Governor Dedicates Home in Swing Through County

Gov. George Deukmejian took a swing through Orange County Monday, dedicating the county’s new home for abused and neglected children--the Orangewood Children’s Home--and hosting a $250-a-plate dinner in Irvine that was expected to raise $225,000 for his 1986 reelection campaign.

The governor, in his dinner speech to about 900 county Republicans at the Irvine Hilton, also used the occasion to attack liberal judges on the state Supreme Court and his primary Democratic opponent for governor, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

“It would help if we had some leadership to match the environmental rhetoric coming from Los Angeles City Hall,” Deukmejian said. “With its irresponsible and illegal discharges of sewage into the Santa Monica Bay, the city has become one of the largest polluters in the state of California.”

By contrast, California under his administration, is “on the comeback trail,” fostering a healthy economy and at the same time providing environmental controls on smog and toxic wastes, Deukmejian said.

The governor also complained that state courts, especially the state Supreme Court, had failed to enforce the death penalty.

“You know I authored the capital punishment law in 1976. Since that time, prosecutors like (Orange County Dist. Atty.) Cecil Hicks have been most instrumental in prosecuting many murders and juries have imposed the death penalty over 200 times, and yet not one murderer has paid the ultimate price. I call upon the court to end its decade-long pattern of loopholes and delays and implement the death penalty in the state of California,” he said to applause.

He noted that since his election in 1982, he had appointed more than 275 judges, including two Supreme Court justices. “These are common-sense judges who will faithfully implement the laws of our state, judges who are as concerned about the rights of victims of crimes as they are about the rights of the accused,” Deukmejian said.

Monday’s dinner is part of a series of $250- and $1,000-a-plate dinners Deukmejian has been holding since June to support his bid for reelection in November, 1986.

Although the Orange County dinner is regarded as a “lower-priced” regional fund-raiser, the event is “very significant,” Deukmejian’s finance committee chairman, Karl M. Samuelian, said Monday. Deukmejian told his audience Monday night that Orange County is “the most Republican county in the whole state, and it makes me feel terrific.”

Orange County residents raised “several hundreds of thousands of dollars” in 1981 and 1982 when Deukmejian ran for governor, Samuelian said.

Already co-chairmen and honorary chairmen for Monday’s dinner, some of Deukmejian’s earliest supporters here, had been working hard, each selling from two to 100 tickets for the dinner, Samuelian said.

Co-chairmen for the Monday dinner included developers Donald Koll and Donald Bren, Fluor Corp. Chairman David Tappan and lawyer Anthony Vitti. Honorary chairmen were Sheriff Brad Gates, Dist. Atty. Hicks and Supervisors Harriett Wieder, Bruce Nestande, Roger Stanton and Thomas F. Riley.

Earlier Monday in Orange, Deukmejian applauded the public-private partnership which led to the creation of Orangewood, a homey-looking Spanish-style facility run by the county for 170 abused or neglected children. The final phase of construction, a gym, pool and recreation center, was completed just two weeks ago.

Of the $7.8 million raised for Orangewood’s construction, only $1.3 million came from public money (from county government and all 26 cities in the county). The rest came from 5,000 individual or corporate donors.

Deukmejian and his wife, Gloria, toured Orangewood’s playground and cottage. He called the partnership effort that created them remarkable.

“Government can never take the place of the family and it never should try,” he said. But he praised “concerned citizens” for “banding together” to help neglected children.

“Let Orangewood be a model of commitment and caring for our entire state,” he told an audience of 700, a mix of Orangewood board members and county Republican leaders.

Orangewood officials and supporters said they were delighted Deukmejian was there. “It lends recognition to the project. And it gives incentive to other communities” to follow Orange County’s example, Supervisor Bruce Nestande said.