Perhaps nothing encapsulates Sen. Dick Ackerman’s nearly four-year reign as Senate Republican leader as well as his own understated response to naming his “biggest accomplishment.”
The chief of the 15-member Senate Republican Caucus since May 2004, Ackerman has served as point man for the GOP minority in negotiations with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and leading Democrats through a special election, two election cycles and four contentious budgets in the biggest state in the union.
So what was his biggest accomplishment as leader?
“Trying to stop as much bad business legislation as we could,” a relaxed Ackerman said this week in an interview.
Over the weekend, Ackerman moved out of his choice office on the third floor in the historic side of the Capitol, swapping spaces with his successor, Sen. Dave Cogdill. In December, he will term out of the Legislature 14 years after he arrived.
Cogdill now replaces Ackerman in the so-called Big 5, though Ackerman will still be around for advice. “The Big 5 is just five – you don’t take any add-ons,” Ackerman said.
He describes the job of minority leader as “basically playing defense” against a strong Democratic majority in the Senate, where Democrats occupy 25 of the 40 seats.
“When you’re in the minority…you can’t always accomplish a lot of things that you want,” Ackerman said.
To be fair, Ackerman went on to name other accomplishments, citing the 2006 infrastructure package approved by voters, Proposition 1A, which limited state raids on local government funds, the 2007 budget standoff pointing to the “potential problems of this year’s budget” and last year’s prison bonds package. The Republicans also neither lost nor gained seats in the Senate during his tenure.
“We definitely pointed out the potential problems of this year’s budget last year,” Ackerman said.
But during the 52-day standoff, Democrats accused Ackerman of waffling leadership and “moving the goalposts” in negotiations.
"(We) agreed to a budget deal," Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said last summer. "And from the time that I left the Big 5 meeting to the time I walked outside five minutes later, (and) Dick Ackerman walked outside, something happened. And maybe he had a metaphysical reaction that the rest of us somehow ... we are unable to communicate at that level."
Ackerman says that is nonsense. “Our goals were pretty clear from the beginning,” he insists.
Even-keeled with a mild temperament in a Capitol full of hot-headed personalities, Ackerman is “a total gentleman” and “old-school,” according to his counterpart, Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines.
"I mean that in the complimentary sense, where his word is his bond. He gets along with everybody. He’s able to forge compromise and he still stands up firm,” Villines said.
The job of minority leader, by any count, is a difficult one. Former Sen. Jim Brulte, who preceded Ackerman as GOP leader, described it this way:
“In the Capitol there are three ways you can lead. One is through force of personality. The second is the ability to reward and punish. The third is a combination of both,” Brulte said. “When you are the speaker or pro tem you can use any one of those three. When you are the minority leader, you can only use the first.”
Before coming to Sacramento, Ackerman, 65, spent a dozen years on the Fullerton City Council. In 1994, he won election to the state Assembly and ascended to the state Senate in 2000, where he served as vice-chair of the Budget Committee before becoming leader in a unanimous vote in 2004.
That GOP solidarity, however, did not last, as the 15-man caucus (there are no women GOP senators) split into two rival factions, one headed by Ackerman, the other by Sen. Jim Battin, who twice unsuccessfully challenged Ackerman for his job.
The Battin-led cohort wanted Ackerman to take a more aggressive stand against the majority Democrats and Schwarzenegger, particularly since the 2006 infrastructure negotiations.
But Ackerman says “management style is a lot different in the Senate” and that he took positions approved of by the majority of Republican senators.
“We basically try to get a consensus by a majority of our guys. That’s what I had done all along,” Ackerman said. “Some people thought that that wasn’t right or whatever. But obviously when the vote came the majority of people said, ‘Yeah, he’s right, he did just exactly what we told him to.’”
Ackerman is said to have survived Battin's second challenge by a single vote. Both Battin and Ackerman are due to leave office this year, leaving Cogdill with what he hopes is a clean slate to lead.
“A lot of those folks that have had issues over the years, as a result of the failure of Prop. 93, are termed out,” Cogdill said in an interview after his selection as leader.
Ackerman hasn’t decided what’s next, though he plans to stay “involved in the (political) process” while returning to Orange County. He said he’s considering practicing law or getting into political consulting.
Reflecting on his four years as leader, Ackerman uses the plainest of adjectives. “I thought," he said, "it was a good run.”

Brian Baer/Sacramento Bee file, 2007