Growth Foes Seek an Ally for Governor

Most of California’s slow-growth leaders, unhappy with all of the possible candidates for governor in 1990, would like to field one of their own.

“My belief is that in the election of 1990, growth and environmentalism ought to be the major issues,” said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Gary A. Patton, who wrote a strong growth-control measure that has been in effect in that small county since 1978.

“I think it’s a given” that a slow-growth candidate will run for governor in 1990, said Linda Martin, co-chairwoman of Citizens for Limited Growth in San Diego.

“It’s a logical step,” said Paul LaBonte, a Simi Valley engineer who is interim president of a new statewide slow-growth group called Save California. “It’s no secret that Gov. Deukmejian is not necessarily the most sensitive person to environmental problems.”

No Hope Among Republicans

Nor do most slow-growth advocates think much of other Republican prospects, should Deukmejian decide not to run for a third term.

On the Democratic side, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein is dismissed as “pro-development” and even state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp and state Controller Gray Davis, who are generally sympathetic to environmental concerns, are suspect in the eyes of many in the growth-control movement.

“Van de Kamp’s heart is in the right place,” Martin said, “but you have to wonder if a person who has been in the system that long can really do what needs to be done.”

She and others argue for a “fresh face,” probably a Democrat, who could take advantage of growing public concern over foul air, traffic gridlock and other growth-related problems to win the Statehouse.

Patton sounds as though he would like to be that “fresh face.”

Deukmejian “hasn’t raised any money, hasn’t spent any money, hasn’t done anything” to cope with the “worsening growth and environmental crisis,” Patton said.

“The governor should be the one to articulate a larger vision for the state,” he said. “If you don’t have a governor who is leading the state on overall policy issues, then nothing happens.”

But Patton, 45, comes from tiny, very liberal, somewhat funky Santa Cruz County, where he meets every week with his constituents at the Cafe Ziho coffee house.

Big Leap for Statewide Race

Many wonder if he could make the jump from that scene to a statewide race for governor.

Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, another “fresh face” who is mentioned by some slow-growth advocates as a gubernatorial possibility, thinks “such a candidacy would gain a great deal of support. I just sense that there is very strong support for reasonable growth management strategies.”

But Agran also warned that “politically, it would be very rough, very challenging, maybe impossible.”

He said the candidate would have to tackle the “fundamental problem that the politicians are taking orders from the developers” in return for heavy campaign contributions.