Sen. Davis Won’t Seek Reelection : Politics: He has been a maverick, angering some fellow Republicans with stands on environment and gay rights.

State Sen. Ed Davis, a maverick Republican who mixed support for environmental causes and gay rights with a staunchly conservative background as Los Angeles’ tough-talking police chief, said Tuesday he will not run for reelection this year.

Davis, 75, said he decided to end his 12-year Senate career after he and his wife “concluded that I have served long enough.” He said he plans to spend more time with his family and improve his golf game.

Davis announced his retirement in typically iconoclastic style, speaking casually with reporters in his Sacramento office as he munched on apple slices and nuts.

He denied that his decision was related to surgery he underwent last October to remove part of a cancerous lung, although he said the operation made him realize that his job was “oppressive” in using up time he could have spent with relatives.

“A man is entitled to see his friends and relatives and to play 18 holes of golf,” he said. “I haven’t played 18 holes of golf since I got here.”

Davis’ decision prompted veteran Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) to announce that she will seek his seat, defusing a possible primary election confrontation with Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Northridge), a close ally and friend. Wright and Boland were placed in the same Assembly district in new maps for California congressional and legislative districts approved Monday by the state Supreme Court.

The move also eased reelection anxieties for fellow Republican Sen. Don Rogers of Bakersfield, who is running in a new district that Davis had considered before deciding to retire.

Davis’ announcement capped a political career in which he surprised and even angered fellow conservative Republicans by sometimes voting against them on environmental and other social issues.

With his mane of carefully groomed white hair and avuncular manner, Davis was a popular figure among his Senate colleagues, who savored his propensity for colorful quips and quotations from Thomas Paine, Churchill and other historical figures during debates.

Davis was elected to the Senate in 1980, largely on the strength of his reputation as Los Angeles’ blunt-spoken, hard-line police chief. His district is a Republican stronghold of bedroom suburbs stretching from Northridge in northwestern Los Angeles County to Lompoc in Santa Barbara County.

In his 8 1/2 years as chief in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, Davis gained fame for his controversial law-and-order comments, including his notorious suggestion that aircraft hijackers be tried and hanged at airports on mobile gallows.

But last year, after the videotaped beating of motorist Rodney G. King by LAPD officers, Davis became a high-profile critic of the department, calling the beating “despicable” and urging his successor, Chief Daryl F. Gates, to resign.

Davis also said he backed a recommendation by the Christopher Commission--convened to review department practices and policies after the King beating--that city police chiefs be limited to two five-year terms. Davis said chiefs generally serve so long that they sometimes come to believe they are “ordained by God.”

Despite his generally conservative political philosophy, Davis displayed a distinctly independent streak in his Sacramento voting.

In recent years, for instance, he has consistently topped other Republican senators in vote rankings compiled by the California League of Conservation Voters, often joining liberal Democrats to help pass pro-environment laws.

Among other bills, he carried one giving the state Coastal Commission more teeth to deal with illegal construction, and has pushed hard for creation of a new state park, Santa Clarita Woodlands, in his district.

“The loss of Ed Davis represents the loss of a Republican who viewed the environment in a nonpartisan way and always fought hard for environmental legislation, regardless of the party line,” said the League’s spokeswoman, Rachel Cooke.

In 1984, Davis angered many conservatives by voting for AB1, which would have prohibited job discrimination against homosexuals had it not been vetoed by then-Gov. George Deukmejian.

After he was attacked last year by a conservative Northern California assemblyman who labeled him the “GOP’s leading crusader for homosexual rights,” Davis defended his vote on AB1, saying it was a simple matter of equal rights for minorities.

Davis in 1989 also softened his longstanding opposition to abortion, saying he favored state funding for abortions for poor women and that it was hypocritical for Medi-Cal to pay for all other medical procedures except that one.

“The reputation of Ed Davis as police chief was very different from the Ed Davis we saw as a state senator,” said Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), a longtime Davis colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“As police chief he was as hard-line and right-wing as you can get, at least that was the propaganda about him. But as senator, he was willing to listen to different ideas and was quite tolerant of differences,” said Lockyer.

In his comments to reporters Tuesday, Davis said that his image as “Crazy Ed” when he served as police chief was a fiction invented by the news media.

Davis scoffed at the notion that he could have been beaten if he had chosen to run for reelection.

Davis called Rogers, a potential opponent, a “predatory creature coming into my home base,” a reference to the overlapping district in which both could have run.

He said Wright should have “kept her mouth shut” four years ago when she spoke of running against him.

Davis ran two unsuccessful campaigns for statewide office, failing to win the GOP nomination for governor in 1978 and the 1986 nomination for U.S. Senate.

In the Senate race, Davis made headlines nationwide by accusing GOP Rep. Bobbi Fiedler, who was running against him, of offering him $100,000 to get out of the campaign. Fiedler and her campaign manager were indicted for attempted bribery, although a judge dismissed the charges.

But the publicity badly damaged the campaigns of both Fiedler and Davis, who finished the primary fourth and fifth respectively.

Davis said he is building a home overlooking the ocean in Morro Bay and he may retire there.

“I’ve seen and done everything I could in this job,” he said. “It’s time for someone else to come in and do the job.”