Takes On Deukmejian Over Budget : Bill Honig: Schools’ Chief Is Well-Armed for Battle

People have been calling state schools chief Bill Honig a lot of names lately. Demagogue. Snake oil salesman. Perhaps the next governor of California.

These are jarring characterizations of the energetic former school teacher who can talk about little else than improving the state’s educational system and these days, about how Gov. George Deukmejian is not budgeting enough money to do that job.

If Central Casting were asked to send a snake oil salesman--or a governor--to Sacramento, it would hardly choose a Bill Honig type. His long, narrow face--usually animated by passionate discussion of school reform--is punctuated by bold, dark eyebrows and overwhelmed by his black-frame glasses. Tall and gangling, Honig looks more like a cartoon caricature than the demagogue Deukmejian has accused him of being.

But the attention that the nonpartisan superintendent of public instruction is suddenly receiving reflects the key part he is playing in shaping the critical issues that confront the Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

Attacking the Budget

Since New Year’s Day, Honig has attacked the governor’s education budget proposal, threatened to mobilize millions of people to oppose it, and pledged to put an initiative on the 1988 ballot that would relax the state’s constitutional limit on spending.

Deukmejian, stung by Honig’s outspoken opposition, singled out the superintendent for special criticism last Wednesday.

“The high rollers and the budget busters, they offer no solutions. They offer no leadership. All they are offering is a little bit of snake oil,” the governor told reporters at a news conference. “. . . (Honig) is going to distort the facts and mislead the people. I think if you look up the word demagoguery in the dictionary, you’ll see that it fits.”

Honig’s burst of activism and the governor’s attack have prompted talk around the Capitol that Honig might seek the governorship in 1990--perhaps even run against Deukmejian if the Republican chief executive seeks a third term.

Honig says he has no desire to run for governor because his campaign to improve education is more important than seeking higher office. But he refuses to rule out the possibility, saying that it may be necessary to completely carry out his school reform program.

Won’t Close the Door

“I’m not saying ‘under no circumstances,’ ” he said. “If we get through three years and the schools are killed and I have to make a point, I may be forced into doing it. But it’s not on my horizon. It’s not in my plans. I’m not sitting day-by-day strategizing how are we going to get there.”

Nevertheless, political insiders look at Honig as one of a handful of statewide political figures who could mount a strong campaign for governor.

Assessing Honig’s chances, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) noted that Honig has “an unlimited supply of his own money” and said he runs “the best ongoing political operation of anybody.”

But like a youngster who won’t be drawn into a fight on the playground, Honig is doing his best to ignore the speculation about his political future touched off by his battle with the governor.

Instead, he is using the increased visibility brought by Deukmejian’s charges to hammer away at the governor’s budget plan and what Honig considers to be the Administration’s shift of policy on education funding.

‘Going to Be Calamitous’

“Its going to be a disaster,” Honig said in an interview at his San Francisco home. “It’s going to be calamitous. This budget is of a magnitude of a cut we’ve never seen before.”

Although Deukmejian’s budget calls for an increase of $241 million for kindergarten through 12th grade education, Honig said the governor’s spending plan actually represents a 4% cut, because of soaring enrollment.

In recent years, the schools have received as much as 46% of all new money coming into the state, Honig said, compared to 9% in the proposed budget for the 1987-88 fiscal year. Honig called the Administration’s change a “betrayal” of its earlier commitment to education.

The schools chief suggested that Deukmejian take money from his proposed $1-billion reserve or raise new revenues--both anathema to a governor who won reelection on a platform of fiscal prudence and no new taxes.

To Honig, the potential cutbacks in education take on the proportion of a life-and-death matter--for the schools and for himself. As superintendent, he has built his entire political career around the idea of improving the state’s school system.

Could Threaten Career

Political consultant Clint Reilly, who helped Honig win election in 1982 and 1986, put it this way: “If he stands aside and lets the educational issue go on the back burner and decline as a significant issue, then his career is certainly going to decline right along with the quality of education in California. I don’t think Bill (Honig) can afford to allow other politicians in the state to place a greater priority on other issues than public education.”

During his first term, Honig had considerable success in making education the state’s top fiscal priority and helped win approval of legislation designed to emphasize basic subjects, instill traditional values, improve the quality of instruction and increase teachers’ salaries.

Now, he argues, a cutback of the scale proposed by Deukmejian would effectively gut the “reform movement” in the schools. No longer would education take first place among state programs, he maintains.

“This budget doesn’t reflect a high priority for schools,” he said. “It reflects a low priority for schools. It is going to hurt us and I think I have a right to take that case to the public and build support for it. The public is the judge of whether it’s snake oil or not. That’s what democracy is all about.”

On Thursday, a day after the governor’s broadside, Honig took his argument to a convention of the state’s school superintendents in Monterey. He presented a detailed critique of the governor’s budget and urged the school officials to mobilize their local communities in a campaign to change Deukmejian’s mind.

‘Matter of Policy’

“This is not a personality clash,” he said. “It’s a matter of policy and where we go in this state. The reform movement is crucial to the health of the state. The (governor’s) decision was to spend that money on something other than education.”

Directly contradicting the governor’s statement that 55% of the budget would continue to go for all levels of education, Honig said the number would actually shrink to 53.7%.

After his presentation, Honig received sustained applause from the superintendents.

In many ways, Honig’s varied professional background has prepared him for just this kind of political battle. The son of a wealthy San Francisco advertising man, Honig graduated from law school at the University of California’s Boalt Hall in 1963. He clerked for his cousin, then-state Supreme Court Justice Matthew Tobriner, a liberal who has since retired. Then, Honig spent two years working in the state Department of Finance--the agency that prepares and oversees the governor’s budget.

Moving back to San Francisco, he spent four years practicing corporate law before quitting to take up teaching at an inner-city elementary school. In the process, he earned a master’s degree in education. After four years of teaching, he became superintendent of the small but wealthy Reed Union Elementary School District in Marin County.

Beat Wilson Riles

He was appointed to the state Board of Education in 1975 by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. In 1982, Honig surprised the educational and political Establishment by unseating three-term school superintendent Wilson Riles.

Until he ran for superintendent, Honig was a lifelong Democrat from a liberal tradition. In 1964, he walked precincts to help Assembly Speaker Brown, then a radical lawyer, win his first campaign. His father, Louis Honig, was on Richard M. Nixon’s well-publicized list of enemies.

During the 1970s, Honig said, he underwent a transformation of his values that altered his attitude towards education and moved him to the middle of the political spectrum. Now, he said, he is comfortable with the label of either moderate Democrat or moderate Republican. Officially, he is registered “decline to state.”

For the last six years, the enthusiastic, fast-talking Honig, part teacher and part proselytizer, has traveled up and down the state promoting his vision of a vastly improved educational system that provides children with a basic education and traditional values.

As superintendent, he has attempted to build a bipartisan base of support by appealing to Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, teachers and parents. He was reelected last year with 78% of the vote.

Politician’s Flair

Honig has shown a politician’s flare for attracting and energizing supporters.

Brown described rallies of parents, teachers and students sponsored by Honig and his wife, Nancy, that have contributed to the school chief’s base of support: “They usually end up in these big, huge public meetings to reaffirm your commitment to education. It’s right out of Ronald Reagan’s book. I mean, it’s like Nancy and Ronnie showing up and all the fanfare. . . . It’s awesome, awesome.”

Part of the key to Honig’s success has been his ability to mobilize supporters to put pressure on Deukmejian and individual lawmakers during previous budget and legislative controversies.

It is a tactic he clearly plans to use again to battle Deukmejian over spending for education in the next fiscal year’s budget. Moreover, he will build on this base of support to promote his proposed constitutional limit to raise the Gann limit on spending, which he argues would ultimately cripple the educational system. Honig talks enthusiastically about filling the 90,000-seat Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum or organizing a march to rally support for the ballot measure.

‘Responsible Action’

“The issue the governor raised is whether it is a responsible action to go out to the public and make your case for why the schools need more resources,” Honig said. “Basically, what the governor is saying is, ‘I don’t want you out there stirring up the troops because it’s going to make my life tougher.’ ”

Rather than engaging in personal attacks, Honig called on the governor to show where the schools chief is wrong in his criticism of the budget.

Instead of debating Honig on the numbers, however, it appears that the Administration would prefer to shift attention to Honig’s personal ambitions and political background.

Bill Cunningham, the governor’s outgoing education adviser, who sat through Honig’s speech in Monterey, said afterward that he did not know of any errors in Honig’s analysis.

But Cunningham joked in his speech to the superintendents that reporters had misunderstood Deukmejian: “He didn’t call Bill a demagogue. He called him a Democrat,” Cunningham quipped. “Of course, anybody would rather be a demagogue.”

Won’t Abandon Battle

Despite such criticisms, Honig is not likely to abandon his tactic of appealing for public support in his battle for more education money. The office of school superintendent has little actual authority other than administration of the relatively small state Department of Education.

Honig must rely almost entirely on his power of persuasion--a quality he has in abundance.

“The power of this office is the ability to mobilize people around ideas, around beliefs, about what they want to happen to their children in this state,” Honig said. “That’s not demagoguery. That’s leadership. I’m not going to stop doing that. That’s what I think I got elected for.”