Ed Davis Does Not Go Gentle or Silent Into Retirement

As the old man in the green golf hat lumbers down the beach, marveling at the weather and chatting with fellow beachcombers, there is little indication that he once sent the Los Angeles Police Department into combat with the Black Panthers and Symbionese Liberation Army.

Or that he publicly warred with the religious right during his dozen years in the state Senate, representing a district that includes a large portion of Ventura County. Or that even now, at 76, he can smite longtime political foes with .38-caliber one-liners.

In baggy sweat-shirt and pants, bending over to pick up an occasional seashell, he looks for all the world like an ordinary retiree out for his morning constitutional. And if it weren’t for his face--that big, rubbery, registered-trademark face --Ed Davis might easily pass unrecognized.

But there is no anonymity for the man who once urged that skyjackers be hanged at airports on mobile gallows. Not even in this small, picturesque fishing town, west of San Luis Obispo, where Davis recently moved. It takes them a minute, the people who spot him in restaurants and grocery stores. But eventually, they remember.

“In my mind I’m seeking joyful obscurity . . . but I couldn’t go into a house of assignation without my wife finding out about it,” said Davis, laughing and adding that he is recognized by someone in Morro Bay at least once a day.

Davis officially retires this week as the Senate’s 19th District representative, ending a career in government service that began during the Depression with a part-time job as a Los Angeles city library page.

But he got a jump on his scheduled retirement. Since September, he and his English-born wife, Bobbie, have been living in a large, custom-built home here. Dwarfing most of its neighbors, the 3,200-square-foot house features art-covered walls, warming racks for bathroom towels and eye-popping views of towering Morro Rock.

Davis has wasted no time in settling into the rhythms and rituals of private life. Besides his daily beach strolls, he downs oyster shooters (raw oysters stuffed into shot glasses) regularly at a local restaurant. He watches Monday Night Football with his old crony Jack LaLanne, a fellow Morro Bay resident. And he enjoys quiet gourmet dinners with Bobbie, as Segovia pours from an expensive stereo system.

It is a comfortable, even elegant conclusion to a 57-year public career in which Davis evolved from arch-conservative poster boy to a maverick who confounded and angered right-wing backers by becoming the Senate’s leading GOP environmentalist and voting in favor of gay job rights.

He announced in January that he was leaving the Senate because he and Bobbie decided he had “served long enough.” He denied his departure had to do with surgery last year to remove part of a cancerous lung.

In a lengthy interview last week, Davis recounted his legislative triumphs and bemoaned his failures, renewed his attacks on the religious right and urged the GOP to recruit more ethnic minorities and gays or face political fossilization.

Though he lost two statewide elections--a 1978 run for governor and a 1986 bid for U. S. Senate--he made a name for himself as a verbal quick-draw artist, able to deflate opponents or sum up political follies with a single quip.

He described Evelle Younger, his opponent in the 1978 GOP gubernatorial primary, as “about as exciting as a mashed-potato sandwich.” GOP Assemblywoman Cathie Wright, a longtime antagonist, was labeled “the Peroxide Princess of Simi Valley.” The Legislature became “Disneyland North.”

How does he feel about being out of the bully pulpit of the Senate?

“I’m delighted,” he said.

With typical candor, Davis described his Senate stint as “the worst job I ever had.” He developed phlebitis as a result of sitting through lengthy committee hearings, he said, and was so busy he had to tell his children to go through his appointments secretary when they wanted to have dinner with him.

Nonetheless, with his courtly manners, stentorian voice and endless store of colorful anecdotes about his police days, the white-maned Davis was a popular figure among his Senate colleagues.

Davis was elected in 1980, largely on the strength of his law-and-order image, in a conservative district that stretches from the northwest San Fernando Valley to Oxnard, with 69% of its population in Ventura County. In his later Senate years, Davis became the most consistently pro-environment lawmaker in the upper house. In 1990, he startled fellow Republicans by announcing that he would no longer vote with them each year to deny state funding for abortions for poor women.

Although he took conservative positions on budget issues, even liberal Democrats were surprised at his willingness to listen to new ideas and tolerate different points of view.

“He went to Sacramento as a conservative and became a moderate,” said Sen. Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), a longtime colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who describes Davis as “a delightfully nice man.”

“He’s very traditional. He’s almost aristocratic. If he lived in England, he’d be called Sir Davis,” said Lockyer. “You can imagine Ed being a colonial administrator in India in 1840. But a very compassionate one who tried to do well.”

“He’s an extraordinarily bright man, and I’m not sure he’s always been given credit for that,” said Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, a longtime friend and political ally.

“He has the common sense of Will Rogers and he’s blessed with the ability to illustrate his points with very colorful anecdotes.”

To this day, Davis complains that he was never as much a right-winger as the media portrayed him. He refers to news reporters, with whom he has had a running battle, as “miserable bastards.” (Criminals he ranks slightly higher as plain “bastards.”)

Reporters, he said, cooked up the “Crazy Ed” stereotype based on his remark that skyjackers should be hanged at airports, an utterance he said has been distorted over the years.

Writers who subsequently mentioned the remark condensed it, he said, neglecting to say that in the original full quote, he also said skyjackers should get fair trials at airports and that U. S. Supreme Court justices should be flown in to make on-the-spot rulings on any appeals.

“After a while, it became a shorthand thing: ‘Hang ‘Em at the Airport Ed,’ ” he said.

Davis said the buzz-quote made many people believe he is an arch-conservative although he has been a moderate all along. But he acknowledged that the hard-liner image was a big plus at reelection time.

“People love me because I’m that son of a bitch that would hang people at airports. They looked at me as something I’m not,” he said.

Asked what he thought were his greatest Senate achievements, Davis pointed not to any legislation but to his efforts to remove former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird, who was defeated in a bitter 1986 reconfirmation battle.

He also cited his role as a principal author of Proposition 115, the so-called “Victim’s Bill of Rights,” which provided speedier trials and other pro-law enforcement reforms. The measure was passed overwhelmingly by California voters in 1990.

In addition, he mentioned his strong support for incorporation drives by residents of several Valley-area communities upset at what they considered rampant overdevelopment.

As his major failing, Davis cited his efforts to pass legislation limiting damages in civil lawsuits and restricting the conditions under which people may sue. He blamed trial lawyers and their generous campaign contributions to Democrats, who dominate the Legislature, for repeatedly torpedoing his bills.

Davis, who describes himself as a “pedigreed WASP,” reiterated his long-held view that the Republican Party is in danger of withering away unless it opens its doors to more blacks, Latinos, Asians and gays.

“When you see the cross-section of the Republican Party, you don’t see America,” he said. “If the Republican Party wants to be the majority party, it must be like a church. The church is supposed to open its doors to all sinners, not just Anglo-European people.”

He saved some of his sharpest vituperation for the religious right, saying it has done “almost irreparable harm” to the GOP.

He called prayer in school “sort of a dumb idea” and took potshots at Christian-right stars such as Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan, mocking the latter--a former GOP presidential candidate--as someone whose campaign “didn’t draw ants.”

He ridiculed the GOP’s championing of “family values,” saying it was nothing but religious intolerance aimed at gays and other minority groups.

“That was such a display of idiocy,” he said, referring to the party’s showcasing of the family-values theme at its Houston convention this summer. “They tried to frame it as family values, but all it was was a bunch of vindictive hatred . . . that didn’t sell to the American people,” he said.

“So poor Bush displayed in approving all that a lack of leadership ability. And he got what was coming to him,” said Davis.

Christian fundamentalists are badly hurting the party, he said, with their insistence that all members of the GOP adhere to the same positions on abortion and other social issues. He also cited right-wingers’ anger at him after he voted for a gay job-rights bill in 1984. The legislation, AB1, was vetoed by then-Gov. George Deukmejian.

For two years after his vote, Davis said, he was harassed by Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), a hard-right leader who made mocking references to Davis’ position whenever the two men passed in Capitol hallways.

Fed up, Davis eventually confronted Nolan during a breakfast meeting of Valley area lawmakers.

“I said, ‘Pat, I can’t understand you. You’re obsessed with homosexuality,’ ” said Davis, adding that he asked Nolan if his opposition to gay rights was rooted in some unpleasant experience with a gay man.

In response, Davis said, Nolan “just blew up and left the room. He’s never molested me since then.”

Commenting on the troubled Los Angeles Police Department, which he headed from 1969 to 1978, Davis said last spring’s riots--and the department’s weak response--inflicted a “ coup de grace “ on the public’s flagging faith in the Los Angeles Police Department.

He also lambasted Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council for not spending more money on the department and adding enough new officers to keep up with population growth.

Davis explained that his famous request as chief that the City Council buy a submarine so police could intercept seagoing drug-smugglers was intended only as a joke on Bradley.

He asked for the sub, Davis said, after Bradley, a former police lieutenant who turned into a Police Department critic after his election to the City Council, questioned Davis’ request for money for a police helicopter.

“I said to him, Councilman Bradley, you’re getting by cheap, because next year I’m going to ask for a submarine to intercept Mexican dope,” Davis said. He said he was amazed that Bradley and the press took the remark seriously.

“I would never have asked for it officially, because people would laugh at you,” he said.

Davis said he was happy to be out of the Senate, which he described as a stressful, unhealthy place to work.

He spent eight days in the hospital in September being treated for phlebitis, an inflammation of the veins, which he said he got from sitting through lengthy committee and floor sessions without being able to stretch his legs.

During the hectic final days of each session, he said, he and other lawmakers often worked 18- and 19-hour days. In especially bad crunch periods, he said, legislators would be locked in the room and served food from the state cafeteria.

He also cited the strain of flying back and forth between Sacramento and his district on weekends and the high cost of maintaining two homes. Saving time was so crucial, he said, that when he bought a new suit, he bought an identical one to save dry-cleaning time.

“The undesirability of the job is something the public doesn’t realize,” Davis said.

“You don’t have time to shine your shoes. You don’t have time to launder your clothes . . .. I don’t think the public recognizes that. They think of it as a fun sort of job, where you sit back and act as God. It isn’t. It’s a hard, working, tough job.”