CONSERVATIVE BOLTS GOP ON WELFARE; SIMI'S WRIGHT THINKS WILSON SHOULD COMPROMISE FOR REFORM.

Byline: Paul Hefner Daily News Sacramento Bureau

The ``Republican A-team'' group photo of California's conservative lawmakers still hangs on a lobby wall outside state Sen. Cathie Wright's Capitol office. Miniature elephants still line her bookshelf.

Yet last week found Wright, Simi Valley's conservative stalwart, casting the only Republican votes in favor of a welfare reform package supported almost exclusively by Democrats and vetoed immediately by Gov. Pete Wilson.

Liberals were delighted to have Wright's vote. Oakland Democrat Assemblywoman Dion Aroner applauded Wright as a maverick. Sen. Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles, offered praise as well.

``She has a daughter who has a baby, and she understands,'' Watson said of Wright. ``She came at it, as most women do, as how does this legislation affect our loved ones?''

What in the name of the Reagan Library was going on?

``I approached it as I do the budget. Do you think I'm going to get 100 percent in that budget of what I would like?'' Wright asked. ``If I figure that approximately 65 percent of the budget I agree with, I'm going to vote for it. I said I'd approach welfare the same way. There had to be compromise.''

She didn't exactly please the governor, however. One staffer called Wright way out of step with her party.

``Sixty-five percent of a car doesn't do you a whole lot of good if the 35 percent that's missing includes the engine, the brakes and the gas tank,'' said Sean Walsh, Wilson's chief spokesman.

But Wright's votes don't signal a plan to return to the Democratic Party, which she left more than 20 years ago. And while her personal perspectives on welfare issues guided her work, far from being disloyal, other conservatives said Wright has played a key role in carrying out the Republican's strategy on the issue.

``She moved the Democrats significantly closer to our position,'' said Sen. Jim Brulte, R-Rancho Cucamonga. ``Now, we want to move them even farther.''

Wright was one of only six Republicans named to an 18-member committee of lawmakers formed to draft legislation to bring California's welfare system into line with new federal law.

Signed in August by President Clinton, the law calls for states to impose time limits on aid and to require welfare recipients to take jobs or enroll in training programs. The issue - which has held up passage of a state budget - has emerged as the battle of the year between Wilson and Democrats in control of the Legislature.

Wilson outlined his plan in January. It would have put a one-year time limit on cash benefits to families entering the welfare system. In contrast, the committee's plan would give recipients two years, plus up to three years of community service work.

When committee Democrats quickly dismissed much of Wilson's proposal, several Republicans grew disenchanted with the process. But while her colleagues drifted away from the committee, Wright stuck with it.

``If you know anything about Cathie, she's very diligent about committee attendance,'' Watson said.

Wanting to keep at least a semblance of a bipartisan product, Democrats courted Wright's support for provisions in the plan and gave ground to keep her vote.

``I knew we wouldn't be able to go around her,'' Watson said. ``Unless we sat there and worked with her, we wouldn't get much done.''

She said Wright drove a hard bargain.

``She compromised when she had to, and she got her way when she could,'' Watson said. ``We gave a lot up because Cathie was there.''

That, Brulte said, was exactly the idea.

``You can't have six Republicans negotiating with 12 Democrats. You always have a lead Republican,'' Brulte said. ``In the first round of negotiations, she played the most significant role.''

Wright said she won several concessions, forcing Democrats to drop planks that would have raised unemployment insurance benefits and granted an earned-income tax credit to low-income families. Neither program should be considered as part of the welfare debate, she argued.

In addition, she said she forced the committee to abandon plans to use the state's investments as collateral against loans to recipients planning to start small businesses.

The changes were significant enough to get her vote, Wright said.

``When you're working with legislation, if you get enough amendments put into it, you're kind of hard-pressed not to vote for it,'' Wright said. ``I got everything out of there that I knew I could. There's more in there that I'd like to see changed, but I had made up my mind that what I had worked on was good.''

She said she knew that Wilson would veto the package. Wilson and legislative leaders are expected to meet through the weekend to try to negotiate a compromise.

But the committee's work helped close the gap between Democrats and conservatives on the issue, Wright said, and improves the chances of an agreement.

``They now have narrowed what the discussion is. They're not going to be talking about the whole picture,'' Wright said. ``That means we're going to see a welfare package.''

Brulte said Wright's vote in favor of the package preserves her status as an honest broker.

``Cathie voted for it knowing the governor was going to veto it,'' Brulte said. ``She felt, and I concurred, as did most of our caucus, that if she voted against it after all the give and take with the Democrats, it would have undermined her credibility as a negotiator with the Democrats in the future.''

But others saw more to Wright's position than political strategy.

``She's a mother and a grandmother,'' Watson said. ``She knows that times get hard, and you need help when times are hard. You're not a bad person for that.''

In her own young-mother days, Wright stayed at home rather than pursue a career before her daughter reached school age, although that shrank her family's income considerably.

It meant cleaning apartments to help cover the rent, cooking soup from chicken backs and picking the bones clean for chicken-salad leftovers.

``I pretty much know where people are coming from,'' Wright said.

And she wasn't afraid to take issue with Wilson's plan.

``As I see it, some of the things the governor had in there would not work,'' she said.

In particular, she criticized a provision that would have required mothers to meet the plan's work requirements 12 weeks after giving birth. The conference plan exempts women with infants.

Wilson has argued that it's unfair to give welfare recipients better benefits than many working parents enjoy. But Wright countered that it's too expensive to provide infant care so that a new mother can work a minimum-wage job.

Wilson and Republicans who voted against the plan said it went too far in granting exemptions from work requirements and gave recipients too much time to collect benefits without going to work.

But Wright, though acknowledging the plan has flaws, questioned whether critics actually studied the bills, as she did.

``How many of them read it? I'd like to take a roll call,'' she said. ``It's much easier to vote no. I do that a lot myself. But when I vote no, it's because I have a darn good reason.''