by Bob Spitz
“Marvelous Truth, confront us, at every turn, in every guise.”
—DENISE LEVERTOV
Ronald Reagan’s performance as a governor was now so polished that a prominent Democrat called him “the Batman of politics.” He seemed immune to the routine setbacks and embarrassments that ordinarily brought anguish to people in public office. Much later, and for much the same reason, he was nicknamed the “Teflon President” by wry observers. In 1970, when he was reelected as the governor of California, the jury was still out on the substance of his performance in Sacramento, but with an eye trained on a higher office, he began building his political résumé—as quickly as possible.
From the lectern at his second inauguration, he prepared for the next step toward his ultimate goal by launching a crusade for welfare reform. The cause offered villains he could flog: dependents of the state who he said milked “programs that reward people for not working.” A distinction was drawn between “the truly needy as opposed to the lazy unemployable” that to many read as the same thing. The “welfare monster,” as he took to calling it, proved a potent tool to stoke populist resentment.
He also pledged to rid California’s campuses of “troublemakers,” a catchall term for protesters that he had softened from his previous characterization of them as “criminal anarchists and latter-day Fascists.” Since running for governor in 1966, he’d tapped into public sentiment critical of activities on college campuses not related specifically to education. Strikes and demonstrations were particular targets, although he seemed to have forgotten that he’d led similar student actions at Eureka College. As far as Reagan was concerned, his approach back then was respectful. He saw the Eureka protest as orderly, ministered by leaders who respected college tradition. These students were, by choice, a disruptive force. They were protesting issues outside of education—about war, race, and politics—and they took positions he didn’t agree with, to say nothing of their appearance and behavior. His sense of propriety was offended by their shaggy hair, drug use, inflammatory language, and general attitude of disrespect.
“We are called materialistic,” he complained during a newspaper interview in defense of his own generation. “But our materialism has made our children the biggest, tallest, most handsome, and intelligent generation of Americans yet.” Why couldn’t they appreciate what they’d been given? Why were they bucking the system that put them on top of the world?
As much as his bedrock political views, Ronald Reagan believed in the importance of old-fashioned good manners. What he saw as the ill-mannered behavior of these radicals pushed his buttons. And his own daughter’s college experience didn’t improve his opinion of the modern student mind-set. Patti Reagan had embarrassed him by dropping out of Northwestern University, where she befriended a radical black activist and became embroiled in a scandal known as “the hot pants incident.” According to press reports, she and a roommate had tussled with a local black peddler selling shorts in her dorm, which precipitated his arrest—and front-page headlines. Afterward, she gravitated to Oxford and later USC, before dropping out for good. “I can’t say we’re surprised,” her father commented, but her misadventures fed his contempt for campus hijinks. He promised to submit legislation that would “provide for the expulsion of students or the dismissal of teachers who interfere with the educational process, and strengthen the trespass laws to keep the troublemakers off the campus.” There would be zero tolerance for agitators. His platform toward them could be summed up by the inscription on a plaque above the doorway to his office: “Observe the Rules or Get Out.”
“In the sixties, on campus, Ronald Reagan was evil incarnate,” says Tom Reed. “So, to turn the tables, we made students the villains.” By 1969, though, the counterculture was no longer quite so anathema to mainstream America, and their peace-and-love sentiments triggered a change in public opinion. Hippies were no longer considered “cowardly little bums,” as Governor Reagan had branded students demonstrating at UC–Santa Barbara a year earlier. Now many saw them as idealists, deserving their say. Nothing underscored that more than the events of May 4, 1970, when National Guardsmen swarmed the campus of Kent State in Ohio and opened fire on demonstrators, killing four students. A month earlier, at the onset of new protests roiling UC–Santa Barbara, Reagan had ordered them put down straightaway, saying, “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.” At the time, it sounded rash; in light of Kent State, inhumane.
Reagan was “determined to get something done on welfare and education,” says Ed Meese, “and nothing was going to stand in his way.” In the spring of 1970, he learned he would have no choice. Verne Orr, the governor’s director of finance, delivered a bombshell during a weekly cabinet meeting. In order to balance next year’s budget, based on projections of funding for welfare and education, a tax increase was unavoidable. The idea horrified Reagan, and he immediately ordered the formation of two task forces with mandates to “reform and restructure” each program, top to bottom.
Precedence was given to welfare reform, which he decided was “our number one priority.” He wanted people to be self-reliant—to exemplify that old myth of the lone cowboy of the West making his own way. Welfare was the great trough that freeloaders came to drink from—“able-bodied people from around the country who preferred a handout to a job.” When Reagan first took office, in 1967, more than 750,000 people were dependent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the state’s bulky welfare machine; just after his reelection, in early 1971, the agency’s rolls hit the 1.5 million mark. Unemployment was skyrocketing and families were desperate, nevertheless the rising caseload threatened the state’s solvency. Legislators of both parties understood the need to rewrite the laws, and they set to work, often at loggerheads, drafting comprehensive bills.
“Reagan wasn’t interested in the politics of it,” according to a Republican member of his bipartisan task force. “He was totally substantive.” And he had an active to-do list. He was adamant that any statute reaching his desk contain measures “increasing assistance to the truly needy,” requiring those who were able to work to seek a job or job training, and implementing laws to “strengthen family responsibility,” which loosely translated meant that children with adequate incomes contribute to the support of indigent parents and that absent fathers provide for their children. “There was also a law enforcement part,” says George Steffes—“cracking down on lady welfare cheats.”
Lady welfare cheats. Like one of the Reader’s Digest anecdotal stories that he could easily wrap his head around, Ronald Reagan fixed on the concept of the welfare cheat, disregarding the fact that there wasn’t much evidence that such a phenomenon existed. Nevertheless, it seemed real to him, and it played well. He claimed his staff “discovered thousands of people who were receiving welfare checks at the same time they were gainfully employed,” that “one couple . . . earned more than one hundred thousand dollars a year between them.” These were compelling stories, but they were unsubstantiated. It didn’t matter. There was a great public resentment against welfare and the people who sought to exploit it. It was an easy idea to convey, even if it ignored the real complexities of the issue.
While his rhetoric was punitive, Reagan and his task force developed a policy that was more constructive than his words implied. Previously, he had vetoed provisions for childcare, job-training, and family-planning programs, all of which got added back into the final bill. Additionally, it included an automatic cost-of-living increase for welfare recipients in order to keep their benefits from eroding as a result of inflation. Weeks of intense negotiations later, a compromise bill was hammered out, and the California Welfare Reform Act of 1971 sailed through both houses of the state legislature.
The governor, usually a passive participant when it came to negotiations, had actively pitched in behind the scenes. “He was very hands-on,” says George Steffes, who served on the task force. “When things looked hopeless, as the
y often did, when frustration set in, when talks got stalled, we went to both Reagan and Bob Moretti [the Democratic speaker of the Assembly] and said, ‘This is not going to happen if you two don’t get involved.’”
The governor had learned how to put his power to use in delicate legislative transactions. “He knew when to back off, when to compromise—and when to shut up,” says Stu Spencer. And he preferred to work a small room. He didn’t need to address the Assembly from an elevated podium, his voice amplified like the Great Oz. A one-on-one meeting with an adversary or legislative holdout was found to be a much more effective approach. Reagan’s movie-star presence provided him with every opportunity to win over undecided assemblymen in close-call situations. In casual meetings, he was witty, he told Hollywood stories, he rattled off a slew of off-color jokes. And he possessed subtle persuasive powers. He didn’t push or shove or cajole. But his steadiness and charm combined to woo—and prevail—in much the same way they had throughout his SAG tenure. His staff learned that Reagan was their secret trump card, and they delighted in playing him to seal a difficult deal.
“Getting the governor together with legislators became a joy,” says Ken Hall. “He did so well in convincing them he was right, regardless of what the problem was.” Whenever he was needed to do some gentle arm-twisting, Bill Clark or Ed Meese dispatched an aide to the floor of the legislature in search of the sergeant at arms. “Tony, I’ve got to talk to Walt,” they would say if, for example, their quarry was the state senator from Bakersfield. Tony would retrieve Walt, who would be escorted to a corner where the governor’s aide stood in shadows, like a spy. “Walt, we need to have you talk to the governor.” Invariably, Walt (or whomever was summoned) grew visibly agitated, swiveling his head in a one-eighty in case someone might have overheard. “I can’t talk to the governor,” he’d practically wheeze while struggling to remain inconspicuous. “My guys will kill me if I do that!” The aide would offer reassurance. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody will ever know. Just go to the bathroom. Tony will take care of it from there.” If Walt complied, they’d hustle him out of the bathroom, shove him into the elevator, take him down to the basement garage, run him through rows of parked cars, and get him into the private elevator that emptied right outside the governor’s study. Ronald Reagan would be standing there, waiting. “Walt!” he’d say. “It’s great of you to come.” Whereupon Walt would be ushered into the inner sanctum and emerge twenty minutes later, grinning and pledging fealty. “We’d slip Walt back onto the floor of the legislature,” Ken Hall says, “where he’d inevitably be voting ‘yes’ on our bill.”
As a rule the governor needed twenty-seven votes to get any bill through the Assembly, and the key to victory was snagging number twenty-six. “People loved to jump on board as the twenty-seventh vote in order to put a bill over the top,” says George Steffes, “whereas no one wanted to be twenty-six.” Twenty-six was the game-changer, the goat, and it was the staff’s job to shepherd him into their corner and put the bell around his neck. Walt—or somebody like him—was always sought to be the twenty-sixth vote. “And never fail, we’d get him,” Hall says, “over and over again.”
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Reagan’s intercession with the legislature was never more important than on June 30, 1972, during a bitter struggle over the new state budget. The governor’s staff had reached an impasse with the legislature and was now three days past the official deadline. The Democrats prepared to shut down government offices. The Los Angeles Times ran fat headlines castigating the governor. It was an embarrassing mess.
That night, Ken Hall and George Steffes remained late in the capitol, drafting yet another version of the budget. At two o’clock in the morning, it seemed they were making headway. According to Hall, “We thought we had a chance this time to get it through if the governor was around.” He’d gone home at ten o’clock, and the lights had gone out in the executive mansion sometime around eleven; the Reagans were sound asleep. Hall and Steffes flipped a coin to see who would wake the governor.
Nancy answered the phone. She was not happy. Steffes apologized, but assured Ronald Reagan they were close to getting the budget through the Assembly. “If you could just come down and talk to one more legislator,” he said, “I think we can solve everything tonight.” Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan had taken a couple of sleeping pills and was feeling fairly out of it. “But get the guys together,” he relented. “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
About forty-five minutes later, the governor arrived at the office dressed in a turtleneck and slacks, looking every bit the actor who had come to play his part. “What are we doing?” he asked in a businesslike voice. “Let’s get this show going.”
It was the signal to execute the usual covert routine. Steffes and Hall singled out a legislator they felt was ripe and had the sergeant at arms hustle him into the bathroom and the elevator, through the parking lot, up the private elevator, and into the study with Ronald Reagan. “An hour later,” Hall says, “we had the budget out.”
Almost six years into the Reagan administration, even skeptics had to acknowledge that it was a well-run machine. Bill Bagley, the Assembly’s most liberal Republican who had dismissed Ronald Reagan as incompetent and “a know-nothing,” admitted years later, “The governor got plenty accomplished that changed my opinion of him.” In addition to welfare reform, his office delivered the largest funding increase to public schools in the history of California, imposed tax controls on county governments, delivered property tax relief to the middle class, passed legislation mandating strong pollution controls on automobiles, enacted the California Coastal Commission, and halted construction of the Dos Rios Dam, which would have caused flooding in Round Valley, a seven-million-acre feed and the spiritual preserve of the Yuki tribe. In 1972 he signed bills that protected the California coastline from development and set aside thousands of acres of parklands for public use.
His attention was increasingly drawn to the outdoors. “Environmentalists rarely regarded Ronald Reagan as a man in their corner,” says Kirk West, the governor’s chief deputy comptroller, “but his accomplishments in that area were long—and historic.” In the summer of 1972, a proposed highway over the Minarets, a gorgeous, pristine mountain range around the Sierra Nevadas, became a political issue. The project was championed by the powerful Central Valley agriculture industry, which lobbied for a year-round route as a way of transporting its products to the east. “Conservationists were absolutely appalled,” West says. “It would have sliced right through sections of the majestic John Muir Trail. The impact on the environment would have been devastating.”
Pressure was brought to rush the highway bill through the legislature. Central Valley farmers had contributed heavily to the governor’s campaigns, and they called in favors, while petitioning their local assemblymen to demand quick approval. Ronald Reagan refused to be pushed. “He decided to see the Minarets for himself,” says Ed Meese, “and so he took his cabinet on a horseback trip.”
The outing blossomed into a full-blown extravaganza on June 27, 1972, as members of the media were invited along. As Meese recalls, only a few of them could ride. George Skelton, who covered the event for the Los Angeles Times, described the image of Ronald Reagan, late of Cattle Queen of Montana, “waving a white hat, on a tall horse . . . as staffers and reporters struggled to mount and hang on to some strange beast.” Reagan’s Keystone Kavalry rode six miles straight up treacherous trails to a clearing just below the Minaret Summit, where the governor delivered an impassioned speech. His awe was palpable. “Because such a crossing would do irreparable harm to the wilderness beauty and wildlife of the area—and because we simply don’t need another highway—we have vigorously opposed such a crossing,” he said. He asked the legislature to close the Minarets Corridor permanently, guaranteeing that the John Muir Trail remained a 250-mile swath of inviolate wilderness between Yosemite and Mount Whitney.
Years later, offshore oil drilling, mining exploration, opening wilderness to development, and wholesale timber cutting became closely associated with Reagan initiatives. The environment wasn’t high on his presidential agenda. But in the summer of 1972, the badge he wore as Conservation Governor was a shiny ornament of his legacy in California.
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During 1973, the Reagan polish began to wear off. It was often the case with multiple-term governors that either malaise took hold and they wore out their welcome or they began to feel too confident and overreached. Ronald Reagan suffered a series of stumbles that touched on both extremes. He misread the public’s ability to unravel his aggressive fiscal gambles and its willingness to indulge his deepening conservative views.
One of Reagan’s vulnerabilities was his habit of aligning himself with the last person to give him advice. “As a result, he’d only get one side of an issue,” says George Steffes. His work with the Tax Reduction Task Force brought this into sharp focus. The committee, which was charged with shaping an agenda for the remaining years of the Reagan administration, fell into the hands of a man named Lewis Uhler, a former John Birch Society stalwart with extremist views. Ed Meese, who was a law-school classmate, defended Uhler as “a very decent guy, a very strong conservative with a libertarian outlook,” but his bona fides set off alarms. His political philosophy was a precursor to the Tea Party’s populist rhetoric. “I am absolutely convinced,” he argued in early 1971, “that legislators, if left to their own devices, will, in short order, put an end to the Republic in the name of improving it unless we, the people, take aggressive action, change the environment in which they operate, change the rules of the game.”
An antitax zealot, Uhler hijacked the governor’s ear. He convinced Reagan to set an extraordinary precedent by calling a special election to approve a state constitutional amendment. Proposition 1, as they labeled it, was cooked up to restrict government spending through rigorous tax-rate limits, while reducing revenues and rolling back personal income taxes. As a sop to encourage voters, an immediate 20 percent credit on their state income tax was promised. In any event, the new law, if enacted, would make it next to impossible for the California legislature to raise taxes.
