NEWS ANALYSIS : Ballot Fallout Expected From Wilson’s Veto : Gay activists say governor’s rejection of new rights for unmarried partners will hurt reelection campaign. Conservatives say it will help.

For the second time in three years, Gov. Pete Wilson has vetoed the one bill on his desk that the gay and lesbian community most wanted him to sign.

Wilson’s rejection Sunday of legislation that would have granted new rights to unmarried partners, regardless of sexual orientation, did not provoke the kind of public protest that followed his veto in 1991 of a major anti-discrimination measure.

But activists on all sides of the issue--including gays and the elderly, who supported the bill, and religious conservatives, who opposed it--said Monday that they expect the Republican governor’s decision to have an impact on his reelection campaign against Democrat Kathleen Brown.

A Wilson appointee who also serves as a leader of an association of gay Republicans criticized the veto and said his statewide group would not endorse Wilson.

The bill, by Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), would have enabled unwed partners to register as domestic partners with the secretary of state and would have given them many of the rights now granted automatically only to married people.

They would have been able to visit each other in the hospital and to assume conservatorship rights if one partner became incapacitated. The bill also would have made it easier for unwed partners to will property to one another.

But Wilson said those goals can be achieved through other, less sweeping means. He took the first step by ordering his Health Services Department to develop regulations allowing competent adults to designate whomever they choose as hospital visitors.

In his two-page veto message, Wilson said he believes that any individual should be free to live with another in a relationship without marriage. But he said he also believes that it would be wrong for state government to encourage “some substitute” for marriage by recognizing domestic partners.

“In virtually every culture, marriage has been deservedly celebrated as a relationship demanding commitment and unselfish giving to one’s own family--especially to one’s children,” Wilson wrote. “Government policy ought not to discount marriage by offering a substitute relationship that demands much less and provides much less than is needed both by the children (and) by society.”

Those words echoed the Rev. Louis Sheldon of Orange County, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, an organization of religious conservatives that opposed the bill. Sheldon said he believes that the measure was unnecessary and meant to advance a “hidden agenda” promoted by gays and lesbians.

“The real underlying issue is that we will stand firm to keep the man-woman relationship in the context of marriage at center stage,” Sheldon said. “This was an infringement on that.”

Sheldon predicted that the veto would help Wilson “shore up his base among conservative, pro-family people.”

Gay political leaders say they do not expect the veto to spark the explosive reaction that greeted the governor’s veto of a sweeping gay rights bill in October, 1991. That closely watched bill prompted violent public protests in part because Wilson had indicated that he would sign it and then changed his mind.

By contrast, Wilson this time was known to be leaning against official recognition for domestic partners. While some supporters of the bill held out hope that he would sign the measure, most assumed that he would not.

Nevertheless, the measure’s backers said Monday that the veto will help Brown mobilize more gays and seniors to go to the polls and vote for her.

A Los Angeles Times poll released Monday found that 52% of registered voters supported the measure and 37% opposed it.

“We’ve got a campaign for governor which has not drawn rave reviews in the gay and lesbian community and not galvanized people,” said Eric Bauman, president of the Los Angeles Stonewall Democratic Club, referring to Brown. “And I think we can use this to galvanize the community.”

West Hollywood City Councilman Steve Martin said the veto was chipping away at the indifference that has thus far characterized the political season.

“I was surprised at the number of calls I got today,” Martin said. “Pete’s just stirred up a hornet’s nest.”

Anger was not confined to gay Democrats. The state Log Cabin Club, a gay Republican group, announced that it will not endorse Wilson because of the veto.

“There clearly is a tremendous amount of disappointment,” said Frank Ricchiazzi, executive director of the club’s political action committee and a Wilson appointee as assistant director of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Ricchiazzi said he felt like inviting Wilson and his wife to dinner with him and his partner. “Come over for dinner and see if we really don’t have a family,” Ricchiazzi said rhetorically to the governor.

Brown, asked about the bill at a Sacramento news conference Monday, said she would have signed it. But in keeping with her effort to court middle-of-the-road voters, she focused on the measure’s effect on seniors and did not mention gays.

“The bill would have provided for senior citizens who are low income, middle income, to have enjoyed certain rights, and would have (allowed them to) enjoy the responsibilities of partnership,” Brown said.

Katz said Wilson is underestimating how important the bill was to older voters. Katz said census figures show that 90% of the about 1 million individuals who are in unmarried partnerships are heterosexual, and he estimates that half of them are senior citizens.

“There is a gay and lesbian component to this issue, but there also is a senior component that is far more numerous,” Katz said. “This is the kind of race where hundreds of thousands shifting here and there can be tremendously important. Any constituency you can swing could be very, very important.”

Weintraub reported from Sacramento, Boxall from Los Angeles.