Pete Wilson Spins Toward the Center

It’s logical to wonder what’s up with Gov. Pete Wilson. Is he trying to scramble back to his original home in the philosophical center? Become what the right wingers, who never have trusted him anyway, might scoff at as touchy-feely?

Three weeks ago, Wilson publicly allied himself with moderate Republican governors who will try to remove the antiabortion plank from the party platform at the GOP convention in San Diego.

Reasserting his support for “the right of reproductive choice,” Wilson told reporters in Washington: “You’ve got people on both ends of the spectrum, ranging from total abortion-on-demand to no relief [from pregnancy] . . . even [when] the life of the mother is in danger. I think most people fall in the middle ground.”

Recently, there have been a series of Wilson leaks to newspapers about his generous plans to pump more money into education. That culminated Tuesday in a revised state budget proposal which featured a $1.7-billion boost for reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grades, improving reading instruction, buying new textbooks, increasing preschool services and repairing rundown facilities.

“Children are really what this budget is all about,” Wilson proclaimed, sitting at a teacher’s table in a second-grade San Francisco classroom and talking to Capitol reporters via TV hookup.

In the revised budget, Wilson even added $5 million in state money to an AIDS program that provides drugs for low-income, uninsured people with the HIV virus.

What gives? Is he trying to smooth over the jagged edges sharpened by his attacks on illegal immigration, “thugs,” welfare moms and affirmative action? Remold his image back into a moderate?

“He really bristles at that,” says an advisor, who reports that the question even has come up at staff meetings presided over by the governor. “He insists, ‘I’ve never moved anywhere.’ ”

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It’s true, Wilson rarely moves his positions. But some positions he tends to emphasize more than others, depending on the public mood and political situation.

When he first ran for governor against Dianne Feinstein, Wilson talked a lot about education and “preventive” programs and made sure women knew he favored abortion rights. But we didn’t hear much about schoolkids after he was elected. Rather, it was a negative litany of anti-this and that--including anti-taxes, after an initial giant tax hike.

Wilson reluctantly was prepared to debate education during his 1994 reelection campaign, but Democrat Kathleen Brown never forced him into it. And when the governor ran for president, he seldom raised the abortion issue among party activists, who tend to be aggressively antiabortion.

What the governor recently said about abortion and the GOP platform was no different than what he has told reporters countless times. He also was responding to a question, not strategically delivering a prepared statement. But Wilson was anticipating the question, aides say, because two other governors--Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and George Pataki of New York--had just announced they would fight the party plank.

One question led to another, and Wilson answered each at length. Sen. Bob Dole’s advisors were furious, declaring privately that Wilson--a Dole campaign chairman--should have dismissed the query with one brief reply and not reheated the abortion controversy.

But Wilson aides contend Dole never complained personally to the governor. And besides, they say, Wilson was very happy with the way it all turned out. He had reemphasized he is aligned with the party’s abortion rights wing and the vast majority of voters.

So with abortion, Wilson did seize an opportunity to recenter his image.

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The governor definitely took steps back to the middle on education, leaking all those stories to capture credit for the hefty boost in funding.

What has been lost in all the spinning, however, is that this is not largess. Wilson is not opening up the Capitol vault for schools. The voters did that eight years ago when they approved Proposition 98, which requires a big chunk of general fund revenues to be spent on education. Boom times are pumping an extra $2.7 billion into the treasury and, by law, schools will get roughly $1.7 billion.

“This is what we started out to do [five years ago], but a humongous recession got in the way,” says Maureen DiMarco, Wilson’s education advisor. “I’d almost given up. When the governor finally had the opportunity, he moved.”

Wilson is moving to put his imprint on the spending--and keep it away from the teachers union for salary increases.

And bristle or not, with action and words he’s clearly moving back toward his natural base.