Poor and Weak Will Suffer if Opponents Win, Bird Says

Brimming with the populist fervor that has helped make her so controversial, California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird spent the busiest weekend of her campaign arguing that the poor and weak in society stand to suffer most if her opponents gain control of the judiciary.

Addressing a California Teachers Assn. convention on Saturday in San Francisco and five black churches here on Sunday, Bird returned to the theme that has dominated her campaign--that politicians and special interests are spending $7 million to defeat her because they cannot abide a court that does not kowtow to their wishes.

“Why are they so afraid of a chief justice who is following the law?,” she asked. Because, she said, her court “is not a house of puppets or of politicians. We are not a house of death or of judicial lynching. We are a house of justice,” Bird told an effusively enthusiastic congregation at Beth Eden Baptist Church.

Carrying a similar message to nearby North Oakland Baptist Church, Bird contended that a lot more than her job is on the line in this election.

“What is at stake here is not the career of Rose Bird. There is something else much more basic,” she said. She warned that an impartial judiciary, not only in California but all over the 1668248942her opponents succeed.

Bird was speaking mainly to very friendly audiences, and that was most evident at Allen Temple Baptist Church, where the Rev. J. Alfred Smith Sr. talked about how important Bird is to the lives of black men on death row.

“About 70 black men on death row would be dead if it weren’t for Chief Justice Rose Bird,” he said. “And I am voting for her,” he added.

Bird returned the compliment with a variation on a statement she repeated often to the black congregations she visited.

“What a beautiful, beautiful people you are and what an exemplary example for all of us in this nation and in the world that you could come here and work against impossible odds and reach out in friendship and peace and love to others no matter what they did to you.”

By turns folksy and evangelical, Bird’s weekend speeches mixed campaign rhetoric, Biblical allusions and personal reminiscences of moral lessons she learned from teachers, from her mother and from the Indian woman who helped raise her.

Not everything she said was serious as she joked about the flak she is drawing from a variety of political candidates who hope to benefit in their own races by attacking Bird.

“If I look a little tired it’s because it’s awfully hard to run for governor, lieutenant governor, controller and the U.S. Senate,” she told a Sunday luncheon audience of about 600 black lawyers and judges here.

For years Bird has suffered from a reputation for a frosty reserve, but that was not in evidence over the weekend. Appearing on a television talk show Friday she disarmed one hostile questioner by commenting coquettishly on his good looks. And she had a similar effect Saturday when she paid a surprise visit to a group of weary reporters who were having dinner in a San Francisco restaurant.

‘Trick-or-Treat Time’

But Bird made it clear she has not lost her capacity for anger as she lashed out at the people she blames for floating the potentially damaging report that she is resigned to losing the election.

Halloween treachery is what she called it, blaming political consultants for trying to interpret an act of generosity as a sign of capitulation. Bird offered some of her campaign funds to two other Supreme Court justices on the ballot. (The justices, Joseph R. Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, turned down the offer.)

“We’re close to Halloween and it’s trick-or-treat time apparently,” Bird said.

“I offered them help and assistance quietly and privately. And it was leaked by political consultants to be linked with the idea of resignation right at a time when people are getting their absentee ballots so they won’t mark the ‘X’ next to your name because they think you are resigning. And they take an act of caring and turn it into something ugly,” Bird said.

What happened to her only served to reinforce the pessimism she has often expressed about the political process.

“Is that how far we’ve sunk in the political process that you can’t care about people without it being read in some negative fashion. How sad that is.”

Morally Wrong

But for Bird, it has been Halloween for a long time, with trickery and duplicity characteristic of opponents who are, to Bird, not just wrong but morally wrong.

There is Gov. George Deukmejian, who, Bird contends, is exploiting the death penalty issue for the sole purpose of advancing his political career.

Linked with the governor in Bird’s view are corporate special interests who cry crocodile tears over the victims of crime, when what they really care about is creating a “client court” that will do their bidding.

But worst of all, to Bird, are the political consultants who use television, the way sorcerers used smoke and mirrors, to distort reality and to lie.

Bird warned that these forces endanger more than her career.

‘A Judicial Lynching’

“What this opposition to the court is all about is really a judicial lynching,” she said, “a judicial lynching of the law and of the whole concept that you would execute someone not because you had a fair trial . . . but because somebody needs it for their political career.”

Bird said the prospect of that kind of justice reminded her of events in Iran, although she insisted she was not equating her opponents with the Ayatollah Khomeini.

“My God, what has happened to our whole concept of honesty and decency. . . . We look over at the Ayatollah, and we turn away because it’s ugly what happens over there. . . .”

Bird’s comments over the course of the weekend were not all so pessimistic, nor was her mood always so dour. She joked about a recent newspaper article that took her to task for not taking better care of her yard. Yes, she said. There were brown spots in the lawn, and she had let the rose bushes get a little scraggly.

She said she was confident that she could still win, that “people power” would triumph over the money being spent to defeat her.

But much of the time, her tone was flecked with sadness. She was serious even when she talked about what happiness meant to her.

Happiness a ‘Tough Process’

It is not “a pursuit of sensation, of feeling good, of new excitements,” she said. “It is a long, tough process and, in part, it is the development of wisdom on our part, and a caring and an understanding of those around us who are weaker than we are, who have less of a chance, as well as understanding that those who are powerful have to follow the rules the way the others do.”

She offered a rare glimpse at her own personal life when she talked Saturday about attending segregated schools as a child in Arizona.

“I had a Papago Indian help raise me when I was very young, and, thank God, I learned that the color of skin and way of life is not important,” she said.

“What is important is the individual and their work. That’s a beautiful, beautiful concept. But it’s tough in a society that is geared to feeling good, being popular, to doing anything to win because if you don’t win you have lost in life.”

She was a hit everywhere she went over the weekend. Her easy rapport with audiences made people wonder how she could be in so much trouble with the voters, and it filled her supporters with regret that she did not get out on the stump sooner.

Yet, to some she remained an enigma, as when she refused on the talk show to answer the question so many people have put to her: How does she really feel about the death penalty?