The Party’s Over Before It Started for California Sesquicentennial

Rain trickles down on a barbecue celebrating California’s upcoming sesquicentennial. Water beads on the purple tablecloths, a misty wind stirs the pine trees and folks don’t seem too surprised.

“It’s very fitting,” says a soggy Bryan Barr, a member of the state sesquicentennial commission. “All these events and most of our efforts have gotten rained on in some way or another. We can only hope it eventually stops.”

It hasn’t yet. Despite the state’s appropriation of $2.9 million in taxpayer money and pledges of at least $2 million from corporate sponsors, California’s efforts to celebrate its 150th birthday have been drowned by bad management, politics and apathy.

The strange saga began in 1994, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson envisioned a 2 1/2-year party to celebrate California’s statehood day--Sept. 9, 1850--and created a commission to manage it.

The festivities started in January 1998 with a festival celebrating the anniversary of the 1848 discovery of gold. But the party crashed this year after efforts to commemorate the 49ers’ gold rush yielded only a handful of small events, and a tall ships race from San Francisco to San Diego was tanked.

Fund-raising has been a problem from the beginning. Last year, the Wilson-appointed commission was restructured after a legislative task force accused it of wasting state funds.

A reorganized commission now faces elimination after its recent cancellation of 1999’s main event, the $4.8-million flotilla.

In a move suggesting that state government has officially backed away from celebrating its own birthday, the Legislature’s budget committee recently voted to shut down the sesquicentennial commission and give its $963,000 budget to local celebrations.

At this barbecue in the Sierra Nevada foothills, news of the latest decision is received with nods and smiles.

“Heck with ‘em,” says Ray Nutting, 39, an El Dorado County supervisor and fourth-generation Californian, wearing leather chaps and a brown cowboy hat. “The state needs to get out of the way and let people be who they are. The only way they are going to be successful is to let local people carry the sesquicentennial ball.”

Still--at a time when organizers have donned pins asking “Sesqui-what?”--some wonder if communities will rally for the cause.

Passion for the past is typical of Northern Californians surrounded by the lore of the Gold Rush, but atypical of southerners who are steeped in the history of the Spanish and Mexican missions of the 1700s, says Ken Owens, a history professor at Cal State Sacramento.

“There are also hundreds of thousands of people who are too new to this state to even care,” Owens says.

Some Californians would simply rather not look back, says Jorgi Boom, a public relations consultant for the Rumsey band of Wintune Indians, the Jackson band of Mi-Wuk and eight other tribes.

California’s American Indian population was decimated by the Gold Rush, Boom says. Tens of thousands were slaughtered, died of settler-borne diseases such as smallpox or were forced into slavery.

“Some of the tribes that I work with have steered away from contributing monies to the many events,” Boom says. “They are mindful of the past history in California and would really want to take great care to see that it’s portrayed accurately. So up to now they’ve chosen to stay not involved.”

A lack of participation, whatever the cause, contrasts with more unified states such as Wisconsin, which held a 150th birthday celebration last year, says David Glassberg, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, studying Californians’ attitude toward their history.

“Wisconsin has a long tradition of a positive, activist government that people still feel pretty good about, and people’s loyalty to their state helped them pull it off,” Glassberg says. “In California, the state government doesn’t have that reputation or get that kind of loyalty.”

The reluctance of California officials to trumpet the state compounds the problem, Glassberg says.

“Some leaders fear that promoting California may bring a backlash of criticism over controversial issues like the rundown highways, overcrowded universities, racial issues and the environment,” he says.

Or the sesquicentennial itself. Some observers wonder if anyone is willing to step in and take responsibility for such a troubled event.

First, a legislative task force last year accused the sesquicentennial commission of questionable spending and failing to file tax returns.

Then, in May, Assembly Democrats accused the commission’s current leader, Republican Secretary of State Bill Jones, of mismanagement.

Jones canceled the tall ships race in February, then squandered money on a Rose Parade float and performance art, among other things, their report said.

Jones, a possible candidate for governor in 2002, calls the report “a political hit piece.” Democratic Gov. Gray Davis ignored his pleas for support at a critical time in fund-raising for the race, he says.

“My repeated request to the governor for just a phone call to secure some contributions never happened,” Jones says.

Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante says the committee’s performance under Jones was “embarrassing.” Davis is looking at the sesquicentennial to see whether “lemonade can be made from lemons,” Bustamante says.

Meanwhile, more than 20 tall ships from as far away as Indonesia are expected on the Fourth of July weekend in San Francisco. Unfortunately, ships that arranged their trips a year in advance could not cancel as quickly as California officials did, organizers say.

To save face, the San Clemente-based Nautical Heritage Society is spending $75,000 to make sure some sort of event greets them.

Says society founder Steve Christman: “These ships are floating embassies and, despite all this sesquicentennial mess, we take a lot of pride in how our state is perceived.”