Bid to Stop Guard’s Honduras Job Fails

A Democrat-sponsored measure calling on Gov. George Deukmejian to pull back 30 Spanish-speaking California National Guard troops committed to Honduras for what the governor called a road-building exercise fell three votes short of passage on Thursday, but supporters planned to bring up the measure again next week.

The resolution received 18 “yes” votes and 15 “no” votes, but a 21-vote majority was needed for passage.

Senate Majority Leader Barry Keene (D-Benicia), author of the resolution, said he will seek another vote on it next week and predicted that it will pass, because three Democrats on record as protesting the National Guard action were absent Thursday.

In an unusual move, Steven A. Merksamer, the governor’s chief of staff, met separately before the vote with both the Democratic and Republican caucuses to lobby against the measure.

Merksamer was asked in closed-door sessions to answer the legislators’ concerns that the National Guard exercise could endanger the lives of the Californians because fighting could spill over into Honduras from neighboring Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Deukmejian, in a letter to his Democratic critics, accused them of trying “to distort the true nature of this mission,” which he termed a noncombat training exercise that also would provide “humanitarian assistance to an American ally.”

The actions came as the first contingent of 15 California National Guard members prepared to leave today for St. Louis, where they will join up with a Missouri unit composed of road building engineers. The combined units are scheduled to leave for Honduras on Saturday.

Four Democrats joined Republicans in beating back the measure. One Republican, Sen. William A. Craven of Oceanside, voted for it.