Women’s Conference Aside, Governor’s Legacy Is Only So-So

After seven years, Gov. Pete Wilson’s final “Call to Action” conference for women takes place Thursday at the Long Beach Convention Center.

More than 7,000 women are expected to attend the annual event, which organizers say will have strong entrepreneurial content as usual, along with its mix of sessions addressing women’s issues and corporate careers.

“What corporate woman doesn’t want to be an entrepreneur?” asks conference director Cathie Bennett Warner, a San Francisco consultant.

As the doors open on the last “Call to Action” and the departing governor begins what he calls a “legacy tour” of speaking engagements to gauge a presidential bid, it’s appropriate to examine both Wilson and his conference.

Have they, in fact, aided women and small business?

Cynics and staunch Democrats have long called the conference nothing more than a political device designed to keep Wilson in the spotlight and earn him points with women voters.

Wilson needed a good image with women, having faced off against gubernatorial candidates Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and Kathleen Brown in 1994. And the conference did indeed spring from a partisan camp.

Bennett Warner said she was part of a core group of women who worked on Wilson’s 1990 campaign and met with him afterward to discuss how he might keep in contact with women and address their issues. A conference in Anaheim was devised that would accept some corporate sponsorship but would basically pay for itself through ticket sales.

Because the state economy was still fumbling, that first gathering had a definite small-business focus. Fifteen of the 39 sessions addressed entrepreneurial topics, according to a 1992 conference program listing. Wilson, who always speaks at the conference, praised women that first year for building and growing businesses statewide, and he held a ceremonial signing of legislation that created the California Council to Promote Business Ownership by Women.

“We had no idea what to expect,” Warner said of that first conference. “We said, ‘If we get 700, we’ll be happy,’ and we got 1,200.”

The conference more than doubled in attendance the next year and continued to grow until it reached the 6,700-person capacity of its rental space in 1996 and ‘97, selling out two weeks in advance. This year, additional space has been rented and the conference budget tops $1 million, including $25,000 for scholarships given to women seeking to pursue business education.

The success of Wilson’s conference has prompted similar women’s events by New York Gov. George Pataki and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. The Times itself is embarking on its own conference this year geared to small business, with sessions of interest to women.

But along the way, Wilson’s event appears to have lost some of its entrepreneurial edge and even some of its focus on women. Only five of last year’s sessions addressed entrepreneurship and topics included “What Women Need to Know About Men’s Health” and “Healthy Dining: Secrets From the Pros for Spectacular Low-Fat Cuisine.”

This year, only four of 36 sessions address small-business issues, according to the program listing, and sessions on body make-overs and simpler lifestyles are among the topics.

“It started as this entrepreneurial conference, but it has its own life, separate from what the creators or the governor’s office had in mind,” Warner explained.

The conference over the years has managed to include more Republicans than Democrats on the program, including Elizabeth Dole, wife of former presidential candidate Bob Dole; Betty Ford, wife of former President Gerald Ford; Marian Bergeson, a fellow conservative Republican and Wilson’s appointee as secretary of the state Office of Child Development and Education; and Julie Meier Wright, who campaigned for Wilson and is his appointee as director of the state Commerce Department.

Still, most of those attending come not because of Wilson or politics but because of the opportunity to network and discuss women’s issues with thousands of other women.

“I’m not a follower of his, to be honest, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to go to his conference,” said Charmaine Wilkerson, co-owner of And Here’s Lily, a Los Angeles food management company.

The conference reflects the truism that business is all about relationships and access, says Constance Rice, a Los Angeles attorney who advises the Los Angeles office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. But apart from the conference, Rice believes Wilson has not helped female business owners.

“I’m sure he’s been a mentor to individual women and he’s had a hand in helping women in the Republican Party, but in terms of large numbers of women, I don’t see much to be proud of,” Rice said. “I think his legacy will be the unraveling of the systems that opened doors for women-owned businesses.”

Rice and others have said Wilson’s support of Proposition 209 and his efforts to end the state’s affirmative action programs harmed female business owners who have seen their opportunities dry up as subcontractors on state jobs. Indeed, Wilson’s position on affirmative action generated a boycott of the conference in 1995 by some women’s groups, but the effort scarcely dented attendance.

As for small business in general, Wilson’s agenda of fiscal conservatism has stood him well. During his eight years in office he vetoed increases in the minimum wage, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation and other measures that would have increased small-business costs, said Martyn Hopper, director of the California office of the National Federation of Independent Business. Wilson’s cuts in statewide business taxes also aided small businesses, Hopper said.

“It’s been a great help to have him in the corner office,” Hopper said. “He’s been a protection against the excesses of legislators who have never written on the front of a paycheck.”

But when small business pushed beyond fiscal conservatism, Wilson’s support ended, say other small-business activists. For example, this year he vetoed a bill that would have created a state task force to clarify the definition of “independent contractor,” an employment issue that frequently lands small businesses in trouble, and he vetoed legislation that would have allowed the self-employed to enroll in group health-care coverage.

Overall, Wilson’s eight years lacked any major initiative that addressed either small-business issues or women’s issues, critics say. For the most part, he simply reacted to what was placed before him by state legislators.

And although his women’s conference does provide an opportunity for thousands of women to network, the question must be asked: Are small businesses and women better served by a conference with authors such as Judith Krantz and entertainers such as Mary Hart, or by a well-thought-out policy and body of proposed legislation, initiatives and programs?

Whether or not the next governor continues this popular conference, more substantive work on small-business and women’s issues would be appropriate and more gubernatorial.

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Times staff writer Vicki Torres can be reached at (213) 237-6553 or at vicki.torres@latimes.com.

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