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SACRAMENTO Tim Donnelly arrived at the Assembly in late 2010 with big plans.

First on his list: a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration. A plan to dismantle the state's air quality board was close behind.

In a Capitol dominated by Democrats, those proposals, unsurprisingly, went nowhere. And the cool reception extended to Donnelly himself, one of the Legislature's few tea party disciples.

The Republican from Twin Peaks, near Lake Arrowhead, had vowed during his campaign that he was "going to Sacramento to start the war," and he kept up the provocative oratory once he landed.

Donnelly is now running for governor, campaigning on many of the themes he sounded in his initial Assembly run: personal liberty, low taxes and small government. But even as he rails against the political establishment, he says that serving in the Legislature has changed him, particularly in how he deals with political adversaries.

"Instead of looking for ways I can do a frontal assault against this massive wall, I found a way to chip away at a single brick," Donnelly said. "The key is you have to pick the right brick, and that means people have to agree with it."

That's a notable departure from the approach he took when he first ran for office 31/2 years ago. Donnelly, formerly a small-business owner and leader in the Minuteman volunteer border-patrol group, told supporters that he had no interest in making friends in the Legislature.

"I'm going there to reach across the aisles to the enemies of freedom and annihilate them and pound them into the ground and take back our power," he said at a Tea Party Express rally in Barstow in October 2010.

He promised legislation based on a controversial immigration law passed in Arizona, parts of which have since been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the first bill he introduced.

The measure would have ended "sanctuary cities" by ordering state and local officials to comply with federal immigration laws. It would also have imposed strict penalties on businesses that did not verify the immigration status of employees.

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Assembly's tea party firebrand, Tim Donnelly, cools his rhetoric