A LEGEND IS LEAVING; TERM LIMITS ENDING SEN. DILLS CAREER THAT BEGAN IN 1930S.

Byline: Jon Matthews Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

He likes really loud clothes, makes alarmingly corny jokes and has been a firsthand player in much of California's 20th century political history.

He's an 88-year-old, saxophone-wailing legislator - a flamboyant, New Deal liberal who has lately been sporting a black hat over prominent sideburns.

He has many friends and has had his critics. But in the Capitol, it seems there has always been state Sen. Ralph Dills.

State Sen. Ken Maddy, a 64-year-old Dills friend, was 4 when Dills was first elected.

Dills ``was on the scene and involved in more significant governmental accomplishments and changes than anyone else in modern history,'' declares friend and former Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, D-Hayward. ``Under current (term limit) rules, there can't be another Ralph Dills.''

To call Dills a one-of-a-kind character and a Capitol fixture does not do justice to the facts. To say Dills is in his final months in the Legislature, his colleagues argue, can't convey the link to the past that soon will be missing.

Simply put, having a conversation with Dills is like stepping inside a political time machine.

Pick a decade.

The 1930s?

Dills, an El Segundo Democrat who also has a home in Rocklin, was very much in the mix. He was active in the EPIC (End Poverty in California) political campaign of muckraking author and socialist-turned-Democrat Upton Sinclair. Sinclair, who once declared that ``Capitalism has served its time and is passing from the Earth,'' lost his 1934 bid to become governor.

But Dills, who already could boast of careers as a teacher, musician and political organizer, won election to the Assembly in 1938. That was during the second term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

While President Truman ``had guts,'' Roosevelt's ``New Deal was overwhelming and he was a fantastic man,'' according to Dills, who was there.

Pick another decade.

The 1990s?

Dills, until just this year, presided over virtually every floor session of the state Senate. Although he now is slowing and sometimes uses a walker, the senator to this day chairs the Senate Governmental Organization Committee, which holds great power over liquor, horse racing, gambling, state hiring and other issues.

`This is not work'

While he could have retired decades ago, Dills drew smiles when he told his committee the other day, ``This is not work. This is pleasure and fun, and you get paid.''

Onward into the new millennium.

In a recent interview, Dills wanted to chat not only about the past, but about Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential chances.

As for his opinion of 1990s Gov. Pete Wilson, Dills bluntly declared, ``Personally I like the guy (but) Pete has that terrible disease of Republican governors of California. You run for president. You have to run for president and so you see him do all sorts of interesting things. I think he's making an ass of himself.''

Asked about Dills' statements, Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh countered that if the tax cut just passed ``is making an ass of yourself, we are guilty as charged.''

But as for Dills leaving the Legislature, Walsh added: ``It's like watching a comfortable old chair finally being taken out of your living room. You've loved it, and as the years passed a couple springs would pop out and stick you a bit, but the chair was still good.''

Term limits

If term limits weren't forcing him to leave the Senate later this year, Dills said, it's unlikely he would have run again but that he nonetheless would have ``seriously considered'' the matter. He still plans, perhaps by writing an autobiography, to stay active in Sacramento.

Maddy, a Fresno Republican also in his last term, called Dills ``maybe the icon of the icons around here.''

Sen. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles, said you can ask Dills about a particular bill debated years or decades ago, and ``he will tell you exactly what was in the bill, which legislator authored the bill and what the author was wearing at the time.''

``It's amazing that as his body continues to weaken, his mind continues strong,'' Watson added.

Watson said Dills sometimes ``didn't spend a whole lot of time in his district'' but was nonetheless ``loved and endeared'' for sticking up for the downtrodden, fighting decades ago for public education before it was fashionable.

Of course, there are laws named after Dills, buildings named after Dills. A plaque bearing his name is on the upper dais in the Senate chamber, where many a night Dills presided until the wee hours, more alert than some younger colleagues locked in sleep-deprived trances.

Before he regularly wore a hat, Dills' styled hair would regularly change hues, sometimes a bit purple, sometimes matching - and sometimes clashing with - his often loud, wide ties.

`He's quite a guy'

``He's quite a guy!'' declared one old Dills' campaign brochure featuring a picture of the smiling senator in a polka-dot tie.

Walk out the rear of the Senate chambers and up some back stairs, and there's Dills' modest Capitol office. Once inside, it takes only a minute's tour to further grasp the time span of his political service, the turning points and big and little names whose paths he has crossed. The office is nearly - no, is - a museum of 20th century California and U.S. political history.

Here is a picture of Dills with Gore. There is a picture of Dills with Hubert Humphrey. Other pictures show Dills with former Gov. Ronald Reagan and playing sax with former state Sen. Henry Mello at the piano. On the wall is a campaign sign urging voters to ``Re-elect Dills, The Roosevelt Democrat.''

Wearing a brimmed black hat, gray suit, string tie and pink shirt, Dills leans forward at his desk and sums up his feelings: ``Oh man, will I miss the place.''

He was born near Rosston, Texas, in 1910, the year Mark Twain died. Dills moved to Gardena in 1925, when the Los Angeles area was a hamlet compared with the modern day sprawl.

When Dills found his way to Sacramento in the 1930s, it boasted a sweltering, pre-air conditioned, pre-reformed Capitol. The pay was $12 a day, the lobbyists fewer in number but close at hand, and comradery the rule of the day.

``In those days the Legislature was less a part of your life. In other words, it was one of those things where a lawyer, an insurance man and even a schoolteacher, as I was, could get away from their job, come up here for the magnificent sum of $12 a day for 100 days,'' Dills said, recalling 60-cent meals that could be purchased at a place near the river.

Several current lawmakers said that during the World War II era, Dills bucked then-widespread sentiment against Japanese-Americans. In more recent years, he also was among those who argued for redress for internment camp survivors.

In the interview, Dills recalled that he refused to vote on one 1940s resolution demanding that Japanese-Americans and Italian-Americans give up their dual citizenship. While legislative records from the State Archives show that at least five other Assembly members opposed such a measure in 1943, Dills said he didn't want to dignify the proceedings by casting a vote.

``It was such an outrage to say that American citizens of Japanese origin as well as noncitizens would have no rights to own land or any interest in it. . . . You can't do that in America. But they did,'' said Dills, who added that he had earned money enough to attend school from a job made possible by a Japanese-American friend.

One of Dills' late brothers ran one of the Capitol's elevators. Another, Clayton, served with Dills in the Assembly. But just because the two were brothers didn't mean they would agree on all issues.

Battle over margarine

One day, a bill supported by Clayton Dills came to the Assembly floor. It was a measure to permit margarine to be colored yellow, just like competing butter.

Ralph Dills still can repeat the debate almost word for word: ``I hit the floor and said, `I'm a milk man!' I said, `I don't mind you coloring it (the margarine) any way - green or any other color - but don't color it like the good stuff, butter.' ''

Today, a trip to any supermarket shows that was one political battle Ralph Dills lost.

``My mother was on his (Clayton's) side,'' he laughed.

Legislative records from 1943 list the local address of the Dills brothers as ``John's Motel,'' telephone number 5-9509.

Today, most legislators, like Dills, own or rent homes in the Sacramento area. Dills lives with his wife, Elizabeth, on a large tract of land in Rocklin. They have three children. Dills left the Assembly in 1949 to become a judge, returned to the Senate in the 1966 elections and has been there, speaking his mind, ever since.

Among other accomplishments, Dills authored the Ralph C. Dills Act, the 1977 collective bargaining law for public employees. He also authored the bill that established California State University, Long Beach, and worked with other lawmakers to pave the way for the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.

Asked about a favorite governor, Dills first declared that he has ``never served under any governor, I have served with them.'' Then he named Republican Earl Warren, who was elected three times beginning in 1942 and eventually become U.S. Supreme Court chief justice.

``He was reasonable. He signed my bill to establish Long Beach State!'' Dills smiled. ``Generally he was with labor. He was a more or less liberal Republican and he was a fearless man. To me he was the most competent.''

`Too old to quit'

In his final, 1994 election campaign for the Senate, Dills was forced to run in new territory under a state Supreme Court redistricting plan. Then 84, he met the age issue head on, trumpeting throughout the 28th Senate District the campaign slogan, ``Too Old to Quit.'' Dills won, extending the legend.

But in that campaign, opponents and critics, including some leading environmentalists, contended Dills' departure from the Legislature was long past due and that he was too close to oil companies, gambling interests and other special interests and campaign contributors parading before his powerful committee.

Sam Schuchat, executive director of the California League of Conservation Voters, recalled that while a rival candidate backed by his group lost to Dills in the 1994 Democratic primary, ``Ralph came out of that election and turned into a terrific environmental vote. . . . He had been pretty poor before that.''

For years blasted as an anti-environmentalist but declaring he had changed to better represent his new constituents, Dills was named ``legislator of the year'' by the environmental group in 1997.

And there are few signs this year that Dills is expecting his ``fun'' job to come to an end.

As Dills presided over his committee earlier this month, for one of the last times, Sen. Betty Karnette, D-Long Beach, struggled to quickly reach her seat and cast a vote. One of her legs is broken and was in a cast.

But Karnette slowed, and flashed a big smile, as Dills declared in a soft voice, ``Take it easy. We'll be here.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

PHOTO (1) State Sen. Ralph Dills, 88, D-Gardena, is leaving politics because of term limits. He was first elected to the state Assembly in 1938.

(2) Dills is greeted by Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, left, and Ruben S. Ayala, D-Rancho Cucamonga, at the start of a legislative session in Sacramento earlier this month.

(3) Sen. Ralph Dills, center, sits between Sens. Richard Polanco and Hilda Solis at a recent Senate session.

Sacramento Bee