Jarvis Eulogized as a Tireless Battler

“Taxes must have gotten high in heaven, because God has called back the greatest tax cutter of them all,” state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights) said Friday in eulogizing tax crusader Howard Jarvis, who died Tuesday night at the age of 83.

Campbell was among 300 friends and supporters who gathered to pay their last respects to Jarvis at a memorial service at Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in the Hollywood Hills.

The group--mainly the political and economic conservatives who supported him during his landmark Proposition 13 campaign--heard Jarvis praised as a scrapper who, said broadcaster George Putnam, became “a true American folk hero.”

Proposition 13 co-author Paul Gann said his sidekick proved “that we, the people, are the government, if we’re willing to get off the seat of our pants and get out there and fight.”

For years, Jarvis had been considered a political gadfly brushed off by the state’s lawmakers, corporate establishment and much of the media. Finally, in 1978, Jarvis clicked.

A combination of soaring property taxes, legislative inaction and a “give-’em-hell” campaign resulted in a landslide victory for the property tax-limiting Proposition 13 initiative.

Homeowners, particularly the elderly on fixed incomes facing steep property tax increases, had a new idol.

But the campaign also spawned bitter political enemies, particularly among liberals, who said that Jarvis was bankrupting the state with the loss of billions of dollars in property tax revenues to benefit a land-owning elite.

When Jarvis died, no flags were flown at half-staff in Sacramento, where Jarvis never felt comfortable and where he ridiculed the lawmakers as “know-nothings” who were out to line their own pockets.

‘An Old Soldier’

Few lawmakers said anything publicly when Jarvis died. An exception was state Senate leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), a Jarvis opponent. “It’s tough to see old soldiers die,” he said.

So it was hardly surprising that the political establishment was sparsely represented at Friday’s service. Only a handful of incumbents showed up, including longtime Jarvis supporter Campbell, who said that politicians had generally regarded Jarvis’ early tax forays as a “pain in the neck.”

Republican Gov. George Deukmejian, who was not a Proposition 13 supporter, was invited to the memorial service but decided instead to send a condolence note to Jarvis’ wife, Estelle, said a source close the Jarvis family.

The eulogies were delivered by longtime Jarvis backers like Campbell, Putnam and Ray Briem, whose overnight radio talk show on KABC was one of the first to give Jarvis a forum; conservative economist Arthur Laffer, who had been part of the Jarvis brain trust, and television commentator and recent unsuccessful Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Herschensohn.

Hours of Work

Behind seated family members and close friends stood some of Jarvis’ supporters, who years ago worked long hours at shopping centers getting signatures to qualify Jarvis initiatives, including Proposition 13, for the ballot.

A few others at the memorial told a reporter they never knew Jarvis and never worked for any of his initiatives, but were grateful for Proposition 13.

“He saved our home from the tax collector,” said an elderly woman who declined to be identified.

President Reagan, former President Richard M. Nixon and California Republican Sen. Pete Wilson sent notes praising the feisty Jarvis.

‘Tireless Battle’

“Howard’s tireless battle to cut the tax burden for California had repercussions across the entire nation,” Reagan wrote in a letter read by Herschensohn.

“Howard Jarvis fired the first shot in the Reagan Revolution,” Nixon wrote. “Like all pioneers he was brash, iconoclastic, gutsy and tough.”

Gann, 74, the quiet half of the Jarvis-Gann Proposition 13 team, said it was always “a comfort” to have the bombastic, intimidating Jarvis on his side during the bitter debates on the initiative. “You knew he was going to win,” Gann said.