Wilson’s Press Secretary Resigns, Will Join NASA

Bill Livingstone, Gov. Pete Wilson’s press secretary, has quit the governor’s staff to become communications director for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Wilson announced Friday.

Livingstone, 40, has been Wilson’s press secretary since the Republican governor took office in January, 1991.

His departure leaves Wilson without either of the men who helped shape his message and image in his years in the U.S. Senate and during his 1990 campaign for governor. Otto Bos, a longtime aide and friend of Wilson who was the Administration’s first director of communications, died last year of a heart attack.

In a statement released by his office, Wilson praised Livingstone for his “curiosity and his capacity for empathy” and said he was grateful for his “performance and friendship.”

Livingstone, a Montana native, worked for Wilson’s Senate office from 1985 until 1990 and agreed to join Wilson’s gubernatorial campaign and then serve as the governor’s spokesman even though he was reluctant to leave Washington, associates have said.

Although he generally enjoyed good rapport with Wilson, Livingstone’s most prominent moment as press secretary came after he and his deputies embarrassed Wilson by saying that three people the governor described in detail during his State of the State speech did not exist but were fictional “composites” drawn from all those Wilson had met as he traveled California.

Wilson later contradicted Livingstone, identified the three people he said he was referring to, and brought them to the Capitol for lunch and a rare Sunday news conference to prove that they were real. Wilson had used the three --a businessman, a farm worker and a carpenter--to illustrate the suffering he had witnessed among Californians reeling from the recession.

Wilson blamed the incident on bad communications between him and his press staff and said he planned to spend more “quality time” with Livingstone and the others.

Although the January incident fueled speculation at the Capitol that Livingstone soon would leave the Administration, he had been looking for another opportunity to return to Washington even before the flap. At NASA, Livingstone will work as a special assistant to the administrator and supervise a staff of 50 people, said Franz Wisner, Wilson’s assistant press secretary.

Director of communications Dan Schnur said Wilson has not chosen a successor for Livingstone but said the post will be filled “in the fairly near future.”