CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Feinstein’s Deliberative Style Tempers Decisions

The environmental movement swelled larger by the hour this spring as Earth Day approached. Politicians, scrambling for support, lined up behind the so-called “Big Green” initiative, closely identified with Democrat John K. Van de Kamp.

Dianne Feinstein, Van de Kamp’s opponent in the primary, found herself in a tight spot. On the subject of the state’s most sweeping environmental initiative, where was Feinstein? Day after day came the same, standard answer: She was studying the issue.

Not until Earth Day dawned did she announce her support for the November ballot measure, which she now embraces as if it had been hers from the beginning. She routinely uses it as a weapon against her Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Pete Wilson.

Feinstein’s advisers find the turn of events an illustration of the candidate’s decision-making and of the impact of the eclectic set of advisers she relies on in her quest to become governor.

The hallmarks, they say, are her near-obsession with detail, with finding answers to searching questions about the issue at hand, even if that means appearing to publicly dawdle. After the deliberative process is finally concluded, the result is set loose with all the dramatic flair she can command.

Despite Feinstein’s oft-spoken desire to act as a mediator to solve California’s pressing problems and the image she tries to project as someone who can unify this disparate state, she and her advisers say her process of decision-making can be an intellectual brawl. Her style is more a reflection of the no-holds-barred world of San Francisco politics in which she matured than a mirror of the calm, elegant candidate voters see on their television screens.

Feinstein says she likes nothing better than getting together a group of advisers, preferably strong-minded ones, and hammering out a solution to the crisis at hand.

“Asking questions and getting a response--and arguing the response--is the way I think best,” Feinstein said in an interview.

“You can get rid of doubts. You can take thoughts, expose them to the light of scrutiny, have people feel free to come back at you. There’s no way, no matter how much you think you know about something, that you can know all of the angles.”

But she alone decides. “Decision-making is basically lonely,” she said. “You make the decision--because you’ve got to stand by the decision.”

Not everyone views that as an advantage. John Barbagelata, a conservative Republican and a foe of Feinstein since 1969 when they both successfully ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, criticizes her as unwilling to entertain options other than the one that would benefit her.

“She’s very headstrong. She runs the show. I don’t think anyone can tell her anything,” said Barbagelata, who left office in 1978. He recalled asking Feinstein to put on the ballot a multimillion-dollar sewer system improvement that she supported. Feinstein, he said, refused.

“She will not go to the voters with issues,” he said, attributing that decision to a reluctance to listen to others.

The deliberateness that Feinstein and her allies say is at the core of her decision-making is shared by her opponent Wilson. In both cases, it may be borne of their municipal beginnings: Each governed a city with the political imperatives of coalition and consensus.

Feinstein, as San Francisco mayor and as candidate for governor, relies on a core of regular advisers that is supplemented issue by issue with experts whose relationship with her can go back decades or weeks. Apart from family members, there is no stereotyping Feinstein’s advisers. They are young and old, male and female and they represent different races.

Among the regular advisers, there are essentially two overlapping spheres of influence--one made up of loyal holdovers from her decade at the helm of San Francisco, the other of political professionals assembled for this campaign.

The symbol of San Francisco’s influence is Hadley Roff, Feinstein’s campaign chief of staff, who met the candidate at Stanford University more than three decades ago. Their political alliance began when Feinstein, in mid-1979, asked Roff to become one of two deputy mayors.

Her other deputy mayor, Rudy Nothenberg, also remains a Feinstein adviser. Now San Francisco’s chief administrative officer, Nothenberg advises primarily on fiscal issues. Among others from San Francisco is Feinstein’s adviser on her pet issue of growth management, Michael McGill, who served briefly in her Administration and has informally worked with Feinstein for years.

Longtime family friend Henry Berman, the campaign’s treasurer, and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) routinely advise Feinstein, as does Rev. Cecil Williams, who runs Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco’s Tenderloin area. Nancy Pelosi, formerly Feinstein’s neighbor and currently the Democratic congresswoman from San Francisco, is another informal adviser.

In the heat of the campaign, Feinstein relies strongly on the relatively new group assembled for the race--Bill Carrick, the campaign director; his partner and media consultant, Hank Morris; press secretary Dee Dee Myers; political director Percy Pinkney and issues director Vicky Rideout.

For her supplemental core of advisers, Feinstein has borrowed liberally from the ranks of Democratic legislative experts. Steve Thompson, head of the Assembly Office of Research and a close ally of Speaker Brown, was Feinstein’s chief issues adviser during the primary campaign.

Rick Battson, an aide to Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg (D-Sacramento), helps on water policy, and Lucien Wulsin, an aide to Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) advises on health issues. Barry Groveman, a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney and a co-author of Proposition 65, the 1986 anti-toxics initiative, is Feinstein’s prime environmental adviser.

Her advisers do not speak with one voice. Williams and Pelosi, for example, disagree with Feinstein on the major issue of capital punishment, which she favors and they oppose. Aides suggest that trustworthiness, rather than ideological point of view, is most important to Feinstein.

“She disdains sycophants,” said Roff, her chief of staff, who said she prefers “people who know their own mind.”

Feinstein says she has never had a formalized “kitchen cabinet,” a group of ambitious peers such as accompanied a former California governor, Ronald Reagan, from Sacramento to Washington.

“It just never worked for me,” she said.

Campaign director Carrick, for one, attributes the absence of such a group to Feinstein’s gender. When she initially ran for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Feinstein was swimming against the prevailing political tide, Carrick said. Influential politicians tried to talk her out of her plans on the grounds that there already was a woman on the board. She ran anyway and won more votes than any other candidate. Later, she ran unsuccessfully for mayor before assuming the office after the shooting death of Mayor George Moscone.

“(Her) whole history is a different sort of history than people who plot their political career by the hour,” Carrick said.

The closest Feinstein comes to having a kitchen cabinet is the support she receives from her family. Her father and uncle, Leon and Morrie Goldman, were her first political influences. Her husband, Richard C. Blum, now serves as what Feinstein calls a “general” in the expensive effort to get her elected.

Wilson’s campaign, and Van de Kamp’s before it, have tried to portray Blum as a mysterious marionette who controls Feinstein’s views and moves. Blum and other advisers say that is not the case.

“She and I are sort of like any other couple,” said Blum, who married Feinstein in 1980. “I give her my advice and sometimes she listens and sometimes she doesn’t. It’s sort of a normal, healthy marriage. We’re like other human beings. We don’t see eye to eye.”

Blum says, and others agree, that he and Feinstein think alike on most issues. In their differences--which he will not discuss openly--Blum is said to lean toward more progressive positions than Feinstein naturally takes.

Other Feinstein advisers believe that Blum has been influential in bringing in experts to help Feinstein, among them a host of volunteer financial advisers who helped the city cope with the drastic effects of Proposition 13.

No one suggests that Blum carries the day with any regularity.

“Dick Blum gives his opinion, but he does not by any means win the battle all the time,” said Williams, a friend of the couple as well as an adviser. “I’ve heard him say, ‘That’s all I can say. Dianne’s made up her mind.’ He knows and all of us know that when she makes up her mind, she’s determined.”

The other family member of influence is Feinstein’s only child, Katherine, 33, a labor lawyer whose presence on the campaign trail is more regular than Blum’s. Aides say she has not only provided a source of companionship during campaign trips but also has been instrumental in crafting Feinstein’s criminal-justice platform.

Family or outsider, all Feinstein advisers say they are confronted regularly by her immense appetite for details. In an interview, Feinstein spoke with pride about Monday meetings she held with department heads while mayor of San Francisco. There, she said, she could quiz the police chief at length about crime statistics, down to particular types of crimes in particular neighborhoods, and press for detailed solutions.

The emphasis on details is notable because Feinstein, particularly during the primary, was criticized for being vague. Aides lay the blame on a related Feinstein attribute--a reluctance to address issues unless she feels she has a command of the particulars. In the primary, when she was attacking subjects that she had not mastered as the mayor of a contained, urban city, Feinstein was on the defensive, advisers say.

“Dianne doesn’t like to wing anything,” said her husband, Blum. “She would just rather not talk about a subject if she’s not prepared for it. . . . There were a bunch of issues eight or nine months ago--where she hadn’t formed her own policy--that a mayor doesn’t work on.”

In a political season, candidates daily are called to answer on specific policies. Feinstein’s reluctance to take a position was most obvious before Earth Day last April. Although she ultimately did come out in favor of “Big Green,” Feinstein took political hits almost daily during the period she was studying the matter.

That and other incidents during the primary helped foster an image of Feinstein as either unwilling to commit herself or unfamiliar with issues--troublesome political negatives that her own campaign director acknowledges were rooted in Feinstein’s approach.

“She wanted her questions answered about her concerns about what it would do or what it wouldn’t do, whether it was realistic, whether it was pragmatic,” said Carrick. “She asked a lot of questions about its impact on the agricultural industry--whereas the easy political thing to do would have been to write that off and move on.”

“Deliberateness and campaigns don’t generally have a lot of compatibility, “ Carrick added. “So, sure, it’s a frustration, and it gets us into trouble from time to time.”

Aides say that once Feinstein is comfortable with details of a particular issue, her confidence rises and she can command an almost instant recall.

McGill, an aide to Feinstein while she was mayor, described a virtual transformation he said took place when Feinstein approached a problem in San Francisco. Regularly, he said, she would alert staff members to an event that was about three weeks away and would give them an initial reading of her thinking. The staff would set to work fleshing out ideas.

“The first week, she’d be a little snappish and say, ‘I can’t spend much time on that’ (because of more pressing business),” said McGill, now Feinstein’s adviser on growth issues.

“The second week, she had already absorbed things we thought she was not listening to. As the event approached, she would start absorbing with amazing speed.

“At the end of three weeks, she would stand there and give a recitation like she had been an expert on the issue for a year.”

During the campaign, Feinstein reads voraciously from issue books compiled by her staff. In the books are memos by the candidate and her advisers that show her evolving thoughts and her staff’s assessment of the options.

Tellingly, during an interview about her advisers, Feinstein took pains to praise two of them, though neither for intellectual prowess nor political savvy. One was praised for an ability to write concise and understandable memos, the other for perfecting a style of memo-writing that Feinstein found particularly appealing.

Feinstein and her advisers tried to build in the sort of deliberate preparation that does not come naturally in a campaign. McGill’s efforts on growth management, for example, began with a call from Feinstein last fall. The first draft of a plan was delivered in January, with successive drafts crafted in the following months. The plan has yet to be publicly announced, but Feinstein has written letters to environmental leaders offering some details.

About the same time she sought out McGill, Feinstein also asked Los Angeles attorney Barry Groveman to handle environmental issues. After a few meetings, he forwarded an outline, parts of which have been released publicly in various forums. Behind the scenes, Feinstein has also courted environmentalists in private get-acquainted sessions.

Aides and Feinstein say that not all of Feinstein’s grasp of issues comes from memos. In San Francisco, she commonly trekked into the city streets to get a handle on visible problems, from drug use to potholes.

Williams, who has accompanied Feinstein on countless visits to the poor and homeless in San Francisco, predicts that she will lean on aides to provide the same hands-on experience across the state if she is elected governor.

“Even with the experts (to advise her), she’s still going to put her feet on the street,” he said.

FEINSTEIN’S TOP AIDES Dianne Feinstein’s campaign team is reflective of the larger group of advisers she depends on: They are a mix of newcomers and longtime loyalists, men and women, Anglos and minorities. Of the senior staff, one has known Feinstein since their days together at Stanford University more than 30 years ago; another jumped aboard the campaign just this summer. Here are the senior staff members:

BILL CARRICK, 40, an Aiken, S.C., native whose accent betrays his roots, is the director of the Democratic effort, having taken over with his partner Hank Morris after Feinstein’s original campaign manager, Clint Reilly, quit in a well-publicized huff. Carrick is well-versed in Democratic heavyweights--he formerly served as political director for Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He also was national campaign director of Rep. Richard A. Gephardt’s unsuccessful run for the presidency in 1988.

HANK MORRIS, 37, carries the title of media strategist and consultant, and as such has been credited with the single defining item of Feinstein’s campaign thus far, the gripping television commercial that vaulted her past Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp to victory in the primary. Morris joined the campaign with Carrick in November, 1989, and still operates largely out of his New York office. He previously has worked for former governors Hugh Carey of New York and John D. (Jay) Rockefeller IV of West Virginia.

HADLEY ROFF, 58, comes as close as anyone outside of Feinstein’s family to being a longtime confidante of the former San Francisco mayor. They met at Stanford University, and Roff was working at City Hall when Feinstein first gained a seat on the Board of Supervisors. In July, 1979, seven months after she became mayor, Feinstein picked Roff as one of two deputy mayors, a position he continued to hold after she left office in 1988. He began working for Feinstein again in February, 1989, when her candidacy for governor had been largely dismissed. He serves as chief of staff, working in the campaign’s San Francisco headquarters.

DEE DEE MYERS, 29, is a holdover from the original Feinstein campaign organization. She joined as press secretary in May, 1989, before original campaign director Reilly quit. At Feinstein’s side at almost every appearance she makes, and Feinstein’s most constant defender to reporters, Myers is somewhat of a campaign junkie. She served as press secretary for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and worked on his 1986 gubernatorial campaign. She also worked as California press secretary for 1988 Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis and in Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential race.

DUANE GARRETT, 43, is a San Francisco lawyer who signed up along with Roff in February, 1989, and serves as the campaign chairman, the titular head. Leaving most of the strategic workings to Carrick and Morris, Garrett most recently has concentrated on the most pressing concern of the Feinstein campaign, raising enough money to combat Sen. Pete Wilson. Garrett served in the same role for Bradley’s 1982 run for governor. In 1984, he was the national co-chairman of the Democratic presidential effort of former Vice President Mondale, and held a similar post four years later for former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt.

JOHN PLAXCO, 39, is concentrating this political season on raising the mother’s milk of campaigns--money. The Louisiana native works with Garrett and Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, in raising the millions of dollars she will need to have a chance against the well-financed Wilson effort. Plaxco, rarely present at public events, has been for a year the campaign’s state finance director, a job he held in the campaign of state Controller Gray Davis. In the last election cycle, that of 1988, Plaxco was the California campaign manager for the presidential bid of Illinois Sen. Paul Simon.

VICKY RIDEOUT, 33, has accomplished the move that bystanders can find mystifying and that political veterans learn to expect. Three months ago, she was deputy campaign manager for Democratic candidate Van de Kamp, issuing blistering reports on alleged failings of Feinstein. With his campaign over in June, she came aboard the Feinstein effort the next month as issues director. She has earned praise from the candidate and other advisers for concise and understandable memorandums on various issues debated during the campaign. Rideout previously served as senior domestic political adviser for the 1988 Dukakis campaign.

PERCY PINKNEY, 48, began working for Feinstein last January as political director, a job in which he links Feinstein with various political entities across the state. Previously, he did the same job for Los Angeles City Councilman Robert Farrell in his bid for the Assembly, and for Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. when he ran for governor. Pinkney rides somewhat of a thin line these days: Feinstein has spent much time disdaining organized political groups, yet finds herself now needing any organized help she can get.