White House Exodus Led by Californians

When Gov. Pete Wilson moved to cut off food stamps to legal immigrants in California this fall, an infuriated Los Angeles official called the White House to complain. A Californian--White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta--took the call. He told the president. And by day’s end, the food stamp cuts were put on hold.

That is the kind of attention that comes when a top administration official hails from the Golden State. And that is what many fear will be lost with a parade of resignations announced this week that will virtually wipe out the Clinton Cabinet’s existing California contingent.

Soon to be gone are Panetta, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor, Defense Secretary William J. Perry and, possibly, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, head of the National Economic Council--all Californians in the highest of places.

“Losing one or two would be unfortunate. Losing as many as five could be cause for great concern,” said Tim Ransdell, executive director of the California Institute, a bipartisan Washington think tank.

What’s more, California’s all-important 54 electoral votes are no longer so important to Clinton now that he has won a second term and will never have to face the voters again.

“With Tuesday’s election a thing of the past and the Clinton administration no longer worried about reelection,” California might not get the level of attention it has received over the past few months from the White House.”

Attention is probably an understatement. California was the rich old granny everybody visited in pursuit of a chunk of the will. Clinton and Bob Dole, his Republican challenger, poured millions into California in the final two weeks before the election and made themselves virtual fixtures of the landscape.

But the courting from the White House began long before that. As president, Clinton has visited California 30 times, more than any other state. He has traveled to California more than Ronald Reagan did in his first term, and Reagan had a ranch in the state.

Washington Largess

In the past two years, California has received $10 billion in federal relief for the Northridge earthquake, big orders for C-17 cargo planes from McDonnell Douglas and its subcontractors, an unusual $364-million bailout of the Los Angeles County health care system, another $410 million to rebuild or replace County-USC Medical Center, and White House support for a highway project as obscure as the Alameda Corridor in the Long Beach-Los Angeles harbor area.

What will be the fate of the state in the administration’s second four years? Officials concede that the departures of the top Californians might desensitize the administration to some of the state’s needs.

But they say the state remains so important to the Democrats politically--and Clinton is so grateful personally--that no serious problem is likely to go unattended for long.

“Will Clinton be flying out there every six weeks? No. He doesn’t need to now,” said one official, who declined to be identified. “But I don’t think this White House will ever ignore the problems of California. It’s the anchor of our electoral strategy.”

The president’s inner circle, the nation’s seldom-penetrated nerve center, is studded with people with past lives in California and whose roots there run thick and deep.

Christopher moved from North Dakota to the coast as a boy and had a paper route in the Hollywood Hills. He rose to become a high-powered Los Angeles lawyer and the dean of the city’s establishment. Ultimately, Clinton would tap him to do more than run the State Department.

Something of a father figure to the president, Christopher is the gray-haired lawyer to whom he looks for advice. He served as chairman of the transition team that helped the newly elected president set up shop in Washington. He helped put together Clinton’s first Cabinet and was an essential connection for people looking for jobs in the administration. In the end, more than 70 Californians held high-level administration posts.

Kantor Connection

Kantor’s friendship with the Clintons is two decades old. A longtime “Friend of Hillary,” Kantor ran the 1992 campaign. But he came to Washington as a fixture of Los Angeles legal and political circles--a prominent attorney with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips who also chaired Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown’s presidential campaign in 1976.

A hard-nosed, in-your-face negotiator, Kantor was named U.S. trade representative and then asked to step in as secretary of the Commerce Department when Ronald H. Brown was killed in a plane crash this year. That put him in charge of the agency that makes sure all goes well for American businesses domestically and abroad. California business leaders love him as they do Perry, the defense secretary and ex-Stanford professor who founded ESL Inc., a defense electronics firm in the heart of Silicon Valley.

But the man who gets more presidential face time than any other would have to be Panetta, a Clinton confidant, the son of a Northern California nut farmer, a top education official in the Nixon administration and a veteran congressman from the Carmel area who is roundly respected by lawmakers regardless of party.

It was Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina who called Panetta that day to put the brakes on Wilson’s food stamp cuts, and the end result circumvented--at least temporarily--the newly signed, loudly touted welfare reform bill.

Molina thinks Panetta’s departure could be “devastating” to the state: “He has been a key connection. He knows the state. He understands the state. I don’t know if it’s possible to replace him for this state and this county.”

By contrast, Perry’s departure may scarcely be noticed in California. After all, he was at the helm of the Defense Department when California was hit by the one-two punch of base closures and sharp reductions in orders from weapons contractors.

But altogether, Craig Fuller, former chief of staff for President Bush, said of the Californians: “They will be missed. No doubt they have had an impact and have allowed people from California entree that otherwise would not be as easy to come by.”

Enjoys Hollywood

Many believe Clinton’s fascination with the West is sufficient to keep California close to his heart. He gets a kick out of Hollywood (not to mention a mountain of campaign contributions). He hangs around with Barbra Streisand and has vacationed in Santa Barbara.

“The president calls the tune and he knows America will not succeed without a strong California,” said Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, predicting the state will be no less wooed. “California is where the Silicon Valley is, where Barbra Streisand is. He genuinely enjoys being in California. It is never drudgery for him.”

If California’s charm doesn’t get him, its sheer size might. If the state were a nation, it would have the seventh-largest economy in the world, which makes it difficult to ignore, even in Washington.

And if Clinton doesn’t need the Golden State, Vice President Al Gore surely does if, as everyone expects, he tries to move downtown to the White House in 2000.

According to Fuller, this courtship is long from over: “I suspect California will probably be seeing a lot of Vice President Gore. Starting immediately. Coming to a town near you.”

Times staff writers Paul Richter, Carl Ingram, Julie Pitta, Jim Bornemeier, Jim Gerstenzang and Dave Lesher contributed to this story.