Toto, We’re Not In Washington Anymore

Many who work in California’s capital like to think of Sacramento as a little Washington . It’s not. It’s a big Carson City .

A very big Carson City, to be sure. But, nonetheless, more akin to Nevada’s capital than the nation’s.

“You know how you drive up I-80 from Sacramento and go by Auburn and see the (Placer) county courthouse and think how small it looks? Well, that’s how this Capitol looks compared to the one back there,” says veteran Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco), who moved from the California Legislature to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1970s and later returned to Sacramento.

I bring this up because scores, perhaps hundreds, of vanquished Bush Administration appointees reportedly are papering the Wilson Administration with job applications.

The governor “is getting a ton of resumes,” said one state official, a Washington transplant who once worked for then-President Ronald Reagan. “If you’ve been in the White House or anywhere in the Administration for the last 12 years, you’ve built up a lot of Republican contacts. You know what? Those contacts and a couple of quarters may get you a cup of coffee. Everything changed Wednesday.”

Aside from these unemployed Republicans eyeing Sacramento, there are 27 freshmen legislators now setting up shop in California’s Capitol. Some may have been taking a cue from watching the changing of the guard in Washington. But there is one thing both groups should bear in mind: While Sacramento is the capital of the largest state, California is still a state.

There is a Statehouse cadence and chemistry that is distinct from Center of Western Civilization grandeur. Hitting .300 in the political big leagues does not assure all-star status in triple A. And people who operate the most successfully here understand that.

State Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren does now, having suffered a cold baptism when he resigned from Congress in 1989 to accept a gubernatorial appointment as state treasurer and unceremoniously was denied confirmation by the Legislature. But Gov. Pete Wilson--a former U.S. senator and San Diego mayor--has seemed out of sync here, not quite grasping how to maneuver.

*

For starters, a Wild West, ‘49ers Gold Rush temperament still permeates the Sacramento personality, as it does Carson City’s. There is much less formality--indeed, less civility--than in Washington.

In the nation’s capital, House members address each other as “Mr. Doe, the gentleman from California.” In the California Capitol, assemblymen in recent years have called their colleagues “liars” and “horses’ asses” as school groups watched from the balcony.

When Carl Covitz, a charter member of Wilson’s Cabinet, insisted on being referred to as “Mr. Secretary”--as his former boss had been at HUD in Washington--people virtually laughed him out of town. The California secretary of business, transportation and housing also commandeered a CHP chauffeur, a move that agitated other ranking officials accustomed to driving themselves. “Covitz was a fish out of water,” a Wilson aide acknowledged.

Often, political games people learn to play skillfully in Washington are not even recognized in Sacramento. It would be as if Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman moved to Sydney and found nobody played football there.

One example is the fine art of leaking, a widely castigated but universally practiced Washington sport aimed at floating trial balloons or deflating someone else’s, building up yourself or knocking down your enemy. Basically, this is a dormant activity in Sacramento.

*

The list goes on: In Washington, the esteemed President is loyally supported by his party leaders 99% of the time. In Sacramento, governors and their party members have wound up shouting obscenities at each other. The whole process of legislating is different; Sacramento’s is more open and (believe it or not) quicker. News media attention is a lot more intense in Washington; a President walks into the Rose Garden and gets on the network news.

Then there’s culture. In Washington, there’s the Kennedy Center. In Sacramento, the symphony just went bankrupt. It tends to be depressing here for Washingtonians.

But as Mark Davis--a speech writer stolen by Wilson from Bush--put it: “I thought I would come here and run circles around everybody. Instead, I find myself running to keep up.”

Larry Thomas, a press secretary for both former Gov. George Deukmejian and Vice President George Bush, said: “The similarities between Sacramento and Washington kind of begin and end with the fact that they both have domed capitol buildings.”