Davis Appoints 3 as UC Regents in Time for Key Vote

Preparing to make his imprint on the University of California, Gov. Gray Davis on Thursday announced his first appointments to the UC Board of Regents: Paramount Pictures chief Sherry L. Lansing, San Diego Padres owner John J. Moores and Newport Beach businesswoman Judith L. Hopkinson.

The appointments come a week before Davis will push his first initiative before the board: a proposal to admit the top 4% of students from each public high school in California.

“I like the idea,” Moores said Thursday. “Gray has talked to me about it. This looks like a very attractive solution to a difficult problem.”

By making the appointments Thursday, the three new members will be eligible to vote on the top 4% plan when it comes up at next week’s board meeting. Davis, who campaigned on the idea, has said the 4% plan would be his only litmus test for his appointees.

The three new regents, of course, were also strong supporters of Davis’ gubernatorial campaign. They seem to reflect the governor’s plan to install political moderates in key positions.

“I’d like to see the Board of Regents become a cooperative, nonpolitical board that is focused on creating an excellent education system,” said Hopkinson, an executive with a mortgage lender based in Orange County.

The appointments follow months of intensive lobbying for the four vacancies on the board. These seats are considered plums, given their 12-year terms and the prestige of the nine-campus research university. Democrats have besieged Davis with pent-up demand, after being shut out for 16 years by Republican governors.

For the record, Moores, 54, said he is not registered with either party and will continue to support centrist Republicans as well as Democrats. He has been impressed with Davis’ emphasis on education and wanted to join the regents because he “immensely enjoyed” being a regent for the University of Houston before moving to California and buying the Padres in 1994.

Moores, a Rancho Santa Fe resident who made his fortune as a computer software entrepreneur in Texas, has been a big booster of higher education. By his own estimate, he has contributed nearly $100 million to the University of Houston, San Diego State and UC San Diego.

“Near as I can tell, there’s not a lot of pay here,” he said about the volunteer position of regent. “I want to get in and do the right thing.”

Hopkinson, 52, said she has known Davis since former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr. appointed her to the California Transportation Commission in 1982. Davis was Brown’s chief of staff.

Trained in architecture at UC Berkeley, she is chief operating officer of Ameriquest Capital Corp., a mortgage lender and financial services company based in Orange. Ameriquest’s chairman is Roland Arnall, a big Davis supporter in last year’s campaign.

Lansing, the chairwoman and chief executive officer of Paramount Pictures, was unavailable for comment.

But Davis pointed out that Lansing, 54, had extensive experience in education before moving into the entertainment industry. A credentialed teacher, she once taught math and English in Watts and East Los Angeles.

More recently, she has served as a board member overseeing Scripps College in Claremont and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She is a board member of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, UCLA Women’s Health Research Program and Times Mirror Co., the parent company of the Los Angeles Times.

“What she is going to bring to the table, besides political skills, is a very sophisticated knowledge of health issues,” said Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, who led Davis’ transition team. That should prove useful, he said, given that the regents spend much of their time overseeing five teaching hospitals.

Davis has one more vacancy to fill. The most intensive lobbying is likely to come from the San Joaquin Valley, which wants representation on the 26-member board to make sure that a planned campus near Merced gets built.