Deukmejian Mulls Future, His Own and California’s

Gov. George Deukmejian’s top priorities for his final 23 months in office are transportation, garbage and medical costs. Then he wants to land a well-paying, full-time job somewhere in California--anywhere.

“I’m really looking forward to a career change and getting out of government,” said the veteran politician, who has held elective office in Sacramento for 26 years, climbing the ladder from assemblyman to senator to attorney general and finally governor.

“I don’t feel burned out. But I do think that after awhile you seem to be continuing to deal with the same issues--year after year after year. So I’m kind of interested in new challenges.”

“But,” he quickly added, “I’m not unhappy about anything.”

It would have been difficult to be unhappy on this particular day as Deukmejian stared out the window of a train compartment at spectacular Alpine terrain--peaks streaked with ice, meadows carpeted by snow, tiny villages with church steeples and smoke curling from chimneys, glacier-fed streams, idyllic lakes, a few domesticated reindeer and an occasional cross-country skier.

On his recent eight-day trip to promote California trade and investment the governor traveled often by train--rolling through the Rhine River Valley of West Germany, past countless hilltop medieval castles, then climbing high into the Swiss Alps to one of the world’s premier ski resorts, Davos, and now descending toward Zurich.

It was a long way, physically--nine time zones--and spiritually from the partisan legislative chambers dominated by Democrats, Proposition 98 and freeway jams back home. The governor relaxed and talked about why he might have accepted the vice presidency last year, what he sees in his future, his new advocacy of tighter gun controls, how he will feel when California finally executes a murderer and the top priorities for his remaining time in the state Capitol’s coveted “corner office.”

Deukmejian surprised virtually everyone, including top advisers, by revealing recently at a press conference that he would have accepted a vice presidential offer from George Bush if California’s lieutenant governor had been a Republican and he could have avoided turning over his office to a Democrat.

The disclosure seemed to contradict previous assertions by Deukmejian that he never has been interested in national office, preferring state issues and California’s life style.

What gave? “Well,” Deukmejian said, chuckling, “it was very easy for me to give that answer because it was such an iffy, iffy, iffy question.”

But “I’m quite sure I would have” accepted such an offer, he said seriously. “Obviously it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. . . . I get along with (Bush) well and perhaps I could have been of assistance in different ways.”

Not Big on Parties

Deukmejian said he would have enjoyed participating in White House decision-making and also helping generate public support for the President. He would not have liked all the black-tie socializing and diplomatic niceties, however. “I’m not too big on all the protocol stuff,” he said.

“It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to go to Washington or run for President. If I’d had a burning desire to be on the ticket, then I would have been kicking myself (last year). Or maybe I would have done things differently and tried to hand-pick a lieutenant governor (in the 1986 elections).”

Now, Deukmejian is proposing that the governor and lieutenant governor run as a ticket. And it makes little difference to him, he said, whether aspirants for lieutenant governor compete in a primary for second place on the ticket, or the gubernatorial nominee chooses his own running mate.

Deukmejian won’t be personally involved anyway because he has decided, at age 60, not to run for reelection next year. He said he will focus during the rest of his second term on problems that affect “the day-to-day living of the average person--things like transportation, solid waste, crime, health care. . . .”

Deukmejian’s views on California’s transportation mess are well known: He prefers bond financing to pump more money into the system, but would allow voters to decide for themselves whether they want to raise the gasoline tax. He also advocates more car-pooling, staggered work hours and keeping trucks off urban freeways during commuter hours.

But he previously had not talked much about garbage disposal. And the governor, who indicated that he had been inspired by Switzerland’s pristine landscape, said California must move toward major recycling and burning of solid waste in regional incinerators.

“Everybody should really be thinking of getting away from landfills and getting toward this idea of either incineration or some other form of destroying waste, but not just dumping it and burying it,” he said.

What other form of garbage destruction did he have in mind? “I don’t know. I’m not an engineer. You know, the way they do things now,” he continued, chuckling again, “they come along with lasers or something and all of a sudden, zap, it’s gone.”

The problem with burning rubbish is that it makes the air even dirtier, and “we’d have to offset it somehow by eliminating some other contaminants,” he said.

“Maybe government can help fund research and development of technology that will allow us to have efficient burning operations that do not create more pollution.”

At any rate, he added, “it (incineration) is going to have to work. I mean, if you can’t find landfills, what are you going to do with it? You can’t leave it laying around. You’re going to have to get rid of it somehow. And we’re just running out of landfill sites. . . . It’s ‘the Nimby syndrome.’ ”

The what? “The Nimby--not in my back yard--syndrome.”

Deukmejian said his Administration is developing a legislative package on solid waste--and also one, coupled with executive actions, aimed at controlling the ever-rising cost of state-financed health care.

“In our country we’ve sort of come to expect that everybody will be able to have the finest quality, first-class health care under all circumstances,” Deukmejian said. “But we just cannot have a system anymore where you can go out and get all the medical care from wherever you want and expect that the government’s going to pay.”

Deukmejian said that under Medi-Cal, poor people can see a doctor “at least twice a month, 24 times a year. I doubt that the average person goes to a doctor 24 times a year.” One of his solutions is to require a meaningful “co-payment.”

“If somebody has to pay a few dollars every time they go get medical care, they are going to be a little more discerning as to what services they use and how often,” he said.

Another Deukmejian cause--a new one that neither he nor anyone else had anticipated--is gun control. The former attorney general wants to ban the sale of rapid-fire assault weapons, such as the AK-47 that was used to shoot up the Stockton schoolyard. This is a relatively popular idea right now, but the governor is expecting more controversy from another of his proposals: Extending the 15-day waiting period required for purchase of a handgun to all firearms, including rifles and shotguns.

“Every responsible hunter and leader of any sportsmen’s organization that I know of are opposed to permitting somebody who has a criminal record or a mental health problem or any kind of propensity for violence from having a gun,” the governor said. “And it just seems to me that the idea of at least being able to check out a prospective purchaser is very reasonable.”

As for military-style assault weapons, Deukmejian said that “I can’t possibily see why a sportsman would have to have one of those. Up until now, every hunter I know of has been satisfied with the different kinds of rifles and shotguns that have been around for ages.”

Doesn’t Oppose Hunting

Deukmejian is not a hunter and never has been. “I just never had any particular interest,” he said. “But I never had any strong opposition to people who went hunting or target shooting.”

In fact, Deukmejian in the past has aligned himself--as most Republicans have--with groups fighting gun control. And he still adamantly objects to the idea of banning all guns. For one thing, he believes citizens have a right to arm themselves for self-protection. For another, he thinks criminals somehow would get guns anyway.

“If you had laws saying that all law-abiding citizens could not have guns,” he said, “it would be an open invitation. It would be like putting a sign up on your house saying, ‘No Guns Here.’ You’re saying to the criminal element, ‘You can come in here and you don’t have to worry about me having a gun to defend myself.’ ”

But Deukmejian, like many elected officials, now is trying to capitalize on public horror and anger over from the Stockton massacre to further limit the types of weapons legally available and to control who buys them.

Asked why he has waited until now to seek these restrictions, Deukmejian said that “I’ve always, in my own mind, had no problem with requiring a waiting period to buy any kind of a gun.” But until recently rifles and shotguns were not considered major weapons in crime, he said. Now, semiautomatic, assault-type rifles--AK-47s, Uzis, AR-15s--are being used by street gangs against police.

“The fundamental answer” to reducing crime, he asserted, is to “work with” young delinquents and “get them back on the right path again.” His Administration now is trying to consolidate several anti-dropout programs into one more effective effort aimed at keeping kids in school. Meanwhile, he contends that tougher penalties and sterner judges--hundreds of them appointed by him--are ridding communities of an increasing number of hard-core criminals. A longtime advocate of the death penalty, Deukmejian displayed a touch of frustration at California’s delay in executing murderers. There now are 251 on San Quentin’s Death Row. “Every week I get a report and it says such and such execution is scheduled, but it is expected to be stayed,” he lamented.

A governor, in certain situations, possesses life-or-death power over a condemned man after all appeals have been exhausted. But Deukmejian said this solemn responsibility will not cause him any emotional trauma, if he ever does get a death penalty case.

“That won’t trouble me,” he said, slowly but unhesitantly. “All I need to keep thinking of is what this person did and how they willfully and deliberately took the life of another--and often times more than one life. I think it’s an appropriate punishment. And I think if we had more enforcement of it, we’d have fewer murders. . . .

“It doesn’t deter everybody. But I think it does deter some people, if it’s implemented--if they know that if they get caught, they’re liable to have their own life taken.”

But another governor will be grappling with such issues in two years. Deukmejian intends by then to be employed privately--perhaps as a lawyer, perhaps as a corporate executive.

“I don’t know specifically yet,” he said, smiling and enjoying the Swiss countryside from the inside of a narrow-gauge, antique railroad car. “I would hope and expect that I might get some offers. At this point I’m just kind of open.”

Although Deukmejian and his wife have long owned a home in Long Beach, the governor said they will move “wherever the best offer is. Honestly, we could live anywhere in the state.”

But he wants full-time work. “I don’t think I’d be happy doing something part-time and lying around the rest of the time. You know, you can play golf for only so long. . . .