Wilson Offers Olive Branch : New Governor Pledges to Work With Democrats

Republican Pete Wilson was sworn in today as California’s 36th governor, promising to “make government work” again by ending the years of partisan stalemate between the statehouse and the Legislature.

In his inaugural address, Wilson, who faces a budget deficit of nearly $6 billion, offered an olive branch to Democrats, promising to work for bipartisan solutions and stressing education, health and environmental programs supported by most Democrats.

“Together, let’s bring a new government wise enough to invest in children as well as infrastructure, determined to shift from the remedial to the preventive, from income maintenance to enrichment of individual potential,” Wilson said in his 15-minute speech.

Addressing the Democrats who have controlled the California Legislature for the last 20 years, Wilson stressed what he described as “core values (that) unite us” and cited the need for bipartisan cooperation.

“For state government to function at all, it must be credible. The people of California have entrusted us to conduct their government through the decade of the 1990s,” he said. “If we are not to destroy the credibility of state government, we must restore it, and to do that we must make government work.

“If we share that responsibility wisely and in good faith, if we do the people’s business and make state government work for them, we will find there is ample credit to share as well. For my part, I’m eager to embrace old friends and new ideas to achieve the future that California deserves,” Wilson said.

Before taking over the reins from Republican George Deukmejian, Wilson resigned the U.S. Senate seat he has held for the last eight years. He then took the governor’s oath of office in an inaugural ceremony that was hastily moved from the Capitol steps to the crowded Capitol rotunda as the first substantial rainstorm in several weeks swept across the drought-plagued Sacramento Valley.

Inaugural guests included White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, who read a letter from President Bush congratulating Wilson. Vice President Dan Quayle, Wilson’s former seatmate in the Senate, was to attend Wilson’s inaugural ball tonight.

In his speech, Wilson also acknowledged the severe budget crisis that his new Administration faces, with a deficit estimated at $6 billion or more in a $55-billion annual budget. He didn’t discuss specific fiscal proposals, which are expected Wednesday and Thursday in his first address to the Legislature and in his budget bill.

“With revenues declining, how can new programs be undertaken when existing programs seem inescapably threatened by the budget crisis?” he asked, specifically citing prenatal care for poor women, dropout prevention programs in schools and drug education programs.

“Prevention is far better than any cure. Those with vested interests in the status quo will not dispute this. They will simply ask, ‘But surely you don’t propose new preventive programs at the expense of established remedial programs?’ That is exactly what we must propose. . . . We must find a way to at least begin to move to a mode of anticipation and prevention,” he said.