Davis Seeks to Capitalize on Past Efforts for Causes : Politics: Controller has been at the forefront on several issues. But critics call his actions opportunism.

State Controller Gray Davis is the answer to a political trivia question: Which California officeholder tallied the largest number of votes anywhere in America in the November, 1990, elections?

Davis took that honor with 4.1 million votes.

The Democratic officeholder, one of two leading Democrats in the primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican John Seymour, is proud of that fact. And he will happily share it with you, along with a host of other accomplishments.

The controller, regarded by many as one of the most opportunistic and ambitious officeholders in California, is anything but a shrinking violet.

In recent years, Davis has turned the controller’s office into what one lobbyist called “a hotbed of environmentalism” by fighting offshore oil drilling and working out deals in which large corporations turned over environmentally sensitive land to the state in return for settlement of tax and financial tax disputes.

Davis has also carried on battles with two Republican governors over budget issues, helped women fight their way into abortion clinics, and led the campaign in California to find missing and kidnaped children by putting their photographs on milk cartons and grocery bags.

Now, as he mounts an underdog campaign in the Democratic primary against his better-known opponent, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, Davis hopes to show that what some call opportunism may translate into major political assets for him.

His work on behalf of one cause or another has created a huge bank of political capital that Davis is drawing on in the Senate race.

In the past, Davis has used television ads citing his efforts on behalf of missing children and battles against corporations on behalf of the environment to promote an image as a fighter, and he is expected to do that again.

Perhaps more important, Davis is being helped in his campaign by a group of loyal supporters who have been attracted to him over the years because of his work on various causes. He appeared at his kickoff news conference with Dorothy Green, president of Heal the Bay, and Lucie Bava, coordinator of the volunteer political action group Women For:, both who are strongly supporting him because of his environmental and feminist credentials.

One of his campaign managers is David Mixner, a Los Angeles political activist who has been active in gay and feminist politics. “He has been there so many times for us, I figured I should be there for him,” Mixner said.

The opportunism issue is one that has chased Davis throughout his career. After catching the political bug working for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Davis, at 31, ran for state treasurer. He lost decisively, but got a reputation as someone with a big hunger for higher office.

Davis does not deny his fondness for the spotlight. “You don’t run for state office without some ambition or a healthy ego,” he said during a recent interview.

Hollywood handsome, with perfectly groomed hair and the country club grace that one would expect from an ex-Stanford University varsity golfer, Davis first thrust himself onto a prominent public platform when, as chief of staff to ex-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., he took on the added chore of being Brown’s chief spokesman, usurping some duties held by the governor’s press secretary.

Often called “Gov. Davis” or the surrogate governor, his stock in trade during those years was calling up reporters with carefully measured statements, then calling them back two, three, even four times, refining the comments, going over nuances, even providing for the placement of commas and other punctuation.

He once confided to an interviewer that he had trained himself to think in 30-second intervals to better accommodate the news media.

Reminded of his style in those days, Davis laughed. “Hasn’t the statute of limitations run out on that? When I was 31, I thought I knew everything. Now I am 49 and I realize how much I don’t know,” he said.

Criticism that he is overly ambitious angers Davis. Pointing to his opponent in the Democratic primary, he said: “Dianne Feinstein has spent more than three times the money running for office and has run for higher office five times, compared to four times for me. It’s very unfair. We should be judged on our records.”

Besides, Davis said, he does not think that the public cares.

“The public already assumes that all politicians are blowhards, that they are self-serving and ambitious. What they want to know is whether you have done something for them. They know I have delivered,” he said.

After losing his bid for treasurer, he worked for Brown until 1981. He was elected to the state Assembly in 1982, from a district that included Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles, and almost immediately fanned speculation that he was office-shopping by aggressively raising money.

In 1986, when former Controller Ken Cory unexpectedly decided that he would not seek reelection, Davis was ready to run, with a campaign fund of $1 million that grew to $5 million. Later, an investigation by the attorney general’s office determined that aides in Davis’ Assembly office had improperly helped raise money for his controller’s campaign.

But then-Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp decided that he did not have enough proof that Davis knew what was going on, and so the dispute was settled when the controller agreed to reimburse the state $28,000.

After one term as controller, Davis formed an exploratory committee to consider a campaign for governor. He ran for reelection instead. Now, two years later, he would like to follow two former state controllers--Thomas Kuchel and an incumbent, retiring Sen. Alan Cranston--into the U.S. Senate.

Along the way, Davis has shown a talent for latching on to high-visibility issues.

As an assemblyman, Davis sponsored legislation that established standards for the removal of asbestos from public schools and also led the effort in California to put the photos of missing children on such things as milk cartons, grocery bags and billboards.

In the controller’s office, Davis helped negotiate land swaps in which the state gave up financial claims against the Bank of America, Union Oil of California and the Howard Hughes estate in exchange for an estimated $100 million worth of wetlands, old-growth forests and other environmentally sensitive acreage.

Davis also successfully battled two Republican governors in the courts over school spending and other budget issues. He skirmished with George Deukmejian over the former governor’s effort to reduce financial aid to public schools. More recently, he helped fight efforts by Gov. Pete Wilson to block emergency funding for the financially troubled Richmond School District and also went to court with public employee unions to block Wilson’s efforts to cut the pay and benefits of rank-and-file state employees.

Born Joseph Graham Davis III in New York City in 1942, Davis moved to California with his family when he was 11. After Stanford, he got a law degree from Columbia University Law School. From there, he went into the Army and served two years in Vietnam, leaving with the rank of captain and a Bronze Star. After the Army, Davis moved to Los Angeles, where he practiced law until catching the political bug while working for Bradley.

While stationed in Vietnam, Davis served in an administrative role with the signal corps. A television ad during his last campaign portrayed Davis in fatigues, holding a rifle, against a soundtrack suggesting combat. Davis defends the ad, saying he was frequently exposed to enemy fire and dangerous situations because his job required him to fly from one base to another by helicopter, putting him in the air five or six days a week.

Davis, born into an affluent family, said his politics began to be formed in Vietnam. “Before that, I had really bought into the American dream that anyone could reach their potential if they simply worked hard enough. When I was in Vietnam, a lot of life’s inequities became apparent to me. I didn’t see a lot of people there from Columbia Law School or Stanford. I saw a lot of blacks and browns and poor people,” he said.

Although decidedly liberal, Davis presents a difficult target to critics because he tends to choose his issues carefully--some say with an eye toward the polls--and avoids taking positions that can hurt him.

Many issues that Davis is identified with are not deeply divisive: finding kidnaped children, beefing up worker safety laws, buying up wetlands, and defending state employees against pay cuts. Critics say Davis takes a dive on other issues.

“One of the reasons for his not getting dragged down by anything is because often on controversial issues you don’t find him taking a position,” said State Board of Equalization member Matt Fong, the Republican who ran for controller against Davis in 1990 and was on the losing end of the incumbent’s highest-in-the-nation vote tally.

Fong said Davis is a reluctant combatant in board matters. Part of the controller’s job is sitting as a member of 61 boards, commissions and financing authorities, and so he sends surrogates, usually top aides, to attend meetings. Fong said Davis uses the system to avoid taking positions on difficult issues, such as setting values on the property of large utilities, an unglamorous part of the State Board of Equalization job that satisfies very few.

“I never see Gray. It’s really his two lieutenants who are usually here,” Fong said. “Gray is very strategic. I think his thinking is, ‘OK, guys, don’t get me in trouble. Let me take the shots where I want to and I want you to keep me out of hot water.’ ”

Yet the controller, while he may pick his shots, does not mind controversy.

Davis has participated in seven so-called “defenses” of abortion clinics, going to the medical facilities to lend assistance to women who must fight their way through anti-abortion demonstrators. He was the only state constitutional officer and one of only a few elected officials who supported the Ralph Nader-backed Proposition 103, the automobile insurance industry rate rollback initiative. He contributed more than $900,000 to the campaign to pass Measure O in Los Angeles, the ballot proposition aimed at stopping oil exploration in the Pacific Palisades oil field.

While many officeholders these days support Proposition 103, Harvey Rosenfield of Voter Revolt, sponsor of the measure, said they were in short supply when Davis stepped up to endorse the measure. “To his credit, he was there at the start,” Rosenfield said.

As for his activity on behalf of clinics performing abortions, Davis operated on the front lines of a highly emotional battle. The controller’s wife, Sharon, a flight attendant with USAir, found the demonstrations “very unpleasant.”

“They literally scream in your face: ‘You will never be elected again!’ They say: ‘We have your picture. We will circulate it. We will tell everyone we know never to vote for you,’ ” she said.

When Deukmejian was governor, Davis repeatedly contradicted Deukmejian’s contention that the state budget was operating in the black. Davis insisted that there was a deficit. The controller was proved right, but Deukmejian, with the support of the Legislature, sponsored a bill that changed the state’s method of accounting so that the state’s books looked better on paper.

“Now when it rains I have to say it’s a sunny day,” Davis quipped.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach), who frequently knocked heads with Davis when both served in the Assembly and Davis was chairman of the Housing and Community Development Committee, contends that the Democrat has no deeply held philosophy.

“He is an opportunist. He is really not a dyed-in-the-wool liberal Democrat. His party consists of Gray Davis,” Ferguson said. “One thing about Gray, he is very bright.”

Davis backed Big Green, the 1990 environmental initiative that was defeated after strong opposition from business groups. He supported the initiative reinstating Cal/OSHA, the state worker safety agency that Deukmejian tried to eliminate. And Davis has backed a host of tough air pollution laws.

Jerry Meral, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, an aggressive environmental lobbying group, said Davis has done an outstanding job on environmental issues.

“When he was with the Assembly, his office was the only office that would regularly call us before a floor vote on any environmental bill that they didn’t know our position on,” Meral said.

One of the key themes of Davis’ campaign for the Senate is his contention that a strong business climate and a clean environment can thrive together.

He believes that government should step in and provide financial incentives to revive the manufacturing industry in Southern California.

To that end, he has proposed a modest series of tax credits and incentives that would reward California manufacturers and other employers who expand business here. He believes that government, perhaps through its pension funds, should invest or provide grants to California-based entrepreneurs trying to put together prototypes of electric cars or ultramodern transit systems, arguing that cutbacks in the aerospace industry have created a large pool of highly skilled workers that can be tapped to build them.

At times, Davis sounds almost like his former mentor, Jerry Brown, when he tells voters that “a growing economy is nothing more than your opportunity to be what you want to be. The economy is just an abstraction to characterize our collective abilities to pursue whatever interests us.”

Davis calls unemployment a “horrific event” in anyone’s life, and said he is “very concerned with adding to the economic difficulties of people caught up in the recession.” He said that includes opposition to passing more tax increases.

“The state’s greatest strength is the wealth that lies between our ears. We are very innovative, very creative. Look at our computer software industry, the high-tech firms in the Silicon Valley, biotech research. But we have to learn how to translate that innovation into manufacturing,” Davis said.

Profile: Gray Davis

Gray Davis is a seeking the Democratic nomination for a two-year term in the U.S. Senate from California. The seat is now held by Sen. John Seymour. Born: Dec. 26, 1942, New York City.

Hometown: Los Angeles.

Education: Stanford University, 1964; Columbia University Law School, 1967.

Career highlights: Served as a captain in U.S. Army, earning Bronze Star for service in Vietnam, 1969; chief of staff to ex-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., 1975-1981; member of the state Assembly 1983-1986; state controller, 1987-present.

Family: Wife, Sharon Ryer Davis.

Quote: “Economics is not some abstraction. It’s your child’s opportunity to do what you do. When I grew up that was a given, that was your birthright. Now that is very much in question. . . . My primary mission is to tell Washington in no uncertain terms that people are entitled to a good-paying job.”