In This Fight, It Doesn’t Matter Who Started It

Pete Wilson is forever charging uphill, a brawler whose notion of fun is to start his own fight. And he’s got himself into another doozy.

This political brawl smacks less of Machiavelli than Michael Corleone, with guns to the head, offers that can’t be refused, nervous hostages and innocent victims.

It’s not a fight this time that the governor started, but he leaped in eagerly.

What makes it special is that unlike so many political dust-ups, this one actually is important. A lot is at stake: labor’s political clout and billions in business tax breaks--also untold thousands of jobs if companies wind up leaving the state.

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This is what’s happening, much of it away from public eyesight:

* Three political amateurs in Orange County, taking their cue from a popular Washington state initiative and cheered by GOP conservatives, are collecting signatures for a 1998 ballot measure that would weaken labor’s political influence. It would require a worker’s annual written permission before a union could spend dues on political contributions; an employer couldn’t even deduct from a paycheck money destined for politicians without the worker’s permission. Thus, labor would have less money to give Democrats.

* Union leaders fear even their members will vote for this. The only way to beat it, they theorize, is to keep it off the ballot. Led by the California Teachers Assn., they’re pointing a gun at a bystander--business--and making an “offer”: Arrange for the measure to disappear and they won’t sponsor three counter-initiatives to raise business taxes $10 billion a year. Even if the tax proposals are beaten, business would spend millions on the campaign--just as labor would to fight the anti-union initiative.

* Business--mainly the state Chamber of Commerce--is pleading that its hands are clean, it’s not involved in the initiative and has no influence with its sponsors. Maybe not, labor replies, but it does have influence with Gov. Wilson. Tell him that either he makes the initiative go away or his business buddies will take one in the pocketbook.

* Wilson--being Wilson--is telling labor: Take your best shot. “I’m going to do everything I can to assist that [initiative],” he told a recent GOP state convention. Not only assist in fund-raising, but “proudly” serve as honorary chairman. “[Union members] shouldn’t be forced to have their pockets picked for political causes they don’t support.”

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“It’s like shoot whoever you can find,” says Mark Bucher, 38, a Tustin accountant and the initiative’s lead co-sponsor. “They [unions] are trying to get at me by attacking innocent bystanders. But we’re not changing our plans.”

And Wilson says adamantly that he won’t ask them to. There’ll be anti-business initiatives on the ballot anyway, he says, because there always are--largely to dry up Republican political money so it can’t be spent on legislative races.

In fact, the governor is irked at business for not backing the initiative--”For business to simply passively sit back, I don’t understand.”

It’s simple: Business is trying to mind its own business, which doesn’t include inflaming labor.

But Wilson’s lock-and-load attitude explains why business has not asked him to put out a contract on the initiative. Says one Chamber official: “I tell people, ‘I’ll be happy to be right behind you and pull the [governor’s] arrows out of your heart when you do [ask].’ ”

There are several subplots:

* Pressure is on the campaign to collect 433,269 valid voter signatures by roughly Thanksgiving to qualify for the June primary ballot. It probably has collected half. Neither the GOP nor business wants the initiative on the November ballot because it could generate a big labor turnout, helping Democratic candidates. If the measure doesn’t make the June ballot, some GOP pols say, it indeed will disappear.

* The initiative could pave the way for private school vouchers if teachers unions don’t have fat treasuries to fight them off. Bucher insists that’s not the main goal. But Wilson was urged to get involved by J. Patrick Rooney, an Indiana insurance tycoon who has spent millions nationally on the voucher cause and now is chairing the initiative drive.

* The governor has a long history of feuding with public employee unions, especially the teachers, so his aggressive activity here is no surprise. Unlike Corleone, this isn’t just business, it’s also personal.

* But Wilson mostly is trying to burnish his legacy, perhaps for another presidential bid.

Yet the legacy won’t be enhanced if his politicking leads to a huge tax hike on business.

Do teachers, though, really want to risk changing their wholesome, apple-pie image to that of political terrorists?

Wilson loves all this. He couldn’t have started a better fight himself.