What next for the former “Ayatollah of the Assembly”?
I’ll be on CALPERS [the California pension fund], and I’ll be running my institute for public service. Radio stations are recruiting me, television stations, law firms, speakers’ bureaus–the same one that represents Clinton and Giuliani and Colin Powell. And maybe a book, if I find the guy Hillary did. She got an $8 million advance.
How did you feel about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s victory?
I thought it was an incredible triumph for him and I think it doomed forever the Republican Party’s quest to push right-wing candidates. They know they are not going to be successful unless they get candidates who attract voters other than Republicans. They’ve got to get candidates who get labor votes, independent votes, new voters. Arnold represented that.
But for the Democrats to lose the country’s largest state: was that a harbinger of bad things for Democrats or incumbents?
Incumbents. If George Bush had been on the ballot, he would have lost. It was a perfect storm in politics that goes far beyond any single party.
Isn’t it weird that you were Mr. No on the Recall, but also privately advising your friend Arnold?
No, no, that’s the wrong way to ask the question. I don’t initiate the calls. If my enemy called me up I’d tell him exactly what he needed to do to win.
Who has better clothes, you or Arnold?
The rich guy. Although I do take him shopping. He’s got great clothes and he’s getting adjusted to wearing ties. And he really must spend a lot of money on his hair. [Laughs]
You’ve served for 40 years…
Forty-four years. I’m the longest serving African-American, tied with John Conyers. He will go back to Congress and be in his 45th year and I will exit the stage.
I’m not sure anybody believes you’re exiting for good. Does it bother you to see an entertainer come into politics, and to know people get their news from Leno?
No. I just wish I had the cachet to be able to go there. Politics has always had a show-business component to it. You are marketing yourself. You are marketing your ideas. You only stay in this business if you can adapt. It doesn’t mean abandoning your values. It doesn’t mean [changing] your goals.
Your biographer James Richardson said he thought anybody who grew up in segregation never gets over it. Do you ever get over feeling like the guy who came to San Francisco in 1951 with two cardboard suitcases?
I hope I never get over it.
There’s not the feeling that “I’ve made it”?
Because I have not. I am still looked at differently. When I walk out that door, in the eye of the total stranger, I’m the bus driver. Or I’m the potential mugger. Or I’m a dealer. So no, I have not made it.
Can that change?
Performance, performance, performance. At some point in the history of this country, color is going to cease to matter.
