Riverside Man Named UC Regent

The Riverside area won its lobbying campaign for representation on the University of California Board of Regents with Gov. George Deukmejian’s appointment Monday of Jacques S. Yeager, a prominent builder who is active in fund-raising for the UC Riverside campus.

Yeager, 66, will take over the seat held by Sheldon W. Andelson, the Los Angeles businessman and gay leader who died of AIDS in December. The term expires in 1994.

“I’m absolutely thrilled and want to thank all the people in the Inland Empire who sent in all the letters to support me to the governor. This is a lifetime ambition,” Yeager said.

A Republican, he has been involved in many civic and charitable causes, including the successful campaign in the early 1950s to turn what had been a UC agricultural station in Riverside into a full campus. Yeager is president of E.L. Yeager Construction Co, founded by his father, and is a director of Security Pacific National Bank.

Yeager, a UC Berkeley alumnus, said he will work for the betterment of the entire nine-campus UC system but that he also considered Riverside’s interests to be his special responsibility. Although UC Riverside graduates have held the rotating alumni seats on the board, there has been no regular regent from the Riverside area for nearly two decades, officials said.

The naming of Yeager leaves the governor with one more vacancy to fill on the regents panel. Observers of the board say he is under pressure to name someone from San Diego because Deukmejian did not reappoint Frank L. Hope Jr., a San Diego architect, after his term expired last month.

The terms of four incumbent regents expired in March but because of a 1974 constitutional amendment shrinking the board from 30 to 28 members, the governor is able to fill only two of those seats. (The constitutional amendment also cut the length of new terms from 16 to 12 years and will reduce the board to 26 members in 1990.)

Andelson’s death created a third vacancy but only for the unexpired portion of his term.

Only one incumbent, Frank W. Clark Jr., the board chairman, was reappointed. Edward Carter, William A. Wilson and Hope were not given new terms.

Also on Monday, the governor announced the reappointment of Marian Bagdasarian, a Fresno teacher, to the California State University Board of Trustees. She has served on that board since 1984 and her new term will last until 1994. Bagdasarian’s husband, George, is a rancher active in the Republican Party.

There is one more vacancy on the 24-member Cal State panel because the term of Lynne Wasserman, a senior vice president of Weintraub Entertainment Group, also formally expired March 1 although she can vote on university matters until the end of April. However, informed sources said it is unlikely that Wasserman, a Democrat originally appointed by Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown, will be given a new term by Deukmejian, a Republican.

Both the Yeager and the Bagdasarian appointments require state Senate confirmation. The regent post carries only expenses and the trustee position brings expenses plus $100 per meeting day.