Fresh blood in California? Not exactly.

• Author: Weintraub, Daniel M.
• Position: Selection of Bill Leonard as minority leader in California legislature

Republicans in the California Assembly picked a leader with plenty of prior experience - in the Senate.

Term limits were supposed to infuse the California Legislature with fresh blood and new ideas as career lawmakers were swept out to political oblivion. But the state Assembly's Republican caucus, most of whose members support term limits, isn't ready yet to trust its future to them.

The Republicans, in their first leadership vote since term limits took full effect, chose veteran lawmaker Bill Leonard as minority leader. Leonard, 49, is technically a freshman with three full terms to serve under the state's term limits law. But his election to the Assembly last fall followed an eight-year career in the Senate and an earlier, 10-year stint in the lower house. His prior Assembly experience ended before California voters enacted term limits in 1990.

Leonard's return to the Assembly and his ascent to the leadership post is but one example of how term limits are not always producing the results that either their backers or opponents envisioned. The law and the changes it wrought have been blamed here for everything from late state budgets to rapid staff turnover to an increasing trend toward settling major issues in conference committees, where input from rank and file members is limited. Studies also have shown that the law has done nothing to slow the pace of campaign fundraising and may have made the pursuit of cash for campaigns more important than ever before.

But term limits may be having their most profound effect when it comes to leadership. California, like many states, had a history of long-serving legislative leaders. But with Assembly members now limited to six years and senators to eight, leaders are more likely to be members with a few years under their belts and just a few more to go.

The last Republican leader in the Assembly - Curt Pringle - had served one term prior to term limits and was in his second term under the new law when he was selected. The new Assembly speaker, Cruz Bustamante, had been in office three and a half years before he won his post. Democrats already are positioning themselves for the next speakership fight, assuming the state's term limit law is upheld by the federal courts and Bustamante is forced from office in 1998.

So Leonard, by moving back to the Assembly from the Senate, was able to sell himself to his colleagues as both an elder statesman and a member who, in his first Assembly term under the...