Davis’ Reminder: I’m Captain on This Ship of State

He’s said it until he’s blue in the face, even red in the face: Nobody makes a move until he gives the OK.

At one Cabinet meeting, Gov. Gray Davis actually sketched a flow chart for his agency secretaries. Trying to be both humorous and explicit, he drew a box labeled “governor” with connecting lines to 12 little boxes for the Cabinet members underneath.

“I’m not appointing you to exercise your independent judgment. I’m appointing you to implement my judgment,” Davis says he has told them. “You are free to give me advice and to contest my views, but you are not a free agent. Nobody has their own agenda. There’s only one agenda. It’s Gray Davis’ agenda. I’m the only elected member of this administration. You are an extension of me.”

Over and over he has told them.

So you can imagine the governor’s reaction three weeks ago when he was handed a Fresno Bee newspaper clipping with the headline: “Davis Withdraws Support in Water Fight.”

What support? What water fight?

It seems former Gov. Pete Wilson--in some lame-duck mischief--had authorized filing of a friend-of-the-court brief, shortly after last November’s election, placing state government on the side of agriculture in a big San Joaquin Valley water fight. A water district is suing the federal government over implementation of a 1992 law requiring annual allocation of 800,000 acre-feet of water for fish and wildlife.

Davis’ newly appointed resources secretary, environmentalist Mary Nichols, quickly decided this administration needed to reconsider that Wilson position. She asked Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer to withdraw the court brief and he did.

A no-brainer.

But she didn’t bother to consult the governor--or tell any of the farm groups or water buffalo, who were alarmed by her appointment in the first place. That also should have been a no-brainer.

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Davis, who has earned a reputation for a hot temper, apparently controlled his emotions. Again, he reminded his Cabinet members about their lack of sovereignty. Afterward, he pulled Nichols aside.

“Gray didn’t dress her down,” insists an aide. But he did stress that this was exactly the kind of thing he had been talking about. Please don’t let it happen again!

The governor also got on a conference call with complaining farm interests to promise he’d learn more about the lawsuit and to assure them that he too had been frustrated by Nichols’ unilateral action.

“It was a failure on my part to communicate,” Nichols acknowledges. “I apologized on all sides. I didn’t want to send a message that we were going to be acting in an unpredictable way.”

Nichols, 53, probably is Davis’ most controversial appointment: a perceived contradiction to his promise of a centrist government. She met Davis in Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr.’s administration, where she held key environmental posts. More recently, she was an assistant EPA administrator in the Clinton administration. As state resources secretary, she’ll oversee the politically sensitive departments of water, forestry, parks, and fish and game.

In an interview with The Times shortly after she was appointed by Davis, Nichols was sharply critical of her Wilson administration predecessor, moderate Douglas Wheeler. “That scared some people,” says Allan Zaremberg, president of the California Chamber of Commerce.

But since then, she has muted the rhetoric and reached out to farm and water interests in an effort to calm her critics.

She even flew in a puddle-jumper to the Mendocino County vineyards of Bill Pauli, president of the California Farm Bureau. “A number of people maybe unjustly criticized her initially,” Pauli now says.

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“I don’t think agriculture has any reason to be fearful,” Nichols asserts. “Throughout the campaign, Gray Davis talked about the importance of preserving the agricultural economy and I’m completely in sync.”

Nichols says she has “goals”--not an agenda, governor--to help resolve “our most difficult resource problems: water, open space and restoring the state park system. If there’s one thing I’ve learned--and it’s consistent with Gray Davis--it is that the only way to find sustainable solutions is to bring people together and craft compromises.”

Indeed, if Davis does hope to reach a centrist compromise on water usage and development, he’ll need Nichols to sell it to environmentalists. She’s got credibility with them. That’s why he appointed her.

It’s about that old canoe theory of governing Davis picked up from Jerry Brown. He’ll have some crew members paddling on the left and others paddling on the right--propelling his ship of state right down the middle. It’s just that as captain, he insists on charting the course.