Charges Derail Hill From Fast Track

When bright and ambitious Frank Hill arrived in the Legislature in 1982 at the age of 28, he was new to the Legislature but not to politics.

Within a few fast-paced years there was even talk of running the affable and conservative young Republican from Whittier for statewide office.

But now at 39, the articulate, wiry father of three children is in for perhaps the toughest battle of all: clearing himself of federal felony charges of political corruption, a predicament starkly at odds with that early promise.

As a political science graduate fresh out of UCLA, Hill went directly to work in 1976 as a campaign staffer for then-Sen. S.I. Hayakawa (R-Calif.) and later for former GOP Rep. Wayne Grisham of Whittier.

A vacant Assembly seat drew Hill to Sacramento, where he quickly acquired the reputation as a “player,” an effective tactician to be reckoned with in the Capitol’s many trade-offs and intrigues. He eagerly assumed a role in the GOP political campaign apparatus that collected and distributed campaign funds to Republican candidates.

As vice chairman of the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee, Hill became a skilled fund-raiser for other Republicans and one of the top-earning recipients of speech honorariums from various organizations with business before the Legislature, a practice that was legal at the time.

As a member of the Assembly, Hill was perhaps best known for his advocacy of English as the official language of California. Some Republicans spoke of him as a possible candidate for lieutenant governor or other statewide office.

But the FBI’s investigation of Hill and others, which became public in 1988, stunned him.

In 1990, in spite of the unresolved FBI case hanging over him, Hill was easily elected to the Senate in a solidly Republican San Gabriel Valley district. He surprised Democrats and Republicans alike by shedding his hard-edged partisanship in favor of a new streak of pragmatism.

Last summer, for example, Hill, who had developed an expertise in state finance, joined with veteran Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento, a Democrat, and tried to forge a compromise outside normal channels aimed at breaking a record stalemate over the state budget.

The upstart effort earned Hill and Isenberg rounds of private criticism by senior legislative budget negotiators from both parties who were trying to reach a compromise with Gov. Pete Wilson. But at the same time they drew admiration from many rank-and-file legislators for burying party differences in their ultimately failed attempt to produce a budget.