Yes, It’s Hard to Buy a House, but This Is Ridiculous

California is the largest state in the nation. Further delay in providing an appropriate residence for its chief executive would be inexcusable.

--L.A. Times editorial, Feb. 4, 1970.

*

California has not provided its governor with an official residence in 32 years and this is long past being inexcusable. It’s bush. A joke. Embarrassing. Ludicrous.

Gov. Gray Davis says he intends to fix that before leaving office. He may never get to live in it, but Davis wants to make sure his successor does occupy a “governor’s mansion.”

He’ll try to raise private money for a suitable residence. That should be a relatively easy task, given all the people eager to befriend a governor. And on this kind of benign project, the donors wouldn’t be taking political sides.

“I will raise the money privately and arrange for a mansion to be left to the next governor,” Davis recently told me. “That will be my gift to my successor.

“I do think a state this large should have a governor’s mansion to appropriately greet visiting dignitaries, ambassadors, constituent groups. It’s a shame we don’t.”

There’s already $3 million in a state pot set aside specifically for a governor’s mansion. It’s from the $1.53-million sale, plus accumulated interest, of a sprawling estate that the Reagan administration had built for a mansion. No governor ever lived in the place. Ronald Reagan and every governor since have been tenants of friends--or, in Davis’ case, strangers--in barely adequate dwellings.

“This is a cockamamie arrangement,” Davis notes.

*

Forty-four states provide official residences for their governors. But California seldom has done right by its chief executives. In the 1800s, governors tended to live in a boardinghouse.

One exception was Leland Stanford, the railroad baron. He bought his own magnificent Victorian two blocks from the Capitol. Mrs. Stanford ultimately gave the 19,000-square-foot mansion to the Catholic Church for an orphanage. The state bought it a decade ago and the last Legislature appropriated $5 million--to be matched with private funds--for repair and refurbishing. The historic building will be used as a museum and for state receptions.

But a governor still needs his own mansion for partying and preening.

California’s only official governor’s mansion this century was purchased in 1903 from Joseph Steffens, a businessman and father of muckraker Lincoln Steffens. The gingerbread had 12,000 square feet over three floors. Thirteen governors lived there until Reagan moved out in disgust.

It was a lovable, warm place, but had aggravating annoyances.

The first occupant, Gov. George Pardee, discovered an open sewer underneath. Gov. James Gillett killed 11 bats one night. In 1941, the state fire marshal said the mansion should be “abandoned immediately.” But successive governors just boarded up the fireplaces.

When Earl Warren moved in, he found that the third floor had been closed because--a newspaper reported--it was “hung with bat-punctured misty gray cobwebs.” Pat Brown draped a rope ladder out a window for a fire escape. By this time, the truck noise had gotten so loud on an adjacent thoroughfare that Mrs. Brown ran window air conditioners to mute the racket.

The Reagans lasted just one month. Nancy Reagan called it a “dangerous firetrap.”

*

Reagan’s friends bought 12 acres on a bluff overlooking the American River, 15 miles east of town. They then gave the land to the state, which built a $1.3-million mansion that critics characterized as “Safeway modern.”

Construction wasn’t completed for Reagan. He lived in a handsome, 5,200-square-foot house near downtown that friends bought and rented to him. It was “a little rinky-dink for a state the size of California,” Mrs. Reagan commented.

Jerry Brown refused to live in the river bluff mansion, belittling it as a “Taj Mahal.” He took a $250-a-month apartment.

Republican Gov. George Deukmejian begged to move onto the bluff, but the Democratic Legislature wouldn’t let him. Too far away; sell it. So Duke’s friends bought a suburban house and leased it to him. This was smaller than Reagan’s digs--nice, but nothing special. Major entertaining in winter required moving furniture outside.

That’s where Wilson lived and also now Davis.

“I mean, is that better than going homeless? Yes,” the new governor says. “Am I complaining? Absolutely not. But when I leave, I’d like to leave behind an appropriate residence for the next governor of California.”

Many governors have thought that, but in the end flinched, fearing political cheap shots. They also were revolted by legislative trading. Hopefully, Davis finally will stop all the silliness.