Race for Governor: The Final Weekend : Deukmejian, Leading in the Polls, Seems to Shun National Ambitions

Most any politician in Gov. George Deukmejian’s position right now would be feeling like king of the hill and gazing off across the horizon at loftier mountains to climb.

Certainly most of his predecessors of the last 40 years did--Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr., Ronald Reagan, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown and Earl Warren.

Virtually all the polls indicate that Deukmejian is headed for a big reelection victory Tuesday. He seems to be liked and respected by the citizenry; in political parlance, he has few “negatives.” He appears to be free of major scandal. His ideology attracts activists of his own party--the conservatives--but sometimes he also does things that neutralize liberals, such as pumping a lot of money into public schools or getting tough on South African racial discrimination. He has ethnic appeal as the son of Armenian immigrants. He is relatively young for a big-time politician, 58. And he is governor of the nation’s most populous and economically powerful state.

In the normal sequence of events, Deukmejian would be glancing toward the Potomac as he flies around California this weekend in a chartered jet with the rest of the statewide Republican ticket. Indeed, Reagan, at the windup of his gubernatorial campaigns, always exhorted Californians to join him in a national crusade, promising, “We can light a prairie fire that will sweep all across America.”

But Deukmejian’s exhortations are directed primarily at urging voters to reject California Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird. And the only thing that might resemble an out-of-state focus is talk of improving California’s trade with “the Pacific rim.”

At sparsely attended campaign rallies Saturday in Monterey, Bakersfield and San Diego--with local crowds ranging from only 50 to 150--the governor also urged support for the entire GOP ticket, as well as himself.

“Voters have a fundamental choice to make,” he said, in a voice made crackling hoarse by recent campaigning. “They can choose our (Democratic) opponents who have racked up record (state) deficits and higher taxes that gave us double-digit unemployment and lenient judges. Or they can choose a California team, a team that has balanced the budget without raising taxes, a team that helped to create 1.7 million new jobs, the team that put on the bench of our courts over 400 common-sense men and women who care about the victims of crime. . . .

“If you believe in the death penalty and if you’ve had enough of Chief Justice Rose Bird, then support our team.”

Rather than use this reelection campaign to build up his political stock nationally--as Reagan did and as Jerry Brown tried to do--Deukmejian’s strategy has been confined solely to defeating his Democratic opponent, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. And he has not worked up much of a sweat in reaching for the goal, averaging only one or two campaign events a day and rarely spending a night away from his Sacramento home.

Deukmejian’s two-day, five-stop aerial blitz this weekend, in fact, is his first trip of the year that resembles a traditional campaign tour. It includes a chartered PSA jet, two rented buses at each stop and a traveling press corps--the normal implements of a successful politician yearning to advance his career.

“There’s just not a basic interest in wanting to pursue anything (nationally). He’s never had that lusting ambition,” said Deukmejian’s longtime friend and political adviser, Kenneth Khachigian, who also happens to be Reagan’s No. 1 speech writer. “He’s the master governor, after for years being an apprentice (as a legislator and state attorney general). He enjoys it. You know, he reads every bill.”

Other advisers--present and former--say the same: that Deukmejian cannot even be talked into granting interviews to national news media, let alone thinking about running for president or vice president. “If he’s got any bug, he’s keeping it well inside,” said campaign manager Larry Thomas. “He’s given no indication to the people around him that it’s on his agenda and he wants to talk about it.”

When asked in public about any White House ambition, Deukmejian replies that there already is a long list of potential presidential candidates and that he has absolutely no interest in adding his name to it. As for the vice presidency, he adds candidly, nobody really runs for that office. The presidential nominee’s running mate is usually selected from among the finalists for the top spot, he continues, and, anyway, Republicans probably will place a woman on the ticket in 1988.

So confident has Deukmejian been of victory this year, and so uninterested is he in promoting himself nationally, that he has rarely bothered to make it possible for the California press to fly on the same plane with him during the campaign--something unprecedented for any political candidate--and he has refused practically all interviews with national news organizations.

‘Dull Gray Presence’

Thomas finally persuaded Deukmejian last month to grant an interview to a personal friend, a veteran reporter for Newsweek magazine. But the reporter wound up using very few of the governor’s comments and describing him as “a dull gray presence so lacking in charisma that he’s reduced to joking about it.”

Deukmejian’s favorite quip about his personality is one that he has been ad-libbing to campaign audiences lately. It goes something like this: “The sponsors of this luncheon told me they wanted to invite the most exciting, the most charismatic politician in California to be the speaker. But Mayor Clint Eastwood couldn’t make it.” That usually disarms his detractors and gets a chuckle from almost everybody.

It so happened on Saturday at the Monterey County fairgrounds, however, Eastwood did make it. And the actor/Carmel mayor introduced the governor.

“You know I’m going to say it,” Deukmejian commented, turning to Eastwood with a big grin and paraphrasing a famous line from one of his movies--”You’ve really made my day.”

But a master of one-liners Deukmejian is not. He has a collection of bromides in his campaign oratory that usually fall flat, such things as the state government turning “from IOU to AOK,” California’s economy enjoying “the second gold rush,” and his policies’ transforming the state “from that mess out West to terrific on the Pacific.”

Deukmejian normally is at his best when he sticks to being his cool, cautious self--thoughtfully articulating his views, justifying his actions, sketching his notions of a second term in a lawyer-like manner that illustrates a strong grasp of state issues acquired during 24 years of public office in Sacramento.

And that is central to the the message that Deukmejian’s advisers, more than anything else, have tried to convey to the voters: that this governor has experience and is a leader. “And he did what he promised; he got the job done,” added Khachigian, parroting the television commercials.

‘Played to Our Strength’

Bradley has attempted to picture Deukmejian as a “caretaker” governor, an administrator but not a leader. The governor’s strategists believe that this has been futile--and they cite, as an example, their own experience in 1982 when Deukmejian barely beat Bradley in their first race.

“We tried a frontal assault on Bradley then, saying he was not a competent mayor--there wasn’t any Metro Rail, he hadn’t filled the potholes--but it made no headway,” Khachigian recalled. “In effect, Bradley did the same thing this time, but he played to our strength.”

Beneath the umbrella issue of leadership, Deukmejian has hit hard on “law and order,” which always gives him at least two reasons to bring up the subject of Chief Justice Bird: to illustrate the type of judges that he, as a longtime advocate of the death penalty, will never appoint; and to contrast his “leadership” with that of Bradley, who has remained neutral on Bird.

Politically, of course, public opinion polls have shown that voters tend to be attracted to any candidate who opposes the unpopular Bird.

Next in Deukmejian’s arsenal of issues has been “fiscal constraint.” He points to his record of having overcome a $1.5-billion state budget deficit inherited from Democrat Jerry Brown, while resisting Democratic legislators’ efforts to do it by raising general taxes.

Speech on Farrakhan

But if Deukmejian emerges the victor Tuesday, as expected, all the political post-mortems will focus on other things--like, to begin with, the governor’s timely speech in September, 1985, strongly denouncing black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan three days before Farrakhan delivered an anti-Jewish address in Los Angeles. Mayor Bradley was reluctant to speak out ahead of time, hoping to moderate Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic tone. But this hesitancy alienated some Democrats within the Jewish community.

The natural advantages of incumbency helped Deukmejian jump off to a big fund-raising lead over Bradley, a wide gap in financial resources that persists today. At last count, Deukmejian had raised $13 million to Bradley’s $7 million.

Everybody in the Deukmejian camp agrees, however, that by far the biggest turning point in the race came late last winter--when the governor decided to spend roughly $700,000 on early television commercials (“Great State, Great Governor”) while Bradley was vacillating on whether to support Bird.

Deukmejian’s advisers had guessed that Bradley would borrow enough money to run early commercials himself. They were wrong. But, said Khachigian, “we built insulation for the Bradley attacks that came later.”

Additionally, Khachigian said, “we wanted to force their hand early and make them go with the only issue they had: toxics. They had a big red ribbon around that one, talking openly about how Proposition 65 was going to bring out their constituency. We thought we’d force them early to use up an issue and give us a chance to defend against it, and make them use up money, which we knew was in scarce supply.”

‘Had to Play Catch-Up Ball’

Khachigian added, referring to the early commercials, “I felt there was a blank page (in the campaign) and I wanted to fill it. After that, they had to play catch-up ball.”

Bradley never did catch up, according to the polls. But Deukmejian insists that he is not taking reelection for granted--and he isn’t even winking.

“He tells us he has seen his opponents burned by overconfidence based on polls,” campaign manager Thomas said. “He understands probably better than anybody how far and how quickly you can close an election on an opponent and bring them down.”

Deukmejian did just that against Bradley four years ago, winning probably during the final weekend of campaigning.

“The polls say we’re ahead--don’t believe them,” Deukmejian kept saying Saturday, in the manner of a very optimistic candidate straining not to show overconfidence. “It isn’t the politicians who will decide the election on Tuesday--it’s you, the voters.”

Meanwhile, Deukmejian Chief of Staff Steven A. Merksamer has been quietly planning for a second term. “The governor’s priorities really haven’t changed that much,” he said. “They’re fiscal stability, no taxes, spending for education, cleaning up toxics, crime. . . . You’re going to see a lot more of the same.”

The governor promised audiences Saturday, “If you’ve liked what we’ve done in the first term, let me tell you the next four years are going to be ever better. Because the best is yet to come.”

So rather than gaze at loftier mountains to climb politically, Deukmejian seems perfectly content to keep his camp pitched in Sacramento indefinitely. In fact, during an interview with The Times last March he even started talking about maybe running for a third term in 1990.

“We’re just going to have to let nature take its course,” Khachigian said.

Flying around the state with Deukmejian this weekend and sharing the podiums with him are Republican lieutenant governor candidate Mike Curb, state Sen. Bill Campbell of Hacienda Heights, the party nominee for controller, secretary of state candidate Bruce Nestande and attorney general candidate Bruce Gleason.