Wilson Stayed With Safe Choice for Schools Chief

As Gov. Pete Wilson considered who should be the next person to lead California’s vast public schools system, he was bombarded with advice from friends, allies and interested bystanders.

Be bold, many of them urged. Break the mold. Make a statement, not just a selection. Among those suggested were a conservative African-American intellectual, a tough-talking former U.S. drug czar, and a onetime Los Angeles teacher immortalized by Hollywood.

In the end, Wilson rejected them all, opting, as he often does, for a safe and cautious choice. He picked state Sen. Marian Bergeson, a respected Newport Beach Republican who was a kindergarten teacher and school board member before becoming a career politician.

Wilson said he was impressed by her education credentials, thought she had a good chance to win confirmation from the Democrat-dominated Legislature, and figured she could hold her own in a tough 1994 election battle to retain the top schools post.

“It really came down to a personal decision,” said an aide who helped Wilson winnow the candidates. “He was fundamentally comfortable with Marian.”

Bergeson was the conventional-wisdom favorite from the day former Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig was convicted of felony conflict-of-interest charges, forcing him to give up his office.

But for Wilson, no decision is easy. For every two steps the governor takes toward making up his mind, he usually takes one step back. He swishes a problem around in his head like a wine taster sipping Chardonnay. He bounces it off aides and associates before finally settling the issue after one final review of all the options.

On this one, his aides say, Wilson appeared to be leaning toward Bergeson from the beginning but did not make up his mind until the last minute.

The governor was in San Diego on the afternoon of Jan. 29 when Honig, the state’s schools chief since 1982, was found guilty by a Sacramento County jury of illegally acting on contracts involving a company run by his wife. Although the Administration had been anticipating, if not expecting, the news, no formal discussion had taken place about who Wilson would choose to replace Honig.

The next day, a Saturday, the governor met with a handful of his top advisers in the Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room in Wilson’s Capitol office. Chief of Staff Bob White, Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Shumate, Appointments Secretary Charles Poochigian and his chief assistant, Julie Justus, were present.

Munching on jelly beans and sipping coffee, the group briefly considered the idea of a caretaker appointment, someone who would take the job while pledging not to run for the post in 1994. While that might have made it easier for the candidate to win confirmation from the Legislature, Wilson ruled it out as unnecessary.

By the end of the two-hour session, the focus was clearly on three natural candidates: Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s education adviser; state Sen. Becky Morgan of Los Altos, and Bergeson. As Wilson jetted off to a National Governors Assn. meeting in Washington, his aides began sifting through the records and backgrounds of the three potential nominees.

Before they could even begin, however, a couple of developments threw them off the track.

First was an avalanche of unsolicited advice. The governor’s office was showered with letters and phone calls recommending candidates not on Wilson’s short list.

A Los Angeles lawyer close to the governor suggested Thomas Sowell, a conservative African-American economist and senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who writes on education issues.

A Sacramento political consultant urged the selection of William Bennett, the fiery former U.S. education secretary and, under President Bush, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Several people suggested that Wilson tap Jaime Escalante, the former Garfield High School teacher portrayed in the movie “Stand and Deliver.”

The common thread running through these recommendations was boldness.

“Several people advised the governor to look beyond the traditional pool of candidates in making his selection,” said one person involved in the process.

While the governor’s friends were showering him with advice, his arch political enemy, Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, offered some counsel of his own. Don’t pick a Republican, Brown said.

“The people elected a Democrat,” Brown said of Honig. “We ought to replace a Democrat with a Democrat.” And then for good measure, Brown ruled out the the Democrat most likely to get the job: DiMarco, Wilson’s secretary for child development and education.

Wilson and his aides took Brown’s threat seriously but were not sure how to respond. Caving into the threat was out of the question. In fact, Democratic state Sen. Gary K. Hart of Santa Barbara, whose name had been among those kicked around the governor’s office, probably lost any chance he ever had of getting the job when Brown tried to lay down the law.

“Brown’s remarks created a situation where it would have been difficult for the governor to name a Democrat, even if he had wanted to,” said one aide.

The three front-runners, meanwhile, each were pursuing the job in different ways.

DiMarco wanted the post and would have taken it if offered. But as Wilson’s trusted education adviser, she found it difficult to argue with his contention that she would be impossible to replace on his staff if she took the independent schools chief job. The least likely of the three to win confirmation in the Legislature, DiMarco was the first to be crossed off the list.

Morgan launched a full-court press. She sent information packets to the media and enlisted the help of Bay Area Republican campaign contributors to call the governor on her behalf. Wilson reportedly viewed the pressure tactics as out of place in this kind of a competition.

Bergeson played tortoise to Morgan’s hare. She waited for the governor to call her. She let it be known that she wasn’t even sure she wanted the job. And when she and Wilson met for 90 minutes at the governor’s residence in Los Angeles, Bergeson even suggested a person or two Wilson might want to consider instead of her.

After that meeting, Wilson seemed to grow more comfortable with the idea of naming Bergeson, the choice whose political benefits were clear from the beginning.

She was the most likely Republican to be confirmed. Unlike Morgan, who represents a Democratic-leaning district, Bergeson’s Orange County seat would almost certainly remain in Republican hands if she left it. And choosing Bergeson, who is admired in all wings of the Republican party, would win Wilson a few bonus points with the conservatives who have given him so much trouble since he took office.

Yet even in late February, as Communications Director Dan Schnur was scheduling the announcement and hunting for a picturesque location for the governor to make it, Wilson still hadn’t made up his mind. After ruling out DiMarco, he ruled her back in, then out again. Although everyone on the staff assumed he was leaning toward Bergeson, he never told them that.

“I’m 80% sure,” Wilson told one of his top deputies as a self-imposed deadline loomed. But he didn’t say who he was 80% sure about.

He asked that the announcement, originally scheduled for March 1, be pushed back a day to give him some breathing room. As it turned out, he didn’t need it. Wilson met with Justus and White in his office for several hours on Feb. 28, after the conclusion of the Republicans’ state party convention held in Sacramento that weekend. At the end of the meeting, he gave the nod to Bergeson, the favorite from the start.

Although Wilson had asked for some information on Sowell--one aide described the governor as “intrigued” with the idea--he ultimately went with the safe choice. He had done the same thing in choosing his successor for the U.S. Senate, when he considered naming Stanford Prof. Condoleeza Rice but instead chose a longtime friend and ally, state Sen. John Seymour of Anaheim. Seymour was defeated at the polls in 1992.

In this case, said one adviser, the governor didn’t want to get “too cute” with the appointment.

Said another, summing up Wilson’s view: “Sometimes the most obvious choice is also the best one.”