After 17 Years, an Old Lefty Is Saying Goodbye to All That

It’s amazing that it lasted this long. Tom Hayden and The Building, as our externally lovely Capitol is known within, always seemed an awkward fit.

After 17 years in the Legislature, the principal leader of the anti-Vietnam War movement and most enduring figure of the 1960s New Left, will leave office when his term ends just over a year from now.

His announcement cited a number of reasons, most notably his disappointment with Gov. Gray Davis. His early “optimism” had “faded into a jaded realism.” He was stunned by Davis’ vetoes, which he characterized as “coldhearted and even irrational,” of his bills to monitor school drop-out rates, create child health standards at toxic school sites and place former gang members on crime prevention committees.

“I feel like I’m dealing with an auto pen,” Hayden explained to me later, referring to a device that politicians use to produce replicas of their signatures. “I work with Gray’s staff on these things, they pass both houses and then, bam, no communication, just a veto message slipped under my door.”

A quarter of a century has passed since Davis emerged as Gov. Jerry Brown’s chief of staff and Hayden was a U.S. Senate candidate and controversial member of Brown’s administration, handling alternative energy and border issues. Indeed, Davis and Hayden both won their first elections, to adjacent seats in the Assembly, in 1982. That continued a friendly relationship, with Hayden often defending Davis from critics who found him overly calculating and insufficiently liberal.

I’ve been at several small dinners with Davis and Hayden and have witnessed their easy, friendly relationship. That’s why it’s a surprise that Davis would reject Hayden’s bills, which seem more common-sense than ideological, in such a cold manner.

I haven’t asked the governor about Hayden’s complaints, but I can guess some of Davis’ concern. Since Hayden is indelibly unpopular with many from his anti-Vietnam War days--in which he not only opposed the war but at times opposed the United States--a certain degree of caution is advisable in dealing with him. I’d told Hayden as much myself in denying him a solo endorsement of then-presidential candidate Gary Hart, for whom I was state political director. Davis certainly would feel this liability more keenly from the governor’s office.

Yet Hayden’s retirement from the Legislature is about much more than a failure to communicate with Davis. Through most of his time in the Legislature, Hayden has engaged in the game of politics rather than following his own political compass. This was especially true when he was in the Assembly, trying to be a player on then-Speaker Willie Brown’s team.

For a time, the Brown-Hayden alliance worked. Hayden applied himself to establishment politics and allowed the powerful organization he founded after his 1976 U.S. Senate race, the Campaign for Economic Democracy, to languish. However, Hayden wasn’t really cut out for quotidian politics. While he chaired committees and worked at legislation, his eyes were fixed on the horizon.

The break came over Willie Brown’s insistence on using his appointees to the California Coastal Commission to pursue a pro-development agenda. While Hayden’s opposition to this made him something of a pariah, it also freed him to get back to his roots. He had promoted the statewide toxics right-to-know initiative, Proposition 65, in 1986, which was successful, and the omnibus Big Green initiative in 1990, which failed at the polls.

Despite that defeat, Hayden was back on track. In 1992, he beat the vaunted Berman-Waxman political machine in a race for the state Senate and became chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee and an influential watchdog on the gubernatorial appointments of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

Though Hayden was much more comfortable in the supposedly staid Senate, life inside The Building was still too constraining. Deeply concerned about the increasing stranglehold of big-money politics, Hayden ran a low-budget, discussion-oriented race in the 1994 Democratic primary for governor. He won both of the lightly viewed debates against my candidate, Kathleen Brown, and my old boss, John Garamendi. He also won newfound respect among media and political elites, along with 14% of the popular vote. However, he was disappointed with the results.

After what surely will be a hectic final year, Hayden will return to L.A.--a better fit for Hayden than Sacramento. It’s a place with vague politics and a sketchy civic culture, but it is a global city, a place where the new world economy runs up against its environmental and social limits. If any politician can make sense of it from a left-wing perspective, it’s Hayden. He’ll finally have the opportunity.