SPECIAL REPORT / ELECTION PREVIEW : DECISION ’94 / A Voter’s Guide to State and Local Elections : Governor : A look at the major candidates for governor, their records and excerpts from their stump speeches. On this page: : THE DEMOCRATS : The Candidate: TOM HAYDEN

Profile

TOM HAYDEN

* Born: Dec. 11, 1939, Detroit.

* Residence: Santa Monica

* Current position: State Senator representing the 23rd District, which includes Santa Monica, Malibu, Pacific Palisades and parts of West Los Angeles.

* Education: Bachelor’s degree in history, University of Michigan, 1961.

* Career highlights: Founder of anti-war organization Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s; founder of Campaign for Economic Democracy, a political action group; author of seven books; elected to the California Assembly in 1982 and to the state Senate in 1992.

* Family: Married to actress Barbara Williams; children Troy and Vanessa from previous marriage.

The Record

State Sen. Tom Hayden is one of the best known of California’s lawmakers. But his fame has less to do with his legislative accomplishments than his activities as an anti-Vietnam War protester and his former marriage to actress-activist Jane Fonda. During 10 years in the seniority-dominated Assembly, most of Hayden’s efforts were thwarted.

His major contribution to California law may have been his support of 1986’s Proposition 65, the anti-toxics initiative that did an end run around the Legislature. An indication of his standing in the Assembly came during the 1992 redistricting, in which the leadership did away with his district.

But in his two years in the smaller and more freewheeling Senate, Hayden has found his voice. As his campaign literature points out, Hayden recently led the first successful effort in 111 years to block confirmation of a University of California regent, in a battle that centered on Hayden’s opposition to student fee increases. Similar efforts have denied the Wilson Administration its nominations to the Board of Prison Terms and the Lottery Commission.

Of late, Hayden has concentrated his legislative efforts on curtailing college student fee increases and emphasizing the state’s previous reluctance to spend billions of dollars in freeway funds on seismic safety. He also has sought to reform the state’s political process, an issue that now forms the backbone of his campaign for governor.

The Speech: In His Own Words

Our human hopes and possibilities are being smothered by a special-interest state that has befallen Sacramento. Every night, lobbyists for special interests are making big contributions to politicians, and on the morning after, they ask those same politicians for a vote. Last year, the lobbyists spent $128 million lobbying those politicians, and you paid for it because lobbying expenses are tax-deductible.

These lobbyists not only enrich their clients, they impoverish and downsize our schools, our health care, our future and our hope. They strangle us with the heavy hand of the past when we should be listening and tending to the needs of the future.

California cannot restore its strength when we are 41st in the nation in school funding. I want our school rooms to be “exploratoriums,” on-ramps to the information highway of the future. I propose we increase school funding over the next five years until we reach the national average.

Nor should we be closing the doors of higher education, as the soaring fees of Pete Wilson have done to 200,000 students in just two years. I will reduce college fees by 20%, and make up the cost by closing wasteful tax loopholes.

I will create a committed and idealistic California Service Corps, sending thousands of college students into a teacher corps and a police corps, to reduce our school dropout rates and increase community-based policing.

To pay for these educational initiatives, we have to change our priorities. I will insist on a $1-billion cut in bloated state bureaucracy and a $3-billion closure of totally wasteful tax loopholes. . . .

We are under-funding education to pay for a “three strikes” law and a prison building program that are fiscally reckless. We must amend “three strikes” to focus on violent repeat offenders, not check forgers or people who are caught growing three marijuana plants. . . .

Too many middle-class people, including our younger people, are trapped in McJobs, permanent part-time jobs that lack meaning and go nowhere. I propose jobs with a future, jobs that require more education instead of less, jobs of restoring the environment instead of degrading what’s left of it.

A Hayden renewal program will begin by creating 55,000 jobs in southern California making clean, zero-emission cars in the coming decade. . . . California can lead the world in designing and exporting energy conservation technology. . . . We must lead in renewable resources like solar and wind energy. . . . We must lead in telecommunications, and reduce our addiction to polluting by commuting. . . .

But we cannot realize this brighter future without a governor with the independence and vision to stand up to the special interests . . . that dominate Sacramento like undertakers in the delivery room.

As a reform governor with a mandate from the people, I will insist on Day 1 that the Legislature enact these reforms: No. 1, campaign contribution limits of no more than $250; expenditure limits to contain the campaign arms race; a prohibition on lobbyists soliciting money for politicians they lobby, and stiffer penalties for political corruption than the slap-on-the-wrist attitude of today. . . .

This is a campaign that is also a cause. This is about the politics of hope triumphing over a future of fear. Don’t waste your vote on the status quo. Vote at least to send a message--and together we may make a miracle.