Wiggins' behavior raises health questions

State Sen. Pat Wiggins said she is seeking another four-year term in 2010 although her often bizarre behavior has led many to wonder whether the Santa Rosa Democrat is suffering from a serious and potentially career-ending mental decline.

The 69-year-old senator's outbursts, odd displays of affection and apparent inability at times to focus or remember things are topics of discussion inside the state Capitol and in political circles along the North Coast.

Wiggins, through her staff, refuses to broach the subject, even as it's become obvious that she needs special assistance performing routine legislative duties, such as giving interviews to the media or participating in committee hearings.

“It's time for new blood,” said Connie Codding, executive vice president of Codding Investments in Rohnert Park and an influential supporter of Wiggins in past campaigns. “To be honest, I just think she's not competent.”

Wiggins, a former computer systems analyst who was first elected to the Santa Rosa City Council in 1994, rose to become a powerful force in North Coast politics, amassing a sizeable campaign war chest and helping like-minded politicians get into office. But her behavior in recent months has other political aspirants sensing an opportunity to strike.

Roseland School District trustee David Rosas, who has filed papers to challenge Wiggins in the Democratic primary, said Thursday he will not make the senator's health a campaign issue despite telling the Napa Valley Register that her “mental faculties are failing.”

Rosas said his comments were supposed to be off the record and he would rather focus on issues affecting the North Coast, such as attracting more jobs.

Rosas articulated what numerous public officials say privately, and that is they believe Wiggins may be losing her mental grip. But the sensitivity of the subject and fears of political reprisal keep them publicly silent on the subject.

Not so for Codding, a power broker in local electoral politics whose husband, Hugh, suffers from dementia. She said she sat at a table with Wiggins last year and was worried the senator was going to embarrass herself.

“You don't know when she's going to have one of her so-called outbursts,” Codding said. “It's just time for her to step back. We all reach a certain stage.”

Codding also said the senator's staff and some of her political allies are deliberately trying to minimize the problems out of their own self-interest.

She specifically singled out Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, a close political ally of the senator's and a longtime friend.

“It disappoints me that Noreen would support her. She's someone who is working with her (Wiggins) and knows the situation she's in. I don't think you're being true to yourself,” Codding said.

Evans declined comment through a spokesman but in the past said she considers media coverage of the senator's problems to be unfair.

Fellow Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, whose district encompasses southern Sonoma County, declined comment, as did Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, D-Arcata.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, whose district also includes southern Sonoma County, said it's not his place “to pass judgment on a colleague from another district. There's a fine line between personality quirks and serious problems. I'm not a doctor.”

Wiggins' staff, meanwhile, continues to deny there is anything amiss with the senator other than her well-documented problems with hearing loss, which require her to wear special equipment during Senate floor debates or hearings.

Nothing has gained as much attention to Wiggins' behavior of late than her exchange with Pastor Robert Jones of Sacramento's Oak Park United Methodist Church last August during a committee hearing on global warming.

As Jones was giving his introductory remarks, Wiggins interrupted the pastor to tell him his testimony was “bull----.”

In a subsequent interview at her Capitol office, Wiggins was unable to articulate why the pastor's comments were so offensive to her.

“I thought he was off base, but he might not have been. I'm not sure,” she said.

Her chief of staff, Sean MacNeil, refused to comment this week on continuing questions about Wiggins' health. But her press secretary, David Miller, issued a statement saying Wiggins “does not have a medical condition which impairs her ability to serve as the senator for the 2nd District.”

Many in that district simply aren't buying it.

At Santa Rosa's Oakmont subdivision, eyebrows were raised during Wiggins' two separate visits to the Democratic Club there, the most recent on Feb. 24, 2008.

Wiggins seemed to not understand basic concepts, such as the difference between Medi-Cal and Medicare, or would start rambling off-topic, according to Lawrence Metzger, the club's past president and a retired psychologist and part-time instructor at UC Berkeley.

“As the questions came in, it became clear that the senator either could not understand a question or was confused when an issue may have been more complex,” Metzger wrote in an e-mail to The Press Democrat. “Sometimes a question seemed to touch off a memory, which she then mentioned, though it may have been far afield of what the audience member was addressing.”

Metzger said Michael Allen, a district director for Wiggins, finally stepped in to answer the questions. Allen, a Santa Rosa planning commissioner, is seeking Evans' seat when she is forced out next year by term limits.

Staff members often intercede to assist Wiggins at public events. She also is rarely unaccompanied at the Capitol, even in some cases to go to the bathroom, as was the case Tuesday when an aide followed Wiggins out of a joint legislative hearing on state water issues.

Wiggins abruptly announced loud enough for everyone in the packed Senate hearing room to hear that she was going to the bathroom, departing as a tribal chief was pointedly telling lawmakers his concerns about their proposals.

The aide who followed her, a water policy analyst, was visibly concerned when she could not find Wiggins. The senator had ducked into a public restroom and not the one locked for legislators' use.

Miller did not directly address the bathroom incident in his e-mail but said in general that senators often are trailed after in the hallways or hustled away from reporters for the simple reason that they are busy.

“Often the only time to brief them, especially on last-minute items, is when members step out of a room, or when they are walking from one hearing or meeting to another,” Miller said.

During the same hearing, Wiggins interrupted a state water official as he was giving his testimony to ask who he was. He told her his name and title, and yet, a little more than 10 minutes later, Wiggins interrupted him again to ask for the same information.

The official, Joe Grindstaff, is deputy secretary for water resources in the state's Natural Resources Agency. He declined comment when reached this week at his Capitol office.

The senator's staff now demands that all requests to interview her go through her press secretary, even when she is literally arms-length away from a reporter. Her staff also has refused to release her schedule of appointments, despite an open records request made by another newspaper. It's an unusual fight over normally basic information.

Also rare was the argument Miller made in denying a Press Democrat reporter's request to interview Wiggins this summer on budget-related matters. He instead directed the reporter to speak with other North Coast officials he said were more involved in the process.

That may be true to an extent — Evans for example, headed the joint Senate-Assembly Budget Committee — but it's not often that a political staffer argues that his boss is irrelevant at one of the most compelling times in California legislative history. The argument also overlooks the votes Wiggins cast on major budget-related bills, many affecting lives on the North Coast.

But even in situations that directly involve Wiggins and paint her in a positive light, she is missing in action. Such was the case when Miller sent out a press release trumpeting Wiggins trimming her pay by 5 percent and giving up her state-owned vehicle to do her part easing the state's financial crunch.

But Miller said Wiggins was unavailable to comment, this time because her husband was having surgery.

It's impossible to have a hallway discussion with Wiggins if one of her aides is present — another remarkable fact given the usual easy interchange between members of the media and politicians in that situation.

Instead, Wiggins appears unusually isolated, rarely engaging in a meaningful way with colleagues or members of the public as she shuffles past them, shoulders stooped.

Dave McCuan, a political scientist at Sonoma State University, said it's obvious Wiggins is being “handled” by her staff.

He said questions about the senator's health and job performance are of public concern and not a private matter as some have argued.

“When someone runs for an election, voters are owed the opportunity to know their member — not just to know that their member is in good hands,” he said.

On the rare occasions she is left alone it seems she struggles to understand what is going on. That was the case on June 2 at the Capitol during an odd encounter with a Press Democrat reporter.

On that morning, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a rare address to a joint session of the Legislature to urge lawmakers into quick action on the state's financial meltdown.

Asked for her reaction to the speech, Wiggins, unaccompanied by aides, seemed to not understand the question, asking three times, “What do you mean?”

She finally said she thought the governor was “right on target” — a surprising assessment given his very public battle with Democrats over the budget. At that moment, an aide for an assemblyman intervened by calling Wiggins' office and then telling the senator she needed to wait for a person to come down “and get you.”

Instead, Wiggins turned to leave, but not before she kissed the reporter on the cheek.

Wiggins long has had a reputation for eccentricity.

Sen. Roy Ashburn, R-Bakersfield, recalled Wiggins yelling, “Hooray!” and hugging him after she gained passage of her first bill as an assemblywoman, even though Ashburn didn't support the legislation.

“She's always had grandiose reactions outside the norm,” Ashburn said.

But Ashburn described committee hearings that Wiggins chairs as “painful,” saying she has to be coached on how to conduct the proceedings even though she's been in elected office for 15 years.

Such behavior has people worried Wiggins' problems are not simply personality quirks, but evidence of a more serious problem.

At a March 13 gathering at Rincon Valley Middle School in celebration of Earth Hour, Wiggins had difficulty staying on topic or discussing the particulars of the bill she sponsored in support of the event.

Earth Hour was 60 minutes set aside on the last Saturday of that month to raise awareness of global climate change and energy efficiency. But Wiggins said erroneously that the event was to take place Dec. 28. She also gave the wrong time of day for when it was to occur.

Rather than engaging the students in a discussion about the environment, Wiggins instead spoke at length about her rise through the political ranks, describing her stint on the state Waste Management Board as “the most wonderful experience I ever had.”

The students looked at her, befuddled.

And when Wiggins said she was going to the restroom, an aide who was with her left to follow.

Wiggins appears to have confined recent public appearances to events where she is assured to be surrounded by friends and where she won't have to speak off-the-cuff on complex policy issues.

She is scheduled to attend a campaign fundraising event Sunday at Kendall-Jackson Winery. On her campaign Web site, Wiggins urges supporters to “Put me back to work for the greatest district in California!”

Wiggins' staff directed all campaign-related questions to her husband and campaign treasurer, Guy Conner, who did not return a call seeking comment Thursday.

Lex McCorvey, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, said he has heard “on many occasions that she is inaccessible in the county and in Sacramento.”

McCorvey declined to speak about Wiggins' reported rude behavior at an awards banquet the Farm Bureau held last October, in which the senator was overheard to ask when one of the hall of fame recipients was going to stop talking and sit down.

Clif Clenenden, a freshman Humboldt County supervisor, said his impression after meeting Wiggins for the first time at a recent event in Eureka was that she seemed “eccentric.”

“She carries great legislation, but I couldn't quite connect that to the person I met,” he said. “I would have some of the concerns just because she didn't present well. I didn't know if that was a bad day or what.”

On other occasions, Wiggins' staff has told a reporter that she is unavailable for comment because she was in a “bad mood” or had just gotten back from vacation and was busy. The rare interviews she does give are almost always scripted.

In May, Wiggins and her husband were seen leaving the Capitol before a meeting the senator was supposed to have with a group of elected officials from three North Coast counties, according to one member of the delegation who felt snubbed.

How serious Wiggins is about running for office again isn't clear. The official deadline to file is March 13.

State records reveal Wiggins raised $49,014 for the first six months of 2009, less money than any other state senator eligible to run for re-election next year and less than the $51,500 raised by Evans for a state Senate committee she has formed for the 2014 election.

“The lack of fundraising is the best indicator of the dilemma her and her staff find themselves in,” McCuan said. “The lack of money is a marker about concerns about what to do next.”

Some say Wiggins has surrounded herself with a competent staff and that in doing so she continues to get legislation passed that benefits the North Coast. She also has one of the best attendance records of any senator, according to state records.

In 2008, legislators approved 24 of Wiggins' bills, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed 17 of them into law — the most of any other legislator.

“The work speaks for itself. It's fabulous,” said Lisa Maldonado, executive director of the North Bay Labor Council, which endorsed Wiggins in past campaigns.

Maldonado said there has been a lot of speculation and “innuendo” about the senator's health, but she's not noticed any problems.

Another supporter, Santa Rosa attorney Michael Fiumara, said Wiggins was discussing bills and greeting people warmly at a recent dinner hosted by the Santa Rosa Democratic Club.

“It seemed to me she was doing the business of the Legislature,” he said.

Still, Fiumara said he was “shocked” Wiggins is going to run for office again. He speculated she is doing so in large part because she needs continued health benefits for herself and her husband.

“That's something retirees look at all the time,” Fiumara said.

But if Wiggins is serious about gaining a second term, she must at some point face the questions swirling about her health, McCuan said. Instead, there appears to be an effort in the opposite direction.

Cal-Channel — a public access station that airs Capitol events — no longer televises hearings of the Senate's Local Government Committee, which Wiggins heads, out of concern she will have another embarrassing outburst, according to a source with knowledge of the arrangement.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, determines what gets aired on the station. His spokeswoman, Alicia Trost, said there is “absolutely no order that would prevent Local Government from being aired.”

McCuan, however, said “the circumstances and timing reek of politics and protection, and not the public interest, and give rise to rumors and innuendo while doing nothing to end the controversy here.”

Said Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown: “When you decide to be a public servant, your life is no longer cloistered. I don't know what the reasons are for people's speculation, but I think she needs to answer those questions.”

You can reach Staff Writer Derek J. Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com.