12.3: Politics in the Era of Limits

Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., like presidential candidate Jimmy Carter, was swept into office on a tide of resurgent liberalism following the Watergate scandal. As secretary of state from 1970 to 1974, Brown established a reputation for honesty by enforcing campaign disclosure laws, exposing election fraud, and uncovering a tax evasion scheme hatched by Richard Nixon. As a principal sponsor of the 1974 Political Reform Act, a ballot initiative that called for the creation of a Fair Campaign Practices Commission, stricter disclosure of candidate spending and assets, and tighter limits on campaign funding, Brown enhanced his standing with disillusioned post- Watergate voters. He also obtained the support of organized labor by opposing Proposition 22, a 1972 ballot measure that restricted union organizing efforts among agricultural workers. By revealing that many of the measure’s qualifying signatures had been fraudulently obtained, Brown helped ensure its defeat at the polls.

In the 1974 primary election, Brown scored two major political victories: He won the Democratic nomination for governor, and voters endorsed the Political Reform Act. Meanwhile, the Republican favorite, Lieutenant Governor Ed Reinecke, had been indicted for perjury in the Watergate hearings and lost his party’s nomination to State Controller Houston Flournoy. The November election was a close contest. Underestimating his opponent, Brown waged a lackluster campaign filled with vague promises to bring a “new spirit” to Sacramento, and barely squeaked by with a 2.9 percent margin of victory. But although he lacked a strong popular mandate, he could count on support from his party. Democrats gained solid majorities in the legislature, dominated the congressional delegation, and secured most statewide offices.

During his first term, Brown adopted policies consistent with California’s liberal/progressive tradition. The Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975, drafted in collaboration with Rose Bird, whom he appointed secretary of agriculture, was a major breakthrough for farm workers and the UFW. Just as significantly, Brown ensured enforcement of the act by appointing pro-labor advocates to the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Bird, the first woman to head the Department of Agriculture, and in 1977 the state supreme court, was one of more than 1,500 women that Brown appointed to state office during his two terms as governor. He also appointed a record number of minorities, giving both groups unprecedented political visibility and an opportunity to shape public policy.

Consistent with his personal commitment to “voluntary simplicity,” Brown established a strong environmental protection record. He created the State Office of Appropriate Technology to promote the development of alternative energy sources, sustainable agriculture, waste recycling, and resource conservation. The solar tax credit and other alternative energy development incentives were other outgrowths of his “era of limits” philosophy. Raising the ire of private industry and developers, Brown appointed conservationists to the Air Resources Board and Energy Commission, advocated more stringent controls on the nuclear power industry, supported the coastal protection initiative, appointed environmentalists to the new coastal commission, and opposed construction of the New Melones Dam. Less controversial was Brown’s Civilian Conservation Corps, a public works program that employed young people to improve and maintain public spaces and wilderness areas.

On budget matters, Brown was a fiscal conservative. During his first term, he refused to raise taxes, approved only modest increases in the state budget, and held the line on salary raises for state employees. As a consequence, large state agencies like the departments of Health and Welfare and Mental Health, still reeling from Reagan’s cost-cutting measures, failed to keep pace with increasing demands for their services. Brown also failed to address the state’s recessiondriven unemployment problem. Although he initially supported the creation of a public works program, he backed off after the Oakland Tribune labeled the proposal as “Brown’s Secret Plan for Worker State.”

In 1976, Brown decided to seek his party’s presidential nomination. Although he won primaries in several states, including California, the Democrats endorsed Jimmy Carter. Determined to try again in 1980, Brown became more attentive to his conservative critics. Announcing that jobs took priority over the environment, Brown supported legislation to simplify the regulatory process for industry wishing to do business in the state, and made pro-business appointments to several commissions and departments. To encourage economic development, Brown traveled to Japan, Canada, Mexico, and England to cultivate new business partnerships, and lobbied the legislature to appropriate funds for a satellite communications system and a new University of California space research facility. Convinced that the state’s aerospace and electronics industry could play a leading role in space colonization, Brown vigorously promoted the latter, earning the nickname “Governor Moonbeam.”

Brown also responded to charges that he was “soft on crime”—charges that stemmed from his support of legislation that reduced penalties for marijuana possession and the decriminalization of sexual activities between consenting adults. Attempting to placate his critics, he signed a bill authorizing harsher, mandatory penalties for felons convicted of violent crimes; however, he remained steadfastly opposed to the death penalty, vetoing a 1977 bill calling for its reinstatement. In 1978, voters took matters into their own hands, using the initiative process to reinstate the penalty and offset the possibility of another veto from the governor.

Although he succeeded in mending fences with some of his conservative critics, he gained a reputation for inconsistency, flakiness, and political opportunism. Nonetheless, he easily won reelection in 1978, defeating his Republican opponent, Attorney General Evelle Younger, by 1.3 million votes. But at the beginning of the race, Brown’s campaign was in serious trouble. Unlike Younger, he had opposed Proposition 13, a tax reduction measure that had appeared on the 1978 primary ballot.

During his first term, Brown gained the respect of voters by refusing to raise taxes; however, he seriously underestimated the impact of inflation. Residents, already forced to shell out more of their income for consumer goods, were also saddled with skyrocketing property values and tax assessments. Wages and salary increases not only failed to keep pace with inflation, but also pushed many into higher income tax brackets. By 1978, inflated sales, property, and income taxes, combined with Brown’s tightfisted fiscal policies, generated a state budget surplus of at least $3.5 billion. Taxpayers were outraged.

Two disgruntled property owners, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, launched the United Organization of Taxpayers to bring the issue of rising property taxes to voters. Proposition 13, which easily qualified for the 1978 primary ballot, set residential and business property taxes at one percent of assessed value, based assessments on 1975 property values, and limited annual increases in assessed value to two percent. Reassessments were permitted only when property was bought or improved, and any new taxes required the approval of a two-thirds vote rather than the previously required simple majority.

Brown initially criticized the initiative as skewed in favor of landlords and commercial/industrial property owners, and disadvantageous for renters and future home buyers. But after the measure passed in June, giving his pro-13 Republican opponent the advantage in the upcoming gubernatorial election, Brown quickly withdrew his criticism and began to develop plans for distributing the state surplus to local and county governments. He also instituted a state government hiring freeze and created a commission to explore other economizing measures. Brown appeared more inconsistent and opportunistic than ever, but his well-publicized efforts to implement Proposition 13 helped him defeat Evelle Younger in November.

Brown’s second term was plagued by financial difficulties, party disunity, humiliating political defeats, and the Medfly controversy. Emboldened by the success of Proposition 13, Paul Gann sponsored a second tax-cutting measure. Proposition 4, approved by voters in 1979, pegged annual government expenditures to the rate of inflation and population growth, and directed local and state governments to return budget surpluses to taxpayers. It was the earlier initiative that did the most damage; within two years, the state’s budget surplus had been spent bailing out hard-pressed city and county governments. Across the state, libraries, schools, police, fire, and park departments, and social service providers were forced to cut staff and services. Maintenance on public buildings, roads, and water and sewer systems was also reduced or deferred. The state’s public schools, heavily dependent on property taxes, were among the hardest hit. By 1986, California fell from 17th to 35th place in per-pupil spending, and finished last among states in student/teacher ratio. Higher education also suffered. State colleges and universities, among the best in the nation, were forced to eliminate staff, cut course offerings, and consider fee increases to compensate for budget shortfalls.

Brown responded to the growing fiscal crisis by vetoing pay raises for state employees and attempting to hold cost-of-living increases for welfare recipients below federally mandated levels. These and other austerity measures were strongly opposed and ultimately overridden by former Democratic allies in the legislature. Despite growing party disunity, Brown decided to try for the 1980 presidential nomination. Calling for tax cuts and a federal balanced budget amendment to woo conservative voters, Brown further alienated liberal and Left-leaning supporters. His reputation for political opportunism, eccentricity, and inconsistency also damaged his chances.

Returning to California after another humiliating loss to Jimmy Carter in the June primary, Brown faced one of the worst crises of his career. The Mediterranean fruit fly, capable of destroying a wide variety of commercial crops, invaded the Santa Clara Valley. Growers called for aerial spraying with pesticides. Brown, however, sided with suburban residents of the area and approved a less toxic approach. The Reagan administration, calling for a quarantine of all California produce, forced Brown to reverse his decision and order aerial spraying. In the end, he lost the support of both constituencies and provided his critics with more evidence of his indecisiveness and inconsistency.

Deukmejian

In 1982, the combined impact of Proposition 13 and a national economic recession plunged the state into its worst financial crisis since the Depression. Brown, whose popularity had steadily declined, decided to run for the U.S. Senate rather than for a third term as governor. After losing to Pete Wilson, the Republican mayor of San Diego, the outgoing governor wryly announced, “I shall return, but not for awhile.”

The gubernatorial race of 1982 was one of the closest in state history. Tom Bradley, who won the Democratic nomination on his strong record of effectiveness as the mayor of Los Angeles, faced the Republican nominee, State Attorney General George Deukmejian. Although Bradley, a former Los Angeles police captain, assured voters that he would be tough on crime, Deukmejian projected a stronger “law and order” image. As a state senator, Deukmejian had pushed through a statute mandating stiffer penalties for gun-related crimes, and authored the state’s 1977 initiative reinstating the death penalty. As attorney general from 1978 to 1982, he was a harsh critic of Brown’s judicial appointees, accusing Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird and others of being soft on crime. Deukmejian also used the governor’s declining popularity against his opponent, claiming “Tom Bradley’s administration will be no different than Jerry Brown’s.” Race, however, was most likely the deciding factor. Deukmejian won the election by a mere 0.68 percent plurality, the smallest margin since 1886. During the campaign, six percent of polled voters indicated that Bradley’s race (African American) had swayed their decision in favor of Deukmejian.

Deukmejian’s electoral victory coincided with the state controller’s announcement that California faced a huge deficit. Rejecting the legislature’s tax increase remedy, Deukmejian proposed massive cuts in social spending and assistance to beleaguered local governments, and rolling over the remaining debt into the following year’s budget in hopes that the economy would recover enough to erase the deficit. After weeks of budgetary gridlock, the legislature and governor finally reached a compromise that included spending cuts, debt rollover, and a sales tax increase if the anticipated recovery did not materialize.

Deukmejian, who had promised not to raise taxes, was undoubtedly relieved when the economy began to stabilize. Indeed, by the mid-1980s, the state treasury once again posted a surplus. In the meantime, William Honig, the new superintendent of public instruction, devised a “back to basics” school reform package that called for extending the school day and year, stronger graduation requirements, extra pay for teachers who devoted extra hours to mentoring students, and an overall increase in public school funding. The governor not only backed Honig’s plan, but also approved funding increases for the U.C. and C.S.U. systems. Deukmejian took a tougher line with community colleges, insisting that they institute a precedent-shattering $50 enrollment fee. As a consequence, a crucial link in the state’s Master Plan for Education was weakened. Between 1980 and 1985, community colleges reported an enrollment decline of 20 percent.

The governor also approved modest funding increases for the state’s rapidly deteriorating transportation system, and a pay increase for state employees. More controversially, he pushed through massive appropriations for prison construction and began the process of reshaping the state’s judiciary to reflect his “tough on crime” philosophy. Critics charged that prison construction diverted resources from programs that addressed the root causes of crime. They also pointed to the fact that prisons held growing numbers of petty, nonviolent offenders, while the rate of violent crime continued to climb.

Deukmejian’s stance on the environment and welfare reform was equally controversial. Siding with his pro-growth and agribusiness supporters, he angered conservationists by endorsing offshore drilling and a scaled-back version of the Peripheral Canal, and by making pro-development appointments to the California Coastal Commission and other environmental protection agencies. He also raised the ire of liberal Democrats by vetoing welfare pay increases and pushing through a reform package that included a work requirement, or “workfare,” for able-bodied recipients.

In the 1984 election, Deukmejian suffered two setbacks. The state legislature, which had the power to reapportion political districts, was firmly controlled by Democrats, stifling Republican efforts to alter the existing balance of power. A ballot initiative, supported by Deukmejian, would have removed reapportionment from the legislature’s jurisdiction and placed it in the hands of a panel of retired judges. In the election, voters not only rejected this measure, but also approved another that the governor had opposed, one that established a state-run lottery to help fund public schools. These minor differences of opinion, however, did not translate into voter disapproval of Deukmejian. In 1986, the booming economy—flush with Reagan administration defense contracts—gave the governor a strong advantage in his reelection bid.

In the 1986 race, Deukmejian once again faced Democratic opponent Tom Bradley, who had recently won a fourth term as mayor of Los Angeles. The reconfirmation of Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird, a Brown appointee, became a major campaign issue. Conservative politicians accused Bird, a strong opponent of the death penalty, of contributing to the state’s growing violent crime problem. Many Californians agreed with this assessment. Deukmejian had long supported Bird’s ouster, but Bradley refused to take a position for or against her removal. This helped bolster Deukmejian’s reputation as a tough-on-crime victims’ advocate. In the election, voters registered their approval by handing Deukmejian 4,395,972 votes to Bradley’s 2,721,674. They also overwhelmingly rejected Rose Bird’s reconfirmation.

Deukmejian’s second term was characterized by battles with the Democrat-controlled legislature over his judicial nominations. He retaliated by using the veto to kill or cut their appropriations for social and environmental programs. Republican legislators, although in the minority, united behind Deukmejian to prevent the necessary two-thirds majority from overriding his vetoes. A revived economy, generating surplus state revenue, allowed Deukmejian to keep his promise not to raise taxes. He was even able to issue a $1 billion rebate to taxpayers. He also approved modest increases in education spending and even larger appropriations for prison expansion. Despite these expenditures, California schools continued to decline, while its violent crime rate increased. With a new economic recession in the 1990s, these two problems worsened, igniting explosive public and political debate over the best use of public funds.