Gray turns green -- with cash

Building more prisons, doling out pork and refusing to rethink the death penalty, California Gov. Gray Davis is confounding friends and enemies with his relentless pursuit of the middle.

By Anthony York

Jun 9, 2000 | Early May is deadline time in the California governor's office, when policy wonks and number crunchers tally the revenue from the year's taxes and huddle to revise their January budget predictions. It's a process known as the May Revise.

But this year, with the state flush with cash, Gov. Gray Davis huddled not with his numbers guys but with his political advisors -- communications director Phil Trounstine, former campaign manager Garry South and pollster Paul Maslin. Together, they hatched a plan to eliminate $545 million in state income taxes for public-school teachers. When Davis unveiled the plan, it dominated state headlines and landed the governor on Page 1 of the Sunday New York Times.

Earlier this week, after the fanfare died down, the bipartisan legislative budget conference committee voted unanimously to kill the teacher tax cut.

Depending on which Sacramento insider is telling the story, this is a reason to despise or admire Gov. Gray Davis, the former Jerry Brown chief of staff who is now on many people's shortlist to be Al Gore's running mate. But whether it's told with loathing or admiration, the story gets across the essential Gray Davis, a consummate and masterful politician surrounded by a team adept at grabbing headlines, who lets the Legislature do his dirty work for him.

"Clearly he wants to attract and retain qualified teachers," Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg said in a statement after Davis unveiled his teacher tax cut. "But his proposal takes state tax policy into uncharted waters. If we do this for teachers, how do we treat other professionals working for the public good?"

"This is the essence of Gray Davis," said one former advisor to Davis' Republican predecessor, Pete Wilson. "Hatch a proposal that has zero chance of passing, but is going to get you on the front page. And now, everywhere he goes, he's introduced as the guy who doesn't want teachers to pay taxes."

Stories of cold political calculation are the trademark of Davis' first 18 months in office. He touts a solid list of accomplishments: implementing school accountability programs; creating an achievement test all public high school students must pass before graduating; giving patients limited rights to sue their HMOs; and extending the state's gun control laws. But most stories about him attempt to analyze his methods and motivations. Although the stiff Davis would appear to have little in common with back-slapping President Clinton, Davis' foes in both parties -- and some admirers -- say he's inherited Clinton's gift for triangulation.

Trounstine says that's unfair. "Gov. Davis doesn't triangulate to find the middle. That is who he is," Trounstine said. "That may be the effect, but that's not the intent. Does he have passionate positions that are outside the mainstream? Not that I can think of. But that's because he happens to be a mainstream human being."

There is a certain consistency to Trounstine's logic. In 1998, Davis ran as a political insider. He had served as Gov. Jerry Brown's terrestrial other half during Brown's early years as governor, and had a solid political risumi as an assemblyman, state controller and lieutenant governor. He positioned himself as the buttoned-down, centrist alternative to a pair of self-financed millionaire challengers, Al Checchi and Jane Harman, in the primary, and conservative Republican attorney general Dan Lungren in the fall.

Davis' eventual 20-point victory was the ultimate triumph of all things status quo and ordinary, the true triumph of gray. Davis likes to joke that he spent 25 years in government trying to move 25 feet (from the chief of staff's office to the governor's office). He ran as the tortoise, not vowing to dramatically change politics. Politics had changed to fit him.

Davis is not shy about being an aggressive fundraiser, and has not relented in his pursuit of campaign dollars since taking office. Reports from the secretary of state's office indicate that Davis had more than $14 million in the bank at the end of 1999. Fundraisers are a regular part of Davis' weekly schedule. On Wednesday, as the Legislature worked out final details of a budget plan to send to the governor, Davis spent part of the day at a $5,000-per-head golfing fundraiser at Pebble Beach, sponsored by the prison guards union.

"He says, 'I've seen that movie before, when a blue-collar Democrat has to go up against multimillionaires,'" Trounstine says of his boss. "We all saw it with Checchi and Harman. But I don't believe anyone, despite any innuendo, can demonstrate a policy outcome that's been driven by fundraising."

But the appearance of a quid pro quo on behalf of campaign contributors, for example, has led to consistent criticism of the Davis administration. Last year, Davis broke with Democratic Party orthodoxy and placed money for a new $335 million state prison in the state budget, which his opponents blasted as a windfall for the powerful prison guards union, which spent more than $2 million to help elect Davis in 1998.

In April, Davis released a $5.3 billion congestion-relief plan which gave the governor more direct control over state transportation projects -- and presumably more power to dole out pork. "Normally, that money goes into a special fund -- the transportation commission sets the priorities for all projects, and the money is given out on an as-needed basis," said state Sen. Ray Hayes, R-Riverside. "Whenever state money is handed out, politics is always going to be involved, but before, it was at least one step removed. This plan is all about Gray Davis being able to hand out pork."

One of the projects that has received the most criticism is a $30 million freeway interchange that leads directly to the casino owned by the Morongo Indians. The Morongos are one of the state's largest gaming tribes, and have donated $1.7 million to political candidates in California from 1995 to 1998, according to a new report released by the watchdog group Common Cause. The Morongos participated in a political action committee that spent more than half a million dollars on Davis' behalf during the 1998 election.

"He says it's congestion relief, but it's more like contributor relief," said Republican state Sen. Ray Haynes. "It always helps to be a contributor to Gray Davis, and Gray Davis makes it well known that it always helps to be a contributor."

Trounstine rejected Haynes' criticisms out of hand. "The [Department of Transportation] analysis is that on weekends, that freeway is heavily congested. Thank God nobody's been killed out there. But I think it would be wrong to argue the governor put this in the budget as a payback to the Morongo Indians."

He said the change in transportation funding was not made to give Davis more pork power, but to kick-start projects that often get bogged down in local government bureaucracy. "He took the bull by the horns and said, 'Let's make it happen.' I wouldn't say it's more centralization, just command decision making."

Next Page: Davis to Legislature: Implement my vision

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