Asking for 2 Years and 2 Houses

Gov. Pete Wilson has been pleading: “Friends, I’m not greedy. Just two years. Just two houses. That’s all I ask.”

He’s asking for too much, say the political pros. He’s asking for something unrealistic--in this election anyway: full Republican control of the Legislature. Maybe in two more years.

But Wilson doesn’t have another two years to wait. He’s out of office after 1998. So he’s going for it this fall as he travels the state raising money for GOP candidates, knowing it’s unlikely his wish will be granted in a year that seems to favor Democrats.

“I have just two years left,” he implores 450 people who have paid $150 for dinner here in the High Desert. “And I would love to have the rich, heady experience of two houses that understand what it’s all about.”

Hours earlier in San Diego, he had beseeched 130 who bought $125 luncheon tickets: “It’s a small thing for my last two years. I’d be terribly grateful.”

The words “terribly grateful” when uttered by a governor tend to make donors’ ears perk up. He may be an unpopular lame duck, but a governor still has the power to sign and veto bills, to appoint judges, to help or hurt special interests.

So far, aides say, Wilson has helped attract $925,000 for Assembly candidates and $570,000 for Senate contestants. He’ll be averaging three fund-raisers a week until the election, including a big $1,000 per plate Assembly dinner Oct. 10 in Los Angeles.

It’s considered unlikely that Republicans will pick up the five seats necessary to topple Democrats from Senate control. The more crucial battle is in the Assembly, and it’s rated a tossup. There, Republicans cling to a one-vote majority.

While Wilson dreams out loud of Republicans dominating both houses, he understands he’ll be living a two-year nightmare if they don’t at least control the Assembly. Therefore, he’s now stumping for more legislative candidates than ever before.

*

The Apple Valley event is being held at the palatial estate of a doctor who owns a medical center. Wilson is the big draw for local residents, who aren’t used to governors passing through town. But developer and mining lobbyists here are lured by the assemblyman being honored--Keith Olberg of Victorville, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, which handles environmental regulation bills.

Olberg is a cinch for reelection and scarcely needs the nearly $100,000 raised, counting checks from lobbyists who haven’t bothered to show up. He’ll hand over the money to the GOP Caucus for parceling out to candidates in tough races.

In San Diego, Wilson raised money for candidate Bob Trettin, a developer consultant who is running against Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Davis. The event took in about $35,000, including money from no-shows. This is a tight race in a district evenly split by party registration. Davis, an ex-school board member, narrowly beat Trettin in 1994 and again is a slight favorite.

“Susan is a very nice woman,” Wilson acknowledged to the GOP donors. “But we don’t send people to Sacramento because they’re nice. I don’t care whether they’re nice. We need to send up people who think right.”

Most Capitol watchers consider Davis a moderate, but to Wilson she’s a dreaded liberal.

In all, Wilson is raising money for at least a dozen Assembly and half a dozen Senate candidates. In some districts, he also is appearing in the candidates’ TV ads and dialing up radio talk shows.

“People ask, ‘Aren’t politicians all the same?’ No, they’re not all the same,” Wilson tells audiences. “And it makes all the difference in the world.”

*

What difference would a Republican Legislature make? It would mean, he says, school vouchers in inner cities, loosening of environmental regulations, curbing of “lawsuit abuse,” more anti-crime bills and welfare “reform.”

I asked whether he had any qualms about cutting off food stamps to legal immigrants, which he recently tried under new federal reforms until Washington ordered him to stop. “Well, you never want to be throwing anybody out in the snow. On the other hand,” he said, the immigrants’ sponsors are responsible for their care.

Wilson said he has “become hardened” to being called a racist because of his opposition to illegal immigration and affirmative action. “I’m not going to back away because someone decries it as racism or a wedge issue or a hot button,” the governor vowed. “You elect people to solve public problems and these are two beauties.”

But if the Assembly doesn’t stay in Republican hands, Wilson won’t be solving much of anything. Without a GOP speaker and committee chairmen, it would be very lonely in Sacramento for the lame duck.