With valley legislators in power, will our issues finally be addressed?

It's not the Civil War, of course. There's no Andersonville or Quantrill's Raiders. But from the time that Los Angeles-spawned Jesse Unruh captured the California Assembly speakership in 1961 and transformed it from an office of ceremony into an office of power, a north-south axis has defined the Legislature. The majority leaders of both the Assembly and Senate have largely come from San Francisco or Los Angeles -- or nearby.

The Bay Area contingent has included Willie Brown, John Burton and Don Perata, and the L.A.-area team has boasted the likes of Dave Roberti, Antonio Villaraigosa and Fabian Núñez. Even into the mid-1990s, as term limits kicked in and forced shorter terms for leaders and the rank and file, the last real Republican speaker of the Assembly, Curt Pringle, was from Anaheim.

But the Legislature's longtime north-south axis is tilting toward an east-west axis, a reflection in part of the swelling population, economic might and political clout of California's interior. For the first time in more than a decade, one of the majority leaders hails from the interior.

He is Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento, the newly designated Senate president pro tem and a farm-belt liberal. The majority leader position is arguably the most powerful in the Legislature, including the Assembly speakership, because senators can serve two years longer in the Capitol.

In the past, minority GOP leaders have come often from the state's interior, which tends to be more Republican and conservative. Jim Brulte, a former GOP leader in both houses, was from Rancho Cucamonga.

Fresno has served as a Republican leadership hatchery for decades. The late Ken Maddy, an urbane and canny politico who led Republicans in both houses and ran for governor in 1978, came from there. So did former Assemblyman Charles Poochigian, the point man on the overhaul of the state's workers compensation insurance system. The two current GOP leaders -- Mike Villines in the Assembly and David Cogdill in the Senate -- have close links to Fresno. Villines is from Clovis, and Cogdill, of Modesto, keeps a district office in the city.

But traditionally, those Republicans served as minority leaders in houses run by Los Angeles or Bay Area Democrats. Not anymore.

In selecting their leaders, the party caucuses in the Assembly and Senate don't focus on issues or geography. Instead, lawmakers want to know what prospective leaders can do for them -- support a cause, raise money or provide protection if they screw up. In the end, it comes down to personality and promises, not geography. But after the new leaders are selected, geography inevitably comes up.

This shift in legislative leadership toward inland California may result in policy changes. There is no crystal ball, of course. But there are some signs that issues important to the region are moving to the Legislature's front burner.

First is water. In the interior, there has been a push to build dams and reservoirs, even a peripheral canal, a proposal defeated by voters in 1982, to ensure future water supplies.

A second fundamental concern in inland California is air quality.

The San Joaquin Valley, plagued by soaring population growth and long commutes, shares with the Los Angeles area the distinction of having the nation's worst air quality.

A third issue is land use, specifically the conversion of farmland and open spaces into residential and commercial development, which has transformed the nature of the Central Valley.