Of Politics, Dark Days and an Old Elm

The year ahead for Pete Wilson seems as bleak as the tule fog that shrouds the State Capitol most winter days.

He has few friends in the Legislature and none in the White House. He is less popular with voters than any California governor in at least half a century, polls say. He lost all his fights in November’s debilitating election. The state’s economy hasn’t been this bad since the Great Depression. He is staring into the abyss of a cavernous revenue gap for the third straight year; this one is $7.5 billion and growing. Next week, in his State of the State and budget messages, he will propose sharper cuts in public services.

And he is up for reelection in less than two years.

Even anxious allies are drawing analogies between Wilson and George Bush: The governor, like the President, will be challenging the political pendulum by facing antsy voters in the 12th year of Republican control of his office. Both men were popular early in their terms and unexpectedly tumbled from favor after they raised taxes and the recession worsened. Neither is trusted by the GOP right. And neither is exactly a spellbinder.

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But Wilson, sitting inside his corner office with its sweeping vista of Capitol Park, doesn’t see the depressing fog. Spring is on the way. That sickly giant English elm he keeps an eye on outside his window--the one that has been dying ever since he took office--is not half dead; it’s still half alive.

He is deep into the task of choosing his next round of budget cuts--and bracing for the certain wails of anguish.

“I can’t shrink from making unpopular decisions,” he said in a conversation last week. “I don’t necessarily enjoy the fact that they are unpopular. . . . Let me just tell you something: I am going to continue to do what I have done from the first day in office. I am going to do what I believe to be right and let the chips fall where they may.”

One thing Wilson fervently believes to be right--for the business climate and the economy--is the avoidance of another tax increase. His record $7.6-billion tax hike of 1991 was “a mistake,” he admitted. Another passion is to resist deficit spending, which his Administration could slip into by rolling over red ink into the next fiscal year, as some Democrats have advocated.

“I’ll have to be stubborn on the subject of taxes and rollover because they will devastate California’s competitive position,” the governor said.

Being “stubborn,” letting “the chips fall”--these are fighting words for many legislators. And they send shivers up the spines of some Wilson associates who fear that another months-long budget brawl between the governor and the Legislature could finish him off.

So the mood in most of the Capitol this holiday season is one of dread for the new year. Politicians, staff and lobbyists don’t know quite what to expect and suspect the worst.

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Wilson, though, is optimistic that legislators--especially the 27 rookies--will have correctly read the electorate’s “tremendous impatience” and will want to help him make government work. “The public doesn’t care a damn about politics,” he said.

Hard times, he also believes, have made people “more receptive” to being “educated” about the complexities of government, the merits of his agenda and the need “to sacrifice” government services.

Another cause for optimism: the recent signs of a possible reconciliation between Wilson and Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, who were best buddies in 1991 but became bitter enemies in 1992 after the governor refused to cut a redistricting deal.

Brown earlier this month invited Wilson to speak to California’s Democratic delegates to the Electoral College, and the governor did. Wilson invited Brown to his Administration’s holiday party, and the Speaker came. Then last week, the governor offered to co-sponsor the Speaker’s upcoming Economic Summit.

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Wilson insiders variously describe the governor’s mood as “realistic,” “very much upbeat,” “energized”--and still feisty, determined to push his programs and dig out of his political hole.

“Pete Wilson is a very tough guy, very tough politically,” observed one longtime confidant. “He enjoys the fact that people are underestimating him now.”

Like the elm tree outside his office, maybe.