2 UC Regents Call for Peltason to Resign : Education: Officials send letters that denounce negative remarks about state Senate Democrats made during a private meeting. UC president apologizes but says he has no plans to step down.

Two University of California regents on Wednesday called for UC President Jack W. Peltason to resign in the wake of recent revelations that he bad-mouthed state Senate Democrats and an outspoken regent during a private staff meeting with his top aides.

In a letter sent to Peltason on Wednesday, regent and Los Angeles attorney Frank W. Clark Jr. said it would be “clearly in the best interests of the University of California” if Peltason stepped down immediately. In a telephone interview, fellow regent Glenn Campbell of Palo Alto concurred.

But Peltason and Board Chairman Howard H. Leach of San Francisco immediately countered with letters of their own. Peltason said it would not be in the university’s best interest if he stepped down and Leach wrote to legislators that the “overwhelming majority” of the regents still support the UC president.

The flurry of faxes marked a bizarre twist in what has become an embarrassing episode for the university. On Sunday, the San Francisco Examiner published a story quoting excerpts from a March 2 private staff meeting the UC president held with campus chancellors and his top administrators. Peltason talked to university officials in Southern California via a video hookup and the newspaper obtained a tape of the meeting.

During the March 2 meeting, Peltason talked about a Senate Rules Committee decision Feb. 28 to reject the appointment of Lester Lee, a Saratoga Republican and businessman, because he had supported Peltason’s recommendation to raise students fees next year. Peltason asked UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien to rally Chinese American support for Lee in time for a full Senate vote the next day.

Peltason said he did not want to see the Senate Democrats “get away with it without some kind of pain or penalty” but said he didn’t want to make this an “issue between the university and the Democrats and make (Senate President Pro Tem) Bill Lockyer so mad at us that he is hostile toward the appropriations. So I want to keep a low profile.”

Peltason also apparently mocked Regent Ward Connerly of Sacramento for his public comments urging regents not to be a rubber stamp for UC administrators. “He’s the hero. He’s the one who came in and is prepared to stand up and reform the place,” Peltason said.

Lockyer (D-Hayward) responded to the excerpts by lashing out at UC officials, calling them “grubby, self-interested individuals” and threatening to form a Higher Education Committee in the Senate to keep closer watch on the UC and the California State University systems.

On Wednesday, Connerly said Peltason’s comments were “totally inappropriate and dead wrong.” He said they showed a continuing siege mentality by UC administrators.

But Connerly said Peltason is a decent man who shouldn’t be forced to step down because of private comments. “I think it’s a very humbling experience for him,” he said. “If this doesn’t bring some of those people back to reality of what’s going on, then I don’t know what will.”

Late Wednesday, a spokesman for Peltason said the president intends to send a letter to legislators explaining his comments. “The remarks were unfortunate and I have spoken with those whose names were mentioned,” Peltason wrote. “It is clear that the decision of the selection of regents is not a matter in which the university administration should be involved.”

In a separate letter to Clark, Peltason said the tape was an apparent illegal bugging. Staff meetings such as this often involve privileged attorney-client discussions and talk about the national labs, he said.

But the two regents calling for his resignation say Peltason, who has taken three days to apologize, has already damaged the university.

Campbell, past president of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said angering the Senate Democrats means “the university’s in danger of having its appropriations cut even more. . . . You know, we still get about $2 billion from the state.”

Clark declined to cite specific problems with Peltason, only to say that Sunday’s excerpts were the latest in a “cumulative series of events” that prompted his call for the president’s resignation.