Alan Cranston, an Old-School Difference-Maker

“I’m doing fine,” Alan Cranston told me four days before he died. He didn’t sound fine.

He sounded weak. Slightly hoarse. Like he was fighting a cold. Or had just woken from a nap.

Whatever, I didn’t pursue it.

I had called the former senator to ask whether he’d like to be quoted in the paper’s obituary about retired Times political writer Richard Bergholz, a Cranston contemporary who died the day after Christmas. I left a message and he called back within an hour.

As usual, Cranston was concise: “Dick understood politics thoroughly and covered it with great accuracy. . . .”

Articulate, but nothing fancy. Get to the point and get off.

How are you doing? I asked.

“I’m doing fine. . . . Have a happy New Year.”

On New Year’s Eve morning, Cranston’s body was found by his son, Kim, at their family compound in Los Altos, south of San Francisco. Kim Cranston was watering flowers when he looked through his father’s kitchen window and found him slumped under a counter. He had been fixing breakfast when his heart stopped beating.

“He’d been under the weather, but we thought it was just the flu,” Kim says. “The doctor said the electrical system that supports the heart died. He was standing and probably didn’t feel a thing, never knew what hit him.”

There’ll be a “memorial celebration” Jan. 16, 3 p.m., at Grace Cathedral atop Nob Hill in San Francisco.

*

*

Cranston, 86, was the last of the post-World War II Democratic leaders who dramatically changed California politics and, for several years, controlled its power structure.

Before the war, he’d been a gutsy foreign correspondent covering Nazism. He got under Adolf Hitler’s skin by producing an unabridged American edition of “Mein Kampf”--including all the offensive phrases--that sold 500,000 copies until the Fuehrer won a copyright suit.

After the war, Cranston decided he’d rather get involved in the action than write about it.

He became dedicated to arms control during a 1946 meeting with Albert Einstein. “He warned that if these nuclear weapons ever were used, they would exterminate all life on this planet--and certainly the human race,” Cranston remembered in a 1999 interview. “That caught my attention.”

And yes, as a senator, Cranston did champion development of the B-1 bomber, which created thousands of California jobs. He rationalized that a nuclear-armed bomber--unlike a missile--could be recalled after being launched.

But what Democratic partisans should thank Cranston for is practically building the California party, literally from the grass roots up. In the mid-1950s, he organized the California Democratic Council, a vast network of party volunteers that helped sweep out Republicans in 1958. Pat Brown was elected governor, Cranston won the controller’s office and Democrats seized the Legislature, leading ultimately to Jesse Unruh’s powerful speakership.

Brown was a Cranston ally. Unruh considered him a threat. “Jess and I had terrible combats,” Cranston told me, but ultimately “we buried the hatchet.”

That occurred in 1968 when both eyed the U.S. Senate seat held by influential Republican Thomas Kuchel. Cranston gambled that Unruh, deep down, was leery of facing the moderate incumbent. So he pledged to step aside if Unruh wanted to run. Unruh really didn’t, Cranston did and Kuchel subsequently got beat by a demagogic right-winger in the GOP primary. Cranston then won his first of four Senate terms and became the Democratic whip, No. 2 in leadership.

*

*

Cranston was not as much of an old-school liberal--he was very pro-business, after all--as he was an old-school politician. He believed in personal contact, in rallies and being on a first-name basis with the local newspaper editor.

“No person I’ve ever met--or will meet--was as organized as Alan,” says longtime aide Kam Kuwata. “He wound up out-organizing and out-working every opponent.”

He had to. The thin, bald wonk wasn’t going to win on wavy-haired good looks. Nor because he’d been a celebrity or the son of a famous man.

He worked the system--and it finally did him in politically. Cranston was driven from office by a careless influence-peddling scandal involving savings and loan operator Charles Keating.

“A mistake and I regret it,” Cranston said. “But I had enough time--24 years in the Senate.”

In retirement, Cranston returned to his No. 1 passion--trying to ban nukes. Last year, he created the Global Security Institute to advocate arms control.

Cranston always knew precisely what he wanted to be in life. He wanted to be somebody who mattered. He always did, mostly for the good.