “I think that’s the best we can do.”

During a floor session at the State Capitol in 2019, Rendon met with then-Rep. Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego).

(Robert Gorey/Los Angeles Times)

Rendon has good reason to be suspicious of his comrades. The #MeToo scandal among Congressional Democrats has led to resignations and the party’s majority has temporarily disappeared. Closer to home, the city of southeastern Los Angeles County where Rendon represents has seen so many civil servants prosecuted, arrested and convicted of political crimes, and in 2021 he plans to declare the area a “corruption free zone.” I remember describing it as “corridor”.

It was non-politicians who pulled the region back from the brink, he said. If they didn’t like what they saw, they would eventually run for office themselves.

“Would you like to hear my twisted theory?” he said with a smile. “Twenty years ago you were a bright student in the Southeast.” [L.A. County] Go to high school and go to college. Then after graduating, you’ll either live in Pasadena or Westwood. Then, the skyrocketing housing prices left people unable to do anything but go back to their dads and moms.

“And you buy a house, or you see the house across the street and you buy it, which, you know, is a lot more affordable than the house your fellow college graduates live in. So you lives in a community, but finds it lacking the comforts that others have and decides to stand for election.

Rendon concluded that Southeast LA County government “still has a few knuckleheads.” “But there’s a whole new generation coming. They’re not ‘involved’ in politics yet. and they are good. they’re really really great. “

What advice would he give to his successor, Rivas?

“I’m from Western California, and so is he,” he said. “We’re done with Eastern California. Draw a straight line through California. Coachella, Inland Empire, Central Valley to Reading. I’ve been working to make sure there is.”

Rendon remembers driving across the state and giving multiple speeches a day during one election cycle to endorse candidates. And I’m giving a speech at Westwood. I was giving a speech in San Francisco, and I was giving a speech in Santa Barbara, and I don’t know where I was after that—probably near Hanford. I started this speech about the California dream.

“I looked around and thought, ‘Whoa.’ This is not the place to do that. It’s wrong. It’s lying to people.”

He said his ignorance epitomized the “domestic colonialism” that dominates California politics, but the guilt is made worse for him because the city he represents has lived in the shadow of Los Angeles for so long. bottom.

“You have to feel like a kid in Bell Park or Walnut Park. You just look down at ‘Alameda Corridor’ and you’re like, ‘Wow, look at that.’ That’s where the work is. There’s work out there, and it’s passing right under me, and it’s just passing me.

“What’s happening in Sacramento is important from a symbolic perspective,” Rendon continued. “It’s important because it formalizes things. Politicians sometimes get in the way of change. But when the culture changes, everything changes.”

rendong with cone Chongos Zamorano Taken in 2019 at Tocumbo Ice Cream in Anaheim (a type of curd).

(Gustavo Arellano/Los Angeles Times)

I asked the last, well-deserved question. How will history remember him?

“My chief of staff recently said, ‘You were a wartime orator'” — this quotes the famous “wartime consigliere” line from The Godfather, and is the wisest Good counselors are people who know how to face problems and fight them.

Rendon rattled off just a few of the hardships California has experienced since Donald Trump took office in 2016. drought. COVID19. Civil riots in the summer of 2020. Since then, misinformation about the election has continued to circulate. The multi-billion dollar budget deficit Mr. Rivas now has to face.

“So we faced a lot of tough situations,” he said. “And instead of crawling on the ball and trying to defend what we have, we tried to be aggressive and do more.”

Rendon stood up. A meeting with voters was held. He tried to walk out the door, but he remembered the pack of tortillas he had left on the table. He grabbed them, smiled, and finally said the words “Godfather” to me.

“Don’t forget the cannoli.”