Ed Davis Calls It Quits: ‘I Have Served Long Enough’

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 former 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 improving 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 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 L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), 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 GOP Sen. Don Rogers of Bakersfield, who is running in a new district that Davis had also considered running in 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 the environment and other social issues. With his mane of carefully groomed white hair and avuncular manners, Davis has been a popular figure among his Senate colleagues, who have savored his propensity for colorful quips and quotations from Thomas Paine, Winston 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, based in Santa Clarita, is a GOP 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 suggestion that aircraft hijackers be tried and hanged at airports on mobile gallows.

But last year, following the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney G. King by white Los Angeles police officers, Davis became a high-profile LAPD critic, calling the beating “despicable” and urging his successor as chief, Daryl F. Gates, to resign.

Davis also said he backed a recommendation by the Christopher Commission--convened to review Police Department practices in the wake of the King beating--that the city police chief be limited to two five-year terms. He said that chiefs generally serve so long that they sometimes come to believe they are “ordained by God” to command the force.

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 others, he carried a bill giving the state Coastal Commission more teeth to deal with illegal construction, and has pushed for creation of a 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 league 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 and said he would vote for the bill again.

Davis also softened his longstanding opposition to abortion, saying that 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 colleague of Davis 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, Davis said that his image as “Crazy Ed” when he served as police chief was undeserved, calling it 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. The threatened challenge made him all the more determined to seek reelection in the 1988 race, he said.

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. senator.

In the Senate race, Davis made headlines nationwide by accusing then-Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge), 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 later dismissed the charges.

But the resulting publicity badly damaged the campaigns of both Fiedler and Davis, who finished the primary fourth and fifth, respectively. Bad blood from the affair later hardened into a feud that still casts shadows over GOP politics in the San Fernando Valley region.

Davis confirmed Tuesday that he is building a home overlooking the ocean in Morro Bay on the Pacific Coast north of Santa Barbara, and that 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.”

The World According to Ed Davis

* In 1969 on his appointment as police chief: “I wouldn’t stay longer than eight years. After eight years, I’d be creating a museum to Ed Davis.”

* After a rash of airline hijackings in 1972: “I would recommend we have a portable courtroom on a big bus and a portable gallows. We conduct a rapid trial for the hijacker out there and then we hang him with due process of law out there at the airport.”

* On accusations in 1972 that the Los Angeles Police Department’s hiring practices discriminated against women: “If we have women given full equality of opportunity with men, it necessarily follows they would have to meet all the same requirements men meet.”

* On the Legislature’s passage of a bill in 1975 reducing penalties for possession of marijuana: “It is obvious that Mickey Mouse and Goofy and all the other characters are alive and well in Disneyland North.”

* On the California criminal justice system in 1975: “At its best, the system grinds out a mediocre product and at its worst, the system is a farce.”

* In 1977 on the possibility of running for mayor of Los Angeles: “I do not want to be mayor of this city. That position has no power. I have more power than the mayor.”

* In 1977 on the few years he became a Democrat because his friend, former Mayor Sam Yorty, asked him to switch parties: “I was able to vote against some real monsters in the primary elections.”

* In 1979 on his claim that the women’s liberation movement was partly to blame for an increase in crime: “Crime is going to continue to go up, up and up because of the new morality which condones lying, stealing and killing.”

* Responding to criticism from the Religious Right on his vote in 1984 in favor of a bill that would have prohibited employment discrimination against homosexuals: “I’ve read all four Gospels over and over again. You know what Christ said about the subject of homosexuality? Zero.”

* In 1986 on the conversion to the GOP of former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver: “He talks a better Republican line than I do.” Davis later declared that he could vote for Cleaver over U. S. Sen. Alan Cranston, a Democrat.

* On Cranston during Davis’ 1986 campaign against him for the U.S. Senate: “I’m going to wring the old turkey’s neck.”

* On his secret taping of a representative of former Rep. Bobbi Fiedler offering him a $100,000 donation to drop out of a race for the U. S. Senate in 1986: “Some people had the arrogance to test my ethics and reputation to see whether I would succumb to the level of greed that perhaps some politicians are willing to fall into.”

* On speculation in 1987 that Simi Valley Assemblywoman Cathie Wright might challenge him for his Senate seat: “Cathie Wright is a surrogate for Bobbi Fiedler.”

* On the state Senate’s passage in 1988 of a bill he authored that would have weakened the power of Local Agency Formation Commissions, which decide boundaries of new cities: “The local citizens for most functions of government are trying to get a divorce from the county.”

* Endorsing Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden’s campaign to replace Mayor Tom Bradley in 1989: “Tom Bradley is a disaster for the city of Los Angeles as far as law enforcement goes, and he won’t change.”

* On Los Angeles County’s proposal to install a landfill in scenic Elsmere Canyon in 1990: “I don’t think there’s any logic to Los Angeles County’s thinking on dumps.”

* On the Rodney G. King beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991: “It was despicable, absolutely inexcusable.”