Conservative Davis Goes Against Image With Pro-Environment Votes

Call it the greening of Ed Davis.

Best known for his cop quips and law-and-order image, Davis, a Republican who represents the state’s conservative 19th Senate District, has become an environmental advocate.

In recent months, Davis--a lifetime National Rifle Assn. member and ex-Los Angeles police chief--has startled and delighted conservationists by working to protect mountain lions, crack down on “outlaw developers” along the coast, create new parkland and slow the pace of home building in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Indeed, in 1988, he posted the best pro-environmental voting record among GOP state senators, according to the California League of Conservation Voters. Davis voted for 85% of the key bills tracked by the league, well above the Republican average of 68%.

“I hate to ruin my political career, but I consider myself an environmentalist,” said Davis, laughing, during an interview.

For some preservationists, Davis’ new devotion to their cause somewhat jarringly contrasts with his public image as an ex-cop-turned-conservative-politician. And outwardly, that image is little changed.

The walls of his Chatsworth offices are festooned with mementoes of his Los Angeles Police Department days. There is an autographed photo of the late Jack Webb, star of the old “Dragnet” television series; another photo bears greetings from the stars of the “Adam-12” TV cop show.

But the man who once urged that skyjackers be hanged at airports now talks worriedly about the destruction of Amazon rain forests, reads National Wildlife magazine and declares that developers who violate state coastal rules ought to be thrown in prison.

His position is all the more remarkable in light of his past antagonism toward California Coastal Commission officials, whom the colorful, sharp-tongued Davis referred to as “environmental fascists” and “unmitigated bastards” during his frequent squabbles with the agency in the early 1980s, when his district included Malibu (the area was reapportioned away from him in 1982).

Backs Coastal Agency

During the past three years, Davis, 72, has emerged as a strong supporter of the beleaguered coastal protection agency.

He has voted several times to restore cuts made in the commission’s budget by its political archenemy, Gov. George Deukmejian. Earlier this year, Davis introduced a bill (recently vetoed by the governor) giving the commission power to move faster to stop illegal coastal development.

“He’s now our champion,” said Bill Allayaud, the commission’s Sacramento lobbyist.

Davis said he changed his attitude because Deukmejian’s appointments to the commission have been good therapy for the agency.

“The Coastal Commission has become a constructive force,” he said. “They were properly sent to the woodshed when he came in; they deserved to go to the woodshed. My feeling is that they have reformed.”

Typical Voting Record

Elected to the Senate in 1980, Davis’ environmental voting record in his first five years was fairly typical of Republicans in the upper house, according to League of Conservation Voters figures.

The league each year compiles scores based on how legislators voted on a number of key environmental bills. In his early Senate years, Davis’ record fluctuated between 24% and 50%. But in 1986, Davis’ record soared to 92%. He dipped to 38% the following year but jumped to 85% in 1988. Last year, the Senate’s other 13 Republicans ranged from 39% to 82%.

Davis’ score stands in even more marked contrast to those of Republican Assembly members whose districts overlap his. Assembly members Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks and Cathie Wright of Simi Valley both scored 15% in 1988; Marian W. La Follette of Northridge scored 28%.

Although he sticks out among fellow Republicans, Davis still scores below most Senate Democrats, who averaged 89% last year. Six Democrats posted 100% records, and even the lowest-ranked Democrat, Rose Ann Vuich of Dinuba, had an 81% record.

“He tends to take risks, and he’s more statesmanlike than most legislators,” said state Sen. Bill Lockyer, a Hayward Democrat who had a 100% ranking.

“That may be because of his age. He’s said he’s an old guy, and he’s going to do what he wants to in spite of what people think.”

Alarmed by Development

Davis said that in the past few years, he has become alarmed as developers built more and more homes in his far-flung district, which meanders from Woodland Hills in Los Angeles County to Santa Maria in Santa Barbara County.

He has been particularly critical of developers in the Santa Clarita Valley, where he moved in 1984, charging that the region has been raped by builders whose projects have brought noise, traffic, pollution and other problems to a once-pristine area.

Davis’ embrace of preservation mirrors a concerted attempt by Republicans at the state and national levels to capture the issue, long considered the Democratic Party’s political property. Burdened with the image of former Secretary of the Interior James Watt, Republicans have sought to return to that of Teddy Roosevelt, an outdoorsman and founder of the national parks system, as GOP voters increasingly worry about polluted air and water, overdevelopment and traffic jams.

Alan Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles-based political consultant, said Republicans representing California’s coastal regions are under growing pressure to change their stances from yuppie Republicans who have flooded into their districts. These youngish, well-educated and well-salaried voters are highly responsive to environmental issues, he said.

“All of a sudden, they can’t just hold onto their office by being fiscal conservatives,” Hoffenblum said. “They’ve got to look at social and environmental issues too.”

Hot Political Topic

And the environment has become a hot political topic among many residents of Davis’ heavily Republican district, which contains portions of two national forests.

In a 1988 poll, for instance, 96% of Santa Clarita residents said they viewed traffic congestion as a serious problem. When the city was incorporated two years ago, the City Council promptly declared a moratorium on cutting the valley’s treasured oak trees.

Davis’ views on growth have led him to tangle repeatedly with the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission, an agency that oversees the establishment of new cities. Davis has criticized the agency for being dominated by developers and for blocking local incorporation drives aimed at slowing development.

Some observers suggest that Davis may merely be responding to constituent pressures.

“In Republican suburbs, the no-growth movement is getting stronger than in some Democratic areas,” Lockyer said. “He may . . . just be tuning in to that growing body of opinion in his area.”

But Davis says he always has been concerned with conservation, dating back to his boyhood, when he dreamed of being a forest ranger, and to his job as a tree surgeon for the Los Angeles parks department in the mid-1930s.

Davis has also long been an independent thinker--and equally independent voter, often to the consternation of his GOP colleagues in Sacramento.

“I’m not a doctrinaire Republican. . . . I try to think out each issue individually,” he said.

‘React in Knee-Jerk Fashion’

“The parties tend to react in knee-jerk fashion. The Republicans are the good old boys who protect the free enterprise system and overlook something like taking a mountain out, where Democrats can become offended by that.”

As an example of his occasional breakaway voting, he favored a 1984 bill banning job discrimination against homosexuals, which prompted conservatives to criticize him. Although he is a longtime opponent of abortion, he startled many last month by announcing that he favors Medi-Cal paying for abortions for poor women.

“I don’t think he has a world view that makes him automatically susceptible” to arguments in favor of environmentalism, said Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, which buys land to be set aside for state parks.

“But he is somebody who will look at the facts as he sees them. He really is a sucker for a logical argument.”