Bergeson Nomination to Honig Post Expected : Education: The prospects for confirmation of the senator from Newport Beach are considered strong.

Gov. Pete Wilson intends to appoint Republican state Sen. Marian Bergeson--a former Orange County kindergarten teacher now considered among the Legislature’s most astute education experts--to replace Bill Honig as California’s superintendent of public instruction, an informed legislative source said Monday.

Bergeson, 67, a conservative Newport Beach lawmaker who was the unsuccessful GOP nominee for lieutenant governor in 1990, is expected to be named by Wilson during a press conference today at an elementary school in a Sacramento suburb.

Her nomination will trigger what could become a drawn-out and contentious confirmation process in the Democrat-dominated Legislature, where Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) has vowed that he would not stand for the appointment of a Republican. But many state lawmakers give Bergeson the best chance among the short list of finalists--including Republican state Sen. Rebecca Morgan of Los Altos--of surviving the process.

Bergeson’s prospects for confirmation to the $102,000-a-year job are strong partly because she has built solid working relationships with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and many Democrats believe that she will be a weak candidate when she runs for office in her own right in 1994.

She comes from a similar background to Wilson’s other hand-picked education expert--Maureen DiMarco, the administration’s education secretary and herself a finalist for the schools chief post. Like DiMarco, Bergeson is a former Orange County school board member and was president of the California School Boards Assn.

The governor’s office, wanting Wilson to deliver the news himself, clamped down information about the appointment, even refusing to confirm that today’s press conference was for the purpose of announcing the new superintendent.

Bergeson also declined to answer questions about the nomination or confirm that she was Wilson’s choice. But a source in the Legislature said Wilson had offered the job to Bergeson on Monday morning and she accepted. Wilson and Bergeson met in his office Monday afternoon.

One of the other leading candidates for the job, Morgan of Los Altos, said late Monday that she had heard nothing from the governor or his aides and was assuming that Bergeson had secured the appointment.

“I’m a little disappointed to hear it via the grapevine,” Morgan said. Still, the Silicon Valley lawmaker pledged not to run for the office against Bergeson in 1994. “I won’t take on a governor’s appointee,” she said.

First, however, Bergeson must secure confirmation from the Legislature, and looming in the way is Brown, the powerful Assembly Speaker who has had his share of conflicts--some political, some personal--with the state Senator.

In 1980, she was one of just four Republicans in the Assembly who did not side with Brown in his run for the speakership. A few years later, she was an outspoken opponent of a move, strongly backed by Brown, to force the state pension funds to drop their investments in companies that did business with South Africa. She called the pressure for divestment an “emotional issue” and said the strategy was “fiscally unsound.”

Bergeson also had a well publicized confrontation with Brown on the Assembly floor in 1987 over a bill authorizing the state to contract with private engineers for highway planning work. Brown shouted at Bergeson; then, as he turned to walk away, Bergeson grabbed him by the arm and appeared to lecture him. Her stock immediately rose in the Capitol.

Brown appeared Monday to be softening somewhat on the nomination. Although he vowed he would not vote for a Republican, he stopped short of saying he would actively oppose Bergeson and try to block her confirmation by the Assembly.

On the Senate side, Bergeson should have an easier go of it. Senate leader David A. Roberti declined to speculate on Bergeson’s chances of confirmation, but said she was “a very capable woman” for whom he has “high regard.”

Others echoed such sentiments.

UC President Jack W. Peltason said Bergeson “is one of the most highly respected people in Orange County, and she’s well regarded on both sides of the political aisle. She’s committed and talented. . . . I always found her to be one of the more sensitive, knowledgeable legislators and someone very much concerned about the problems of education.”

It was unclear Monday what tipped the decision in favor of Bergeson. Wilson had said he was looking for a candidate who would defend the interests of California’s schoolchildren and could win election statewide in his or her own right in 1994.

In Bergeson, he has found a conservative with strong ties to education but not one who has always supported increased funding for the public schools, a stance that could leave her vulnerable to efforts to portray her as unsympathetic to education.

Bergeson also could earn enemies on both sides of the ideologically divisive issue of education vouchers to allow parents to more easily finance a private school education for their children. Bergeson favors limiting use of the vouchers to parents of children in underachieving inner-city schools.

Long considered a consensus builder in the Capitol, Bergeson has expressed a need for more cooperation between the state schools chief and other branches of the educational hierarchy.

She has also suggested that California might do well to consider dumping the post she now is a step away from. Instead of an elected state schools chief, Bergeson has argued that the superintendent of public instruction perhaps should be hired by a regionally elected state school board.

Politically, there are some who question whether Bergeson has the stomach to run a tough race against heavily funded Democrats. The officially nonpartisan primary race in June, 1994, is expected to pit Bergeson against Democratic state Sen. Gary Hart of Santa Barbara and Democratic Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin of Union City.

In her only statewide race, Bergeson in 1990 bested a Wilson ally, then-state Sen. John Seymour of Anaheim, to win the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. She then lost handily to incumbent Democrat Leo McCarthy in the fall, getting just 42% of the vote.

But she has earned respect inside the Capitol. A California Journal survey of legislators, lobbyists, staff and reporters ranked her the Republican senator with the highest integrity, behind three Democrats.

Elected to the Assembly in 1978 after her school board stint in Newport Beach, Bergeson arrived in Sacramento with a solid understanding of education financing. She skipped to the Senate in 1984 and has focused largely on educational and local government issues.

Bergeson counts among her proudest achievements her bills that reformed the teacher credentialing process, authorized bond funds for schools and provided for higher curriculum standards and graduation requirements.

“She has a real feel for what’s going on with educational issues,” said Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress).

Others agreed. “I’ve known her for 30 years,” Orange County Supt. of Education John F. Dean said. “She is a conservative with a great knowledge of education, a real child advocate.”

Sheila Benecke, president of the Orange County Parent-Teachers Assn., said she has “high hopes that she will be able to help bring us out of a time of great crisis in public education.”

“Politically, it’s the smartest and safest political thing for the governor to do,” said Audrey Yamagata-Noji, a trustee of the Santa Ana Unified School District.

Times staff writers Kristina Lindgren and Stacy Wong contributed to this story.

Profile: Marian Crittenden Bergeson

Born: Aug. 31, 1925, Salt Lake City, Utah

Education: Attended UCLA 1945- 48; received bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Brigham Young University in 1949

Elective Office: Newport City School District, 1964-65; Newport-Mesa Unified School District, 1965-77; became first woman from Orange County elected to the state Legislature in 1978, representing Newport Beach and coastal Orange County in the Assembly through 1984; elected to the state Senate in 1984, where she chairs the Senate Local Government Committee, one of only three Republicans to head a standing policy committee.

Awards: Outstanding Citizen of 1992 by Orange Coast College; Outstanding State Senator of 1991 and Legislator of the Year in 1987 by the California School Boards Assn., and Senator of the Year in 1987 by the UC Student Assn.

Personal: A devout Mormon; married to Garth Stewart Bergeson; has four children, four grandchildren and a cocker spaniel named Chester. Has lived in Newport Beach for 35 years.

Source: California Legislature, Who’s Who in American Politics