CAPITOL JOURNAL : Wilson Wraps Self in Reagan Cloak on Taxes

It is midnight in the Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room and Gov. Pete Wilson is seated in a floodlight of television cameras, looking relieved as he signs a $55.7-billion budget and a $1.7-billion income tax increase.

The income tax hike--mostly on the wealthy, but also on middle-class renters--is piled on top of nearly $6 billion in other tax increases he has approved: on sales, cars, liquor, tuition, even candy and bottled water.

And, by every indication, many fellow Republicans up and down the state are boiling mad. True, Wilson never took the “no tax” pledge when he ran for governor last year. But who expected him to raise taxes by this much, especially in a recession? And he did forswear the income tax.

So the symbolism of the setting is significant. Wilson could have chosen any number of places to sign the tax hike Tuesday night. But he simply walked into the Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room outside his private office. He has been wrapping himself in the cloak of Ronald Reagan for days now--trying to explain to unhappy conservatives that if it was OK for “Mr. True Believer” to raise taxes by a record amount when he first became governor, it should be acceptable for him, too.

“This is hardly the first time a conservative Republican governor has had to raise taxes to close an inherited budget deficit,” Wilson has been telling audiences. “I vividly remember another when I first came to the Assembly in 1967. Then-Gov. Reagan signed a tax increase that was proportionately twice as large as the increase we face.”

But not everybody is getting the message.

In the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento, staunch conservative Barbara Alby is running against Wilson’s handpicked Assembly candidate, longtime government official B.T. Collins, and calling it a referendum on the governor. She is especially targeting Wilson’s tax increases. Many see this contest as another in a series of battles for the heart and soul of the California GOP, pitting the no-tax, socially conservative ideologues against what the governor’s advisers like to call “Wilson Republicanism.”

Meanwhile, letters and telephone calls have been coming into the governor’s office protesting the tax hikes.

“It’s been difficult to convey the extent of this budget crisis,” concedes Wilson’s press secretary Bill Livingstone, referring to the state’s $14.3-billion deficit. “You have people saying ‘no new taxes.’ They’re living in a make-believe world. To point out that he’s still a fiscal conservative, Wilson’s talking about Reagan. Both governors were forced into comparable circumstances.”

This is supposed to be the year, say the experts, that Wilson “defines” himself in the public’s mind. So far, unlike his predecessors, he seems to defy definition. There is a little bit of all recent governors in Wilson.

The new governor, in some ways, has attempted to emulate Democratic Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown--the “builder” Wilson called him in his Inaugural speech. “Pat Brown was a doer. Wilson’s a doer,” says Livingstone.

On many occasions, Wilson has resembled Brown’s son, Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., the master of the media event, the “photo op.” Before Wilson confined himself to the Capitol for budget negotiations starting in April, he was traveling to media events several times a week--appearing at schools, reservoirs, drug rehabilitation clinics--attempting to promote his programs through the television camera. And he expects soon to be on the road again.

Wilson now is calling himself a “compassionate conservative”--never a moderate. He described a “compassionate conservative” on Thursday at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Hoover Institute in Palo Alto. It is a person who, for example, spends tax dollars to help poor children through Head Start and steers their older sisters into family planning and away from crack.

“We must reject the flawed straw-man characterization of conservatives by liberals as uncaring,” he said. “We need an honest characterization that fairly and accurately portrays our approach of compassionate, creative conservatism. . . . It’s time to move on to a new debate over how to energize our existing institutions, public and private.”

In other words, both government and the private sector have a significant role to play in people’s lives. Wilson’s advisers think that message will sell not only in California but nationally as the GOP Establishment gradually begins eyeing potential presidential candidates for 1996.

And comparing himself to Reagan can’t hurt among conservatives.