Full text of "Reporting from Sacramento : oral history transcript; tape-recorded interview conducted in 1969, 1977, and 1979 by Amelia R. Fry, Gabrielle Morris and Sarah Sharp for the Regional Oral History Office The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California, 1981 : and related material, 1977-1981"

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University of California • Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight/Edmund Brown, Sr., Era

REPORTING FROM SACRAMENTO

Earl C. Behrens Gubernatorial Campaigns and

Party Issues : A Political
Reporter's View, 1948-1966

Richard Bergholz Reporting on California

Government and Politics,
1953-1966

Sydney Kossen Covering Goodwin Knight and

the Legislature for the
San Francisco News, 1956-1958

Interviews Conducted by

Amelia R. Fry, Gabrielle Morris,

and Sarah Sharp

1969, 1977, 1979

This manuscript is made available for research
purposes. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for
publication without the written permission of the
Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of
California at Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication
should be addressed to the Regional Oral History
Office, 486 Library, and should include identification
of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use
of the passages, and identification of the user.

Copy No .

PREFACE

Covering the years 1953 to 1966, the Goodwin Knight-Edmund G. "Pat"
Brown, Sr. , Oral History Series is the second phase of the Governmental
History Documentation Project begun by the Regional Oral History Office
in 1969. That year inaugurated the Earl Warren Era Oral History Project,
which produced interviews with Earl Warren and other persons prominent in
politics, criminal justice, government administration, and legislation
during Warren's California era, 1925 to 1953.

The Knight-Brown series of interviews carries forward the earlier
inquiry into the general topics of: the nature of the governor's office,
its relationships with the legislature and with its own executive depart
ments, biographical data about Governors Knight and Brown and other
leaders of the period, and methods of coping with the rapid social and
economic changes of the state. Key issues documented for 1953-1966 were:
the rise and decline of the Democratic party, the impact of the California
Water Plan, the upheaval of the Vietnam War escalation, the capital punish
ment controversy, election law changes, new political techniques forced by
television and increased activism, reorganization of the executive branch,
the growth of federal programs in California, and the rising awareness of
minority groups. From a wider view across the twentieth century, the
Knight-Brown period marks the final era of California's Progressive
period, which was ushered in by Governor Hiram Johnson in 1910 and which
provided for both parties the determining outlines of government organiza
tion and political strategy until 1966.

The Warren Era political files, which interviewers had developed
cooperatively to provide a systematic background for questions, were
updated by the staff to the year 1966 with only a handful of new topics
added to the original ninety-one. An effort was made to record in greater
detail those more significant events and trends by selecting key partici
pants who represent diverse points of view. Most were queried on a
limited number of topics with which they were personally connected; a few
narrators who possessed unusual breadth of experience were asked to discuss
a multiplicity of subjects. Although the time frame of the series ends
at the November 1966 election, when possible the interviews trace events
on through that date in order to provide a logical baseline for continuing
study of succeeding administrations. Similarly, some narrators whose exper
ience includes the Warren years were questioned on that earlier era as well
as the Knight-Brown period.

The present series has been financed by grants from the California State
Legislature through the California Heritage Preservation Commission and the
office of the Secretary of State, and by some individual donations. Portions
of several memoirs were funded partly by the California Women in Politics
Project under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, in
cluding a matching grant from the Rockefeller Foundation; the two projects
were produced concurrently in this office, a joint effort made feasible by
overlap of narrators, topics, and staff expertise.

The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape record autobio
graphical interviews with persons significant in the history of California
and the West. The Office is under the administrative direction of James D.
Hart, Director of The Bancroft Library, and Willa Baum, head of the Office.

Amelia R. Fry, Project Director
Gabrielle Morris, Project Coordinator

iii

GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

Advisory Council

Don A. Allen James R. W. Leiby

James Bassett Albert Lepawsky

Walton E. Bean* Dean McHenry^

Peter Behr Frank Mesple*

William E. Bicker James R. Mills

Paul Bullock Edgar J. Patterson

Lou Cannon Cecil F. Poole

Edmond Costantini A. Alan Post

William N. Davis Robert H. Power

A. I. Dickman Bruce J. Poyer

Harold E. Geiogue Albert S. Rodda

Carl Greenberg Richard Rodda

Michael Harris Ed Salzman

Phil Kerby Mortimer D. Schwartz

Virginia Knight Verne Scoggins

Frank Lanterman David Snyder
Mary Ellen Leary • Caspar Weinberger
Eugene C. Lee

Project Interviewers Special Interviewers

Malca Chall Eleanor Glaser

Amelia R. Fry Harriet Nathan

Gabrielle Morris Suzanne Riess

James Rowland Miriam Feingold Stein

Sarah Sharp Ruth Teiser
Julie Shearer

*Deceased during the term of the project.

GOODWIN KNIGHT-EDMUND BROWN, SR. ERA ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

(California, 1953-1966)

Interviews Completed and In Process, March 1981

Single Interview Volumes

Bradley, Don, Managing Democratic Campaigns, 1954-1966. In process.

Brown, Edmund G., Sr., "Pat", Years of Growth, 1929-1966; Law Enforcement,
Politics, and the Governor's Office. In process.

Champion, Hale, Communication and Problem- Solving: A Journalist in State
Government. 1981.

Davis, Pauline. In process.

Dutton, Frederick G., Democratic Campaigns and Controversies, 1954-1966. 1981.

Hills, Edgar, Boyhood Friend, Independent Critic, and Campaign Manager of
Pat Brawn. In process.

Hotchkis, Preston, Sr. , One Man's Dynamic Role in California Politics and Water
Development, and World Affairs. 1980.

Johnson, Gardiner. In process.

Kent, Roger, Building the Democratic Party in California, 1954-1966. 1981.

Knight, Virginia (Mrs. Goodwin). In process.

Leary, Mary Ellen, A Journalist's Perspective: Government and Politics in
California and the Bay Area. 1981.

Lynch, Thomas, A Career in Politics and the Attorney General's Office. In process,

Mills, James. In process.

Reagan, Ronald. In process.

Rodda, Albert. In process.

Shell, Joseph C., Conservative Republican Strategies, 1952-1972. In process.

Simpson, Roy E., California Department of Education, with an Introduction by
Wilson Riles, Sr. 1978.

Multi-Interview Volumes

PAT BROWN: FRIENDS AND CAMPAIGNERS. In process.
Burch, Meredith
Carter, Judy Royer
Elkington, Norman
Guggenheim, Charles
Sloss, Nancy

BROWN FAMILY PORTRAITS. In process.
Brown, Bernice
Brown , Frank
Brown, Harold

CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTIONAL OFFICERS. 1980.

Button, A. Ronald, California. Republican Party Official and State

Treasurer of California, 1956-1958.
Gibson, Phil, Recollections of a Chief Justice- of the California Supreme

Court.

Mosk, Stanley, Attorney General's Office and Political Campaigns, 1958-1966.
Powers, Harold J., On Prominent Issues, the Republican Party, and Political

Campaigns: A Veteran Republican Views the Goodwin Knight Era.

EDUCATION ISSUES AND PLANNING, 1953-1966. 1980.

Doyle, Donald, An Assemblyman Views Education, Mental Health, and Legis
lative and Republican Politics.

McKay, Robert, Robert McKay and the California Teacher's Association.

Sexton, Keith, Legislating Higher Education: A Consultant's View of the
Master Plan for Higher Education.

Sherriffs, Alex, The University of California and the Free Speech. Movement:
Perspectives from a Faculty Member and Administrator.

THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE UNDER EDMUND G. BROWN, SR. 1981.

Becker, William, Working for Civil Rights: With Unions, the Legislature,
and Governor Pat Brown.

Christopher, Warren, Special Counsel to the Governor: Recalling the
Pat Brown years.

Davis, May Layne, An Appointment Secretary Reminisces.

Kline, Richard, Governor Brown's Faithful Advisor.

Mesple, Frank, From Clovis to the Capitol: Building a Career as a Legis
lative Liaison.

Poole, Cecil, Executive Clemency and the Chessman Case.

THE GOVERNOR'S OFFICE UNDER GOODWIN KNIGHT. 1980.

Barrett, Douglas, Goodwin Knight's Governor's Office, 1953-1958, and the

youth Authority, 1958-1965.

Bright, Tom M., The Governor's Office of Goodwin J. Knight, 1953-1958.
Groves, Sadie Perlin, A Career as Private Secretary to Goodwin Knight,

1952-1958.

Lemmon, Maryalice, Working in the Governor's Office, 1950-1959.
Mason, Paul, Covering the Legislature for Governor Goodwin J. Knight.

GOODWIN KNIGHT: AIDES, ADVISERS, AND APPOINTEES. 1981.

Bell, Dorothy Hewes , Reminiscences of Goodwin Knight.

Finks, Harry, California Labor and Goodwin Knight, the 1950s.

Hill, John Lamar, First Minority Member of the State Board of Funeral

Examiners .
Polland, Milton, Political and Personal Friend of Earl Warren, Goodwin

Knight , and Hubert Humphrey.

INDEPENDENT DEMOCRATS. In process.
Salinger, Pierre
Yorty, Sam

ISSUES AND INNOVATIONS IN THE 1966 REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN. 1980.
Nofziger, Franklyn, Press Secretary for Ronald Reagan, 1966.
Parkinson, Gaylord, California Republican Party Official, 1962-1967.
Roberts, William, Professional Campaign Management and the Candidate,

1960-1966.

Spencer, Stuart , Developing a Campaign Management Organization.
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE LEADERS, VOLUME I. 1980.

Caldecott, Thomas W., Legislative Strategies, Relations with the Governor's

Office, 1947-1957.

Fisher, Hugo, California Democratic Politics, 1958-1965.
Lanterman, Frank, California Assembly, 1949-1978: Water, Mental Health,

and Education Issues.
Richards, Richard, Senate Campaigns and Procedures, California Water Plan.

•

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATIVE LEADERS, VOLUME II. 1981.

Burns, Hugh, Legislative and Political Concerns of the Senate Pro Tern,

1957-1970.

Lincoln, Luther, Young Turk to Speaker of the California Assembly, 1948-1958.
Rattigan, Joseph, A Judicial Look at Civil Rights, Education, and Reappor-

tionment in the State Senate, 1959-1966.
Sumner, Bruce, California State Assemblyman and Chairman of the Constitution

Revision Commission, 1964-1970.
Allen, Bruce F. , California Oil and Water, and the Politics of Reform,

1953-1960.

ONE MAN-ONE VOTE AND SENATE REAPPORTIONMENT, 1964-1966. 1980.

Teale, Stephen, The Impact of One Man-One Vote on the Senate: Senator

Teale Reviews Reapportionment and Other Issues, 1952-1966.
Allen, Don A., A Los Angeles Assemblyman Recalls the Reapportionment Struggle.

PERSPECTIVES ON DEPARTMENT ADMINISTRATION, CALIFORNIA 1953-1966. 1980.
Peirce, John, California State Department of Finance, 1953-1958.
Levit, Bert W. , State Finance and Innovations in Government Organization,

1944-1959.

Tieburg, Albert B., California State Department of Employment, 1945-1966.
Wedemeyer, John, California State Department of Social Welfare, 1959-1966.
Lowry, James, California State Department of Mental Hygiene, 1960s.

vii

POLITICAL ADVOCACY AND LOYALTY. 1981.

Blease, Coleman, A Lobbyist Views the Knight-Brawn Era.

Coffey, Bertram, Reflections on George Miller, Jr., Governors Pat and

Jerry Brown, and the Democratic; Party.

Engle, Lucretia, Clair Engle as Campaigner and Statesman.
Nelson, Helen, California's First Consumer Counsel.

REMEMBERING WILLIAM KNOWLAND. In process.
Jewett, Emelyn Knowland
Johnson, Estelle Knowland
Manolis, Paul

REPORTING FROM SACRAMENTO. 1981.

Behrens, Earl C., Gubernatorial Campaigns and Party Issues: A Political

Reporter's View, 1948-1966.
Bergholz, Richard, Reporting on California Government and Politics,

1953-1966.
Kossen, Sydney, Covering Goodwin Knight and the Legislature for the

San Francisco News, 1956-1958.

SAN FRANCISCO REPUBLICANS. 1980.

Christopher, George, Mayor of San Francisco and Republican Party Candidate,
Weinberger, Caspar W. , California Assembly, Republican State Central
Committee, and Elections, 1953-1966.

CALIFORNIA WATER ISSUES, 1950-1966. 1981.

Bonderson, Paul R. , Executive Officer, Regional and State Water Pollution

and Water Quality Control Boards, 1950-1966.
Brody, Ralph M. , Revising Legislation and Building Public Support for the

California Water Project, 1959-1960; Brief History of the Westlands

Water District.
Brown, Edmund G., ST., The California Water Project: Personal Interest

and Involvement in the Legislation, Public Support, and Construction,

1950-1966.

Goldberg, B. Abbott, Water Policy Issues in the Courts, 1950-1966.
Warne, William E. , Administration of the Department of Water Resources,

1961-1966.

viii

VOLUME INTRODUCTION

Reporting from Sacramento is a collection of interviews with Earl "Squire"
Behrens, Richard Bergholz, and Sydney Kossen, three newspaper journalists who
have surveyed the political scene in Sacramento for many years. Each of these
interviewees comments on specific incidents from the state capital's past, but
also addresses more general trends and changes. Behrens 's interview begins the
furthest back in time with his discussion of Earl Warren's campaigns and other
Republican party activities. Behrens then moves beyond these specific events
to talk about what he sees as the "work" of the political reporter generally.
All these comments are very personal in nature, and come from his vantage point
at the San Francisco Chronicle. Richard Bergholz 's interview also originates
in very personal recollections about his more than thirty years as a political
writer and reporter for several presses including the Copley Press, the Los
Angeles Mirror, and the Los Angeles Times. And Bergholz, too, enters into that
general level of discussion of the reporter's role, which he admits is occa
sionally an adversary one. Sydney Kossen 's interview focuses primarily on
Goodwin Knight and Knight's relationship with the legislature and the press,
all from Kossen 's positions as Sacramento reporter for the International News
Service and the San Francisco News.

One of the primary values of Reporting from Sacramento lies in the docu
menting of these personal recollections of a small sample of the many reporters
and journalists who have covered the state capital in California's recent past.
These journalists ably reminisce about their lives and work.

Students of the lives of political reporters are also directed to A Jour
nalist's Perspective: Government and Politics in California and the Bay Area,
an oral history with Mary Ellen Leary. Harriet Nathan of the Regional Oral
History Office and the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley conducted
this fine, detailed set of interviews, to be published in 1981. This volume
includes Ms. Leary's valuable recollections of her own life and her thoughts
on California politics since the Culbert Olson era, as well as on her writing
career for San Francisco News, the Pacific News Service, and others.

Sarah Sharp
Interviewer /Editor

3 April 1981

Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight /Edmund Brown, Sr . , Era

Earl C. Behrens

GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGNS AND PARTY ISSUES:

A POLITICAL REPORTER'S VIEW,

1948-1966

An Interview Conducted by
Amelia R. Fry
in 1969, 1977

Earl C. Behrens
ca. 1960

TABLE OF CONTENTS — Earl Behrens

INTERVIEW HISTORY 1

Earl Warren's Republican Party Activities 1

1948 Vice-Presidential Campaign 4

1952 Republican Delegation and National Convention 5

Warren's Legislation and Opposition 9

Goodwin Knight : Labor and Other Support 12

1958 Election: Republican Big Switch 16

Republican Weakness, Democratic Strength: 1962 Brown-Nixon Campaign 18

Other Issues: Capital Punishment, Jesse Unruh's Leadership 20

TAPE GUIDE 22

INDEX 23

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Earl C. "Squire" Behrens was the dean of state political reporters from
the 1940s until the 1970s. Covering elections and legislative sessions for
the San Francisco Chronicle, he was respected for the massive information
accumulated over a quarter of a century, and undoubtedly influential in the
reams of copy drawn from it.

The following interviews with Behrens provide a broad framework for
understanding the press's view of California in the Earl Warren, Goodwin
Knight, and Edmund "Pat" Brown years. Originally the Regional Oral History
Office had hoped to record systematically and at length Behrens' commentary
on the events he had covered and the role of the press in government and
politics. The first session was held early in the beginning of the govern
mental history project (1969), in a borrowed office in the state capitol down
the hall from the press room where Squire was working. June Hogan and Amelia
Fry were asking questions at this session, seeking both background information
and leads on the research that lay ahead. This session was for staff use, and
the transcription consisted of a distillation of questions and answers for the
developing files of the project. The tape was re-used, and plans were made
for returning to Squire to take several sessions of an official oral history,
once the project was far enough along to provide data for questions equal to
his fund of knowledge. Before this could be done, Squire's health had pre
sented problems and he was in the Veterans' Hospital in Palo Alto.

Still alert and dedicated to his profession, he welcomed interviewer
Amelia Fry there in 1977, to record a brief interview for the Knight-"Brown
Era study. Although bright and efficient, the lobby and veranda of the
Veterans' Hospital were a bit noisy for interviewing; portions of the tape
were close to inaudible* and also made later correspondence over communication
difficult. This session was transcribed in the usual verbatim process and,
with the distilled transcription of our first interview included, the good
offices of Behrens' longtime friend and loyal visitor, Ruric "Ric" Todd, were
solicited. The edited transcript was hand-carried from ROHO to Behrens in
1979 and returned with a few spiky comments from the Squire to emend a passage
here and there that he found irrelevant or inaccurate.

A wiry man with aquiline features, he spoke vigorously, occasionally
expressing regret that he did not have access to the extensive personal
papers which he had donated to the California Historical Society and
referring scholars to them.

As to how he came to be called "Squire," it was Todd who reported that
Behrens didn't recall the sobriquet's origin, other than that it dated from
his youth as a farm boy near Redding.

A further interview with Behrens, recorded in 1967 by the Dwight D.
Eisenhower Library, is available in The Bancroft Library. It covers much the
same territory as the present manuscript, but provides additional details.
Mr. Behrens' extensive personal papers are available at the California
Historical Society in San Francisco.

Amelia R. Fry, Project Director
Gabrielle Morris, Project Coordinator

25 July 1980

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office i;Li

Room 486

The Bancroft Library

University of California

Berkeley, California 94720

Governmental History Documentation Project Interviewee
Your full name s£,fcft\ C W**-'* ^^

fj k 1

Date of birth fj k 1 < S <H "*-

Father's full name

Mother's full name

' jg^

Mother's place of birth
Where did you grow up? r

.ft et^o

Father's place of birth \ S /a^u) n ? kt$ ^ £> t/ k

Early employment

Positions held in state government

Employment after leaving state government

San Francisco
Chronicle, 6/9/50

EARL BEHRENS REPORTS-

\oiir

sent* at the political arena

A* one u^i expert puls it "Hardly any three political figures
meet without onr of them bring Karl Behren*." True or not, no
national or California political convention goes on without Earl
(.. Behren*, The Chronicle'* political editor. being in a ringside
•eat. During the legislative WMIOM hi* heat in the state capital at
Sacramento, and he return* to hi* San Franci.«co denk only after
the M-Mion close*. BehreiM has covered every important political
event in the nation since he began writing political newi for Th«
Chronicle over 26 yean ago.

Probably the mo«t traveled political writer in tb« bruin***,
Behrena covered over 110,000 mile* in the five month* of the 1 W8
presidential campaign, toured with Truman, Warren, B»rkl«T,
y and Wallace, covered the Republican, Democritic, Third
and Governora* convention*.

Known to legitlaton and politico* throughout the .nation,
Behrena haj the political contact* and acumen that bring
Chronicle reader* iniido *torie* and more complete corermge.

Follow Ear/ C. Behrcn*' daily accountt of political
Hot* your ChronicU uniting for you every morning icitk
delivery ten if e. Cottt you SOt a month l«u th*n the »e
price.

•i '.

San Francisco Chronicle, 6/9/50

Election Aftermath J

Truman May Campaign in
State; Battles On for
County Committee Control

The President
Might Help

Candidates

Both Parties
HaveContending
Local Factions

By EARL C. BEHRENS. Political Editor. Tho Chronic!*

There will he a fight for the
San Francisco chairmanships
r>; both the Republican and
Democratic county central com
mittees.

The committees will reor-
snia.-e »: the 7nv Hall July 11 In
icconlar.'e wr.h Slate law.

William M Malone. incumbent
IVmocratle county chairman, can
he counted upon to be a candidate
lo Jiiccfrd himself He will not
comment on that subject at the
moment, however

Malone will pav no attention to
the demands of Ftmer P Delany.

leader of th* anti-Malone faction
fleeted at Tuesday'! primary that
Malone resign
THK RtriBl.lCANS

Arthur J. Dolan Jr. cochairman
ot the Grand New Party ?roup «ald

meeting of the newly elected .OOP

Despite the GNP election

trlct. the other Republican legisla
tor from thu city, la on the doubt
ful list but may follow Hanley.

MAlone will have the backing of
the majority of the six Democratic
.\ssemblymen from San Francisco.
it not all of them in the row over
th. chairmanship.

Philip S. Danes of the anti-Ma-
ione faction declares he has suffi
cient pledges from the Democrat* to
elect him is the new chairman.

Dflany himself may be suggested
as a candidate for chairman imce
he was the leader In ihe move to
oust Malone.

Malone just laughed yesterday
| when informed that Delany was
demanding his political scalp.
I Delany issued a hot statement d«-
! Glaring that "Malone should Imme
diately resign."

"The bankruptcy of U» Maione
machine,' he said, "waa mada erl-
dent by the election results."

Delany cited the fact that Con-
gi ess woman Helen Oahagan Doug-
! las, winning Democratic nominee for
U. S. Senator, had rolled up a big
San Francisco vote and that MaJone
had run the campaign here of Man
chester Boddy, the losing Demo-
of era tic aspirant.

members. Hanlev said ye.sterdny he He blamed Maione for the fact
would be the "next chairman bo- that Governor Earl Warren won over
cause we've got the votes " James Roosevelt In the Democratic

I didn't lose control or the com- 1 balloting here Tuesday. He said

•Mlttre.'1 said Hanlev in challenge
to the statements In the news
papers and the olficlal tally at the

Malme "sabotaged Roosevelt's cam
paign as much as he dared."

Delany further contended that

,Clty Hnll which showed the GNP tne "election of 17 men and worn-
county coramitte« members wotiidj ticket with a majority of the com-.^"" of the antl-Malone slate had

be held early next week to consider' mittee memberships.
a candidate to succeed Herbert, Lrftf,ers of ,h,

Hanlev.

ONP tic-Vet

scoffed at Hanlrys claims and

M uttw ni iinnif y a rMMOin nnu

An error in vote counting In the some of those who had not bee,n
19th Assembly District ye.sterday counted upon heretofore already

disclosed the Grand New Party ha\e signified a willingness to go
raptured ?O— not '.'I— ot 40 places along with th» new leadership.
nn tlie Republican committee, but ,
:hn still constituted a majority. LKdISLATORS

One independent » as elected and Members of the legislature are
the Hanlev croup, won 19 places, in- ex-oflicio but are \oting members
stead of the 18 previously reported, of the eountv committees.

The Reclstrar's office announced fipeaker Pro Tem Thomas A
1000 vnt<-s were inadvertently Maionej of the A.vembly repre-
rtropped As a result the new tally sentative of the 30th district, ma>y
showed Marv J. Sweeney, a Hanlev Oe counted upon to go along with
supporter, was elected with 3987, in, GNP members. Assemblyman
votes and Charles F. Cahill. GNP Arthur H Connolly Jr 31st dis
member, defeated Continued on Pnpe S. Col 2

ended Malone's control over the
committee.

Malone slmpiy reierred to the box
score at the Registrar's offlct which
showed 23 of his ticket and 15 of
the rival slate, with two Independ
ents elected by the Democrats.

Delan? said his group would hare
sufficient votes at the July 11 meet-
Ing "to end Malone's control, pro
vided Malone does not resign be-
lore "

"We d like to t«« a chairman who
acts only u a presiding officer of
the committee," uid Delany. "and
the chairmanship should b* rotated
yearly. We want DO mow political
tx>«*ei In control." ha added.

Malone appeared unworrted by the
threats of the Delany group.

San Francisco Chronicle, 6/9/50

Election Aftermath 1

• Jr

Truman May Campasgoi isa
State;.

Both Parties
Have Contending
Local Factions

The President
Might Help

Candidates

By EARL C. BEHRENS. Political Editor. The Chrcnicb ' .'

' President Truman may comt
to California and apeak in sup-
port of Democratic candidate*
this fall, a high-ranking Dem*
ocratic official predicted in

Washington yesterday.

MraiUirr.e the slow tabulation of
Die votes cast at Tuesday's primary
election showed no material changes
in the results of any of tht major
races for nominations.

Governor Earl Warren conlUued
to roll up a record combined Vot«
on the Republican and Democrttie
tickets, and James Roosevelt lenjfti-
ened his lead for the Democrats*
nomination over Warren, : •

Just when the President might
come tor California was probiem-
aticat. •

He has been Invited to attend the
National '• convention . of the A^merl-
cnn Legion at Los Angeles In Oc
tober,

The Washington official told Iht
Associated Press that If the Presi
dent comes to California h« will ask
support for Roosev-lt.
TRUMAN'S STRATEGY

The* President likewise would
stump for Congresswoman HeJen
Gahagan Douglas, Democratic nomU
nee for U. S Senator and a Truman
supporter.

The President would also speak
for Democrats in all States which
he might .visit on hli proposed
cross-country tour.

There had been reports that tht
President might plug for th«
Douglas candidacy and pay Httla
attention to Roosevelt who tried to
dump Mr. Truman in 1948.

The Washington official s»ld no
firm decision has been made on th«
extent, if any. the President will
talk in California.

Some observers believed that th«
whopping total vote being rolled
up by Warren might have sotnt
bearing on the President's ultimata
decision to come to California. -

Recently at a news conference,
the President told reporters that h«
would do nothing to drive anyone
out of the Democratic party. He hu
5ald on other occasions that h«
would support party nominees
whenever hls-support U requested.

THE RECORD

The Washington spokesman said
yesterday that "anyone who know*
the President and his party record
car assume that he will support all
nominees of the party. That is hta
record."

While Roosevelt sought to block
the Truman nomination *n 1941
prior to the national convention, na
supported the Truman • Barkley
ticket afterwards.

Democratic National Chairman
William M. Boyle said yesterday
that he hoped the President would
come to California.

The Democrats have their eye»
on California for the 1952 presi
dential race. »

The official -canvass of the pri
mary election vote will be begun
throughout the State Tuesday.

Warren's combined total vot«
topped the million-and-a-half mark
I yesterday as returns mounted from
'all parts of the State.

Warren had 1,B«2,4^» to Roose
velt's 999. 80«.

The Associated Pres^ tabulations
for Governor, Lleutenint Governor,
U. 8. Senator, and Attorney Oen-
enU are reported In the table above
on this page. Tabulations for other
offices are as follows:
STATE

Democratic ticket,
cincu: Kuchel 820.811.
6«9, Collins 111.101.

Republican ticket,
clncts: Kuchel 819,818,
354.

STATE TBEAStTBES

Johnson. Incurobenl, unopposed
on R«0ubUcaa ticket.

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t., June 1 , 1 9/4 **** «jan ^rancisto (T^wimlf

far/ C. Behrens

• .-.

Dean of Political

' ' "" . " ' ' i T

'-* :~i -. «v , ' '

Writers Retires

Earl C. Behrens, dean of
this country's political writ
ers, retired yesterday as po
litical editor of The Chron
icle. ' : ;>

The courtly 82-year-old
Behrens — known to genera
tions of news reporters and
people- in public life as
"Squire" — is relinquishing
the demanding routine he
has followed for more than
half a century. But he will
continue to follow and chart
the political tides as they
sweep the country.

Four years ago, in award-
ing Behrens the Medal of
Freedom at - White House
ceremonies, President Nixon
described him as "a legend
among political reporters."

Colleagues and political
figures alike have been
awed by the breadth and
depth of his political knowl
edge as they have been
warmed by his unflagging
gentility and kindliness.

A native of Shasta in the
Sierra foothills, Behrens was
graduated from Stanford
and took post graduate stud
ies at the University of Cal
ifornia. He served as a lieu
tenant in World War I and
was seriously wounded while
on duty with the U.S. Expe
ditionary Force in Siberia.

Upon his return to health,
he joined the old San Fran
cisco Journal as its political
editor, and in June of 1923
joined The Chronicle staff.

.EARLC. BEHRENS
The Chronicle's 'Squire'

In the 51 years since then,
he has attended every major
national political convention
and each of the national .
governors' conferences. He
has been held in high regard
and affection by political
leaders of the last half cen
tury regardless of political
affiliation and his files bulge
with hundereds of photo
graphs — all inscribed to
"The Squire."

^ • u.r.-'

As one Behrens watcher
observed more than 20 years '..
ago: "Hardly any three po
litical figures meet without
one of them being Earl
Behrens:" •.

Ms x written countless :
articles for national publica- ;
tions on political subjects
and was the author in 1948 of '
"Political Primer for Ameri
cans" for which he won sev
eral awards.
He served for three terms 'f

as president of the San '
Francisco Press Club and 1
was also president of the
Capitol Correspondents As
sociation of Sacramento. He
also belongs to the National
Press Club, the Gridiron
Club, the American Acade- •
my of Political and Social
Science; the American Ju-j
dicature Society, tire Smith- ;
sonian Institution, the Hoov
er Library Association and
both the Stanford and Uni
versity of California Alumni
Associations.

Behrens has been honored
By the- State Senate and As
sembly as well as by the Saa
Francisco Supervisors for
the excellence of his report
age, and two years ago the
National Governors Confer
ence bestowed on him its
first Golden Pen Award.

The Squire himself noted
at a Press Club gala Honor- ,
ing his dedicated service to
journalism that his creuo
these long years has always
been to "disagree without
being disagreeable."

Behrens is married to the
former Bernice Woodward,
director of the State Depart
ment 's Reception Center
here, and "has one son, Dr.
C. G. Behrens.

THE SQUIRE OF SAN FRANCISCO POLITICAL REPORTERS, 1948-1966
[Interview 1: 6 June 1969] ##

Earl Warren's Republican Party Activities

Fry: Who was with Warren in the 1948 vice-presidential campaign?

Behrens : Sweigert and others. He was in the attorney general's office

with Warren and then came up here. Bill Sweigert is one of the
best, and during the '48 campaign Bill was traveling with us.
He drew up all the speeches for Warren, but it didn't mean a
thing, for the simple reason that they were under wraps. They
were innocuous speeches. Terrible to cover. To try to get some
news out of the darn things — ! The Republicans were certain of
victory, "Dewey was a sure winner — so don't rock the boat."

Around about Constitution Day time, Warren always used the
closing about a little old lady saying to Ben Franklin, "What
have you given us, Dr. Franklin?" And Franklin replied, "A
republic, if you can keep it." We [reporters] got so we could
mouth that thing, and Warren would get sore at us. He'd look
down, and there we were mouthing. We did that for a week, I
think.

Hogan: Was Clem Whitaker with him in his first gubernatorial race?

Behrens: Young Clem Whitaker had very little to do with this. He might
have known something. Of course, there was a break, you know,
between old Clem Whitaker and the governor, a very serious one.

/M/This symbol indicates that a tape of a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 22.

Fry:
Behrens :

Fry:
Behrens

During the medical bill issue?

Prior to that. He handled the publicity for the first Warren
campaign, as I recall. My recollection is that he had a speech
which Warren apparently hadn't read carefully which said that
welfare is not a matter of need; it is a matter of right. That
caused one terrible mess later on, and he blamed Whitaker.

Whitaker jumped over to Knight, you know. Goodie Knight,
while he was still lieutenant governor, was talking about running
against Warren. Once he was going to run; then he backtracked
and didn't do it.

When did your own experience with Warren start?
in the attorney general's office?

When Warren was

Before that. When he was district attorney of Alameda County.
You see, first he was a deputy city attorney. I don't recall
much about it — Frank Coakley would. I've forgotten now whether
he was a deputy DA before. There was quite a close contest
between Earl and a fellow named Frank Shay. Warren got it.
Frank then went into other lines; he was head of the Growers'
Association. They became very friendly later; Shay was on one
of his advisory commissions [State Board of Agriculture] .

But when Earl Warren was DA, he became active in Republican
politics. In 1936, at the last minute, William Randolph Hearst
put a ticket in the field headed by [Governor] Frank Merriam as
a delegation pledged to the nomination of Landon for president.
The Axis crowd, as they called them in those days (Harry Chandler
of the L.A. Times, George T. Cameron from the Chronicle, and
Joseph R. Knowland of the Oakland Tribune) , decided they weren't
going to let Mr. Hearst come in. To my recollection, he was a
registered Democrat in New York.

This was a hurry-up delegation, I remember that very well,
because the other group decided they weren't going to let Hearst
take over Republican politics in California. So, then they
looked around for a vehicle to put a ticket together. They
weren't anti-Landon necessarily; they were anti-Hearst. They
turned to the California Republican Assembly, which had been
organized in 1934. After several meetings, they finally came
up endorsing an unpledged delegation headed by Earl Warren, with
the distinct understanding that as soon as it was legally possible
he would release the delegation. So, when they went to the con
vention, they were pledged nominally to Warren, but they were
released to go as they wished.

Behrens: Warren stayed on then as national committeeman for two years,
then decided to run for attorney general in 1938. Since that
was considered a non-partisan office, he resigned as national
committeeman, and Bill Knowland succeeded him. Then he went on
for attorney general and was elected.

The office had been held by U.S. Webb for time immemorial
without any particular change. Warren made the office more
important. He put an amendment on the ballot making the office
the state law enforcement officer. He went on as AG for four
years. He had a falling out with Olson (who was then governor)
which wasn't very hard for anyone to do. In 1942, he ran against
Olson. At that time we had cross-filing. Warren filed on both
tickets. Olson did not. Warren came out with a very heavy
margin over Olson in the primaries and then beat him badly in
the general election and then went on and was elected two more
times and quit in 1953, as I remember, to accept the position
as chief justice.

There has always been a question as to whether Warren had
been promised the first appointment or whether he'd been promised
an appointment. That has never been cleared up satisfactorily.
I don't know who does know the answer to that. Herb Brownell,
who was then the U.S. Attorney General, came out here to McClellan
Field on a Sunday, I think it was, and talked to Warren. What
they talked about was never made clear. I was the one who broke
the story positively because I had had some contacts with Washing
ton, and I found out that Herb Brownell had told some people back
there that this was going to be the fellow. There's always been
some confusion about what Warren did in the Eisenhower campaign.

In 1944, Warren had been a favorite son candidate from
California and headed the ticket. At that time he was not
really a candidate. It was just to hold the ticket together.
Under the law then you could just vote once for .the whole ticket.
During the convention, which as I recall was in Chicago, the
Oregon delegation wanted to present his name for the vice pres
idency. He said, "No soap." At a joint meeting, he turned down
the thing. As I remember, in '44 he was the keynoter at the
Republican national convention.

Then, in 1946, he won both party nominations for governor
again. The candidate against him was Bob Kenny, who was the
Democratic-CIO package candidate; I called him that, and finally
it stuck because he picked it up himself and made it legal. Of
course, then Bob went off to the Nuremberg trials. Warren got
both nominations that year; we still had the double-filing
busines-s. And Goodie Knight was elected lieutenant governor
over Jack Shelley, who later became mayor of San Francisco,
congressman, lobbyist for San Francisco.

1948 Vice-Presidential Campaign

Behrens: Then Warren in '48 was again head of the delegation. At that
convention, after a lot of effort, they succeeded in getting
Warren to be Republican nominee for vice president. Why I was
very close to the picture was that Jim Haggerty was a very close
friend of mine, dating back to Dewey days when Dewey was governor
and I'd been covering at various times in Albany. Jim was on the
campaign trail with us.

I think Jim had come on in the Willkie campaign in 1940.
Warren was attorney general and so wasn't on the national ticket
because it was a partisan thing. The delegation that year was
split three or four ways . A number of candidates received the
votes. But Willkie came out to see Warren — I came with him — to
try to get some friendly spark, but Warren didn't give him any
encouragement at all. Willkie finally ended up as the candidate.

In 1948, Warren was named the vice-presidential candidate.
Interestingly enough, a lot of people thought that if Warren had
been the top rather than Dewey, they might have defeated Truman.
Truman was the bottom of the barrel until he really took hold of
things. During the campaign, I sashayed back and forth with the
various candidates. Part of the time I was with Truman, part of
the time with Dewey, part of the time with Barkley, part of the
time with Henry Wallace, who was the third-party candidate, and
part of the time I was with Warren. Warren's speeches were very
dull and uninteresting, largely, I think, because the Dewey people
didn't want them any differently, because they thought the thing
was in the bag, and they didn't want to rock the boat. Bill
Sweigert was along. Of course, he'd been the confidential or
executive secretary for Earl Warren, and Bill had a lot to do
with writing the speeches for Warren during the campaign. He
gave him a lot of advice; he was one of the main advisers.

In August of '48, some of us went back to Albany with Warren
for a conference with Dewey. They had a two-day meeting, and
then they had a press conference discussing the tactics of the
campaign. I was always convinced, from watching Warren at that
press conference — Warren had a habit; when he was a little
incensed, the back of his neck would get red — and I could see
those hackles come up when they discussed how they would campaign.
Of course, Warren would say, "Okay," you know, naturally — he was
the second-place man. I was quite sure that he would have waged
a tougher campaign.

That 80th Congress had a very good record, in my book, but the
Republicans didn't say anything about it. Truman came out to
California. He was down, presumably licked before he started.

Behrens: He had a reason to come to the Midwest because there was a reunion
of his military outfit, I think. But he didn't have any reason to
keep on coming. This was supposed to be a non-political goodwill
tour; this was in June of '48. For some reason or other, he was
invited to make the commencement address at the University of
California — I've always thought that Ed Pauley, a UC regent,
engineered that — and to get an honorary degree. So, then we rode
on east and back with him. The first day was a Sunday, and he
observed the amenities of the occasion and didn't say much about
politics; but, as I remember, on the next day he said a short
thing about the Congress, just a little bit. It got a little
applause. But the second day he hit twice as hard and got three
or four times as much applause. Then he realized he had an issue.
By the time we got to California, he was really "giving them hell,"
as he said. That's when he called it the "Do-Nothing Congress,"
the 80th Congress. My recollection is that Warren came over as
far as Davis to say hello to the President of the United States.
And that was the time that Truman said, "Warren is a Democrat and
doesn't know it."

Then, in 1950, Warren was re-elected. He beat Jimmy Roosevelt
by something like a million votes. He didn't win in the primary.
He announced some time in the middle of the term that he would not
seek a fourth term. This was the first time anyone had ever been
elected to a third term. He was the third one to be elected to a
second term. One back in the early days, when the term was only
two years; then Johnson came along and was elected twice. But,
in the middle of his term, he ran for U.S. Senator and was elected.

1952 Republican Delegation and National Convention

Behrens: To get down to 1952, the delegation again was pledged to Warren.
Contrary to the belief of many people, the delegation never did
vote for anybody but Warren. He never released them at the con
vention. So, he got the votes of the California delegation plus
a few more. On the train Nixon came on — of course, let's make
it very clear, Warren was a loner. Going back to Fred Houser,
who became a judge later on, Fred was running for lieutenant
governor on the Republican ticket. One time, as I understand it,
Warren wouldn't let Houser on the platform with him because
Warren was strictly shooting for both party nominations. He was
a Warren man only. He wanted to remain bi-partisan for political
reasons only. He was a fine- looking guy, and he had a lot of
kids, and they looked well, and a good-looking wife, so no harm
done in the campaign. He's always been in my book a loner, which
was positive politics in those days.

Behrens: So, after that second election — he went on to win in 1950 as

governor and in 1952 was an actual candidate for the presidency —
I campaigned with him in Wisconsin in the month of March in 1952.
We would spend three days in Wisconsin and three days at home and
one day traveling. Then later on we campaigned in May. He was
making a real pitch, you see. He won a few delegates in one of
the districts in Wisconsin. Then, at the convention, his dele
gation stood pat.

Prior to the convention, at the national governors' meeting
in Houston, the supporters of Dewey promoted, for Eisenhower,
a telegram to be sent to the credentials committee calling for
"fair play" in the seating of delegates. The Texas delegation
was in contest and the one in Georgia — I'm kind of hazy which
one came up first. Anyway, that thing, to me, sealed any chance
of Warren's getting the nomination.

Of course, Warren figured he'd be a compromise choice. During
the campaign in Wisconsin, in discussing it with newspapermen, he
called himself "a long, long shot." In addition to that, he said
never but twice in our history, after a great war, had the hero
of the war come out flatly and said he would not accept the
presidency. One, of course, was Sherman, and the other was Black
Jack Pershing, whom the Democrats had talked about running as a
candidate. But in '52, the Democrats were still playing footsie
with Eisenhower. Prior to that, in '48, Eisenhower had already
told the Republicans, then in '50, that he was an actual candidate,
as was Warren.

But, as I said, Warren kept his delegation intact. Bill
Knowland was chairman. Whether Bill was trying to get to the
platform to release the delegation, I never knew. There was some
argument about whether Joe Martin, who was chairman, purposely
didn't see him or not, or whether Warren hadn't given him the
sign to release them. After the nominations, Eisenhower came
back to Denver, and I was with him again the month before and
the month afterwards —

After this telegram was sent from the governors' conference
at Houston, Texas, for fair play in seating the delegates, Warren
went back to California. Then we went on to the Chicago conven
tion by train. Now, Warren's delegation was kind of a compromise
delegation. It had a lot of Nixon people in it, a lot of Warren
people, and others. Nixon was in Chicago and knew what was going
on. Now, he had made a favorable impression on Dewey and others
in a speech in New York, and Dewey apparently had him in mind as a
running mate for Ike. (Of course, if Taft had been nominated,
the guess was that Bill Knowland would have been the vice-
presidential nominee.)

Behrens: At Denver was the first time I saw Nixon on the train; Nixon came
on and joined the party. Of course, he was supposed to have gone
back and talked to Warren; he was pledged to Warren. The big
hassle was that he came back through the train and started to
talk to his own people about how Warren was not going to be the
choice; we might as well get on the bandwagon and go for
Eisenhower. Of course, Warren never forgave him for that. That
heightened whatever feeling there was before. Nixon had also
affronted Warren by taking a poll as to the delegation's second
choice.*

Warren never, so far as I know, did support Nixon, not even in
the congressional campaign. In the Nixon senatorial campaign — I
might digress to say that all during the campaign Warren hadn't
said a thing about Nixon versus Helen Gahagan Douglas . But the
Nixon people had a man along at every press conference they could
find, and they kept asking Helen Gahagan Douglas who she was
voting for for governor. She always sidestepped it. Finally,
down at San Diego, toward the end of the campaign, she was caught,
and she said, "Roosevelt." So, they immediately asked Warren,
"How about this?" He said, "Well, what do you think I would do?"
or something like that. Well, right away that foxy Murray
Chotiner put it out that Warren had endorsed Nixon, and Warren
couldn't backtrack.

To get back to 1952, Warren went up to Boise and handled that
meeting [in Eisenhower's campaign]. He'd said earlier that he
would campaign; quite some weeks had gone on, and Warren was
getting pressed for other engagements. But he wasn't getting any
word from the East about where he was to go. Finally, word got
back to me about it. A good friend of mine was Republican
national committeeman from Oregon, Ralph Cake, who was handling
scheduling from Washington. I called him and told him that
Warren was getting kind of embarrassing, and, "If you're going
to use this man, you'd better do it."

Shortly after that, they started scheduling him. Of course,
they started sending him into some pretty rough places. He wanted
to go to Georgia for sentimental reasons — I think he'd had a vote

*A similar poll was referred to by Arthur Breed, Jr., in an
unrecorded conversation with the Regional Oral History Office
in 1973. Former state senator Breed recalled that Nixon had
written to a selected group of Republicans asking their choice
of candidate if Warren was not successful. It seems likely
that a copy of the Nixon letter is among Mr. Breed's papers.

Behrens : or two out in Georgia in the 1952 convention at one time or other —
but they sent him into places where some of the governors that he
knew were running for the Senate. Wyoming, for instance. Then,
also, he was into a lot of labor places like Pennsylvania and New
York, and I remember once he went up in the Au Sable range country
in Michigan, which was very heavily Democratic. Some of the news
papermen have told me since that they tried to tell him that he
could get killed up there, that they'd murder a Republican. But
he was received very well because he'd had a good record out here
in labor.

Then he stays through '53 as governor, when he was named by
Eisenhower. Of course, Eisenhower afterwards was never pleased
with his appointment. There's no doubt about that. In fact, Ike
told me so.

Fry: When did you first start going with Warren on these campaigns?

Behrens: It would have started in '38 because there wasn't too much

traveling with candidates in those days, with people like the
attorney general and things like that. Prior to that, like '32,
I was with the presidential candidates, '34 with the gubernatorial
candidates. Of course, I'd probably catch him off and on. Prior
to 1936, I'd had some contact with him as a district attorney
because there were a lot of mean cases over there, and he was a
tough district attorney. Dewey and Warren were supposed to be
the toughest district attorneys in the United States. This is
only secondhand, but in light of the court decision about letting
a fellow talk to an attorney, some of those who served with him
said they never had any instructions like that from Warren. A
change of heart.

But on this train trip I started to tell you about, Nixon
came on and that heightened the feeling between the two because
Nixon started suggesting to some of his people — there's no doubt
about that — in fact, when we got to Chicago again some of the
people wanted to jump the gun. I talked to [delegate] Alan
Pattee about it, not long before his fatal accident — he was one
of those who was a Nixon man — and Alan was one of those who said,
"We shouldn't stick around. We're not going to nominate Warren
anyway . "

You see, under our law you pledge yourself to the best of your
ability and judgment to support So-and-So, but there's no binding.
It hasn't been broken in the past as I recall here, but it's not
legally binding. They were getting ready, some of them. They
weren't going to stay too long with Warren. But they held together
anyway. The balloting was over in a very short time.

Behrens : Getting back again at the convention, the first time this contest
was brought before the convention, the bulk of the California
delegation, all except eight, I think (I think we had seventy
in those days) — on the first ballot, the whole seventy went with
the Eisenhower crowd, but the second time around, knowing that
Eisenhower was in good shape, they voted for the Taft side as
against Ike. Most people don't recall that.

Warren's Legislation and Opposition

Fry: Do you know anyone who would be good to talk about the relations
between Warren and labor?

Behrens: Neil Haggerty would be good. Warren was ahead of his time in some
things — labor, for instance. He presented, early in his second
term, FEPC, health insurance, and he also had a lot to do with
the water project. In 1953, he allowed a bill to be signed which
had a lot to do with continuing the Feather River project, which
later on was taken advantage of by Brown. It was a bill by state
senator Johnson, who since died. Under that, I think they used
the $170 million they voted in 1933, kept the thing going.

Some of these things, you see, were premature. They weren't
ready for those things yet. Whitaker murdered the medical thing
right off the bat by calling the man who was out here "a horse
doctor." He was a veterinarian, the main expert for Warren, to
begin with. He was one of the main health authorities in the
country. He headed up the public health department at Michigan
University. I wouldn't be surprised if he were deceased now.
But anyway, they just laughed him out of court as a horse doctor.
What he'd done was to leave the veterinary field and gone to
Stockton and become a health officer and became one of the top
men in the United States in that field. It was a cruel thing to
do to a person.

Also in the labor field, Warren was not unfriendly to labor,
although one time, as I recall, he allowed "hot cargo" to become
law without his signature because it was then pending in the
courts and he didn't feel he should veto or approve it.

Fry: Do you know if this affected his relationship with Haggerty?

Behrens: I don't think so. I remember right after that — it was customary
for the AFL to have the governor make a speech in those days at
their state convention (the CIO hadn't entered the picture then) —

Behrens: he was booed and hissed here in Sacramento, and then he tore
right into them. It made him mad. When he went out, they
applauded him. I was covering it.

He had friendly relations with Haggerty because he signed a
lot of pro-labor bills. I never heard that he had any unfriendly
relations with Haggerty. I'd doubt that. They might have jammed
on certain bills or something like that.

We put in disability insurance during Warren's time too. We
already had workmen's compensation. Of course, originally the
money the employee paid in went into the unemployment insurance
fund. Later that was changed so that only the employer's money
goes into that, and the employee's money goes into the disability
insurance fund. That was during Warren's time too.

Fry: When was that passed?

Behrens: To my recollection, it was about '46 or '47, but I could find out
in no time from Jack Shelley, because he handled the bill as a
senator.

Fry: Can you suggest any reference for nailing down dates of legisla
tion?

Behrens: Newspaper files, but that's a big job. Generally, there's no

annual summary. Our [Chronicle] auxiliary library was wiped out
when the Examiner moved in. It's in a warehouse someplace. I'm
told it's just impossible to find anything. Scott Newhall may
know about it. Al Denny may know where- it went to. Charlie
Thieriot said you might as well throw it away as put it in a
warehouse. Summaries are made by newspapers generally. Sacramento
Bee has put everything on microfilm, but they microfilmed the
first edition. What I wanted to find out about was when Governor
Olson collapsed at a state barbecue and about his taking the oath
of office, because, you see, he was an atheist and wouldn't swear
on the Bible. I went through the microfilm all right. It was a
Pete Phillips story, but it was written the night before, so it's
not on the edition they microfilmed.

One thing, too, in speaking of Shelley: Warren for a long
time, even in the '46 campaign, was very quiet about Goodie
Knight, who presumably was his running mate. Finally — I don't
like to get personal to candidates about these things — but some
people came to me about it when I was down at the state bar
convention in Coronado. Earl was down there making speeches.
When I had breakfast with him in the morning, I said, "For God's
sake, you don't want this guy Shelley. Nothing personal, but you
don't want to have a Democrat as your lieutenant governor. He
might 'coon' you on a lot of things," which has happened.

Behrens: (When Olson was governor, you see, his lieutenant governor,
Patterson, stepped over the traces.) Finally, I got him to
come out so I could use something about it, a little statement
on Knight. And after, Knight was attempting to cut Warren's
throat for quite a while there too, deciding whether to run
against him in '50, and then he changed his mind.

Fry: What do you think about interviewing Knight on Warren?

Behrens: I think it would be a good idea to do it. You'll get something.
See what he says anyway. He might be a little jaundiced. He was
all ready, you know, to take over in '48, but it didn't happen
that way.

Fry: Do you know how Dewey feels about Warren, especially in view of
opinions that if Warren had headed the presidential ticket, they
might have won?

Behrens: I haven't talked to Tom Dewey about it in recent years. Although
Warren never was out to do a rough and tumble campaign, he might
have been forced to do it. Everything seemed so set for the
Republicans that year; they didn't want to say anything that
would make anybody mad.

Warren had some pretty strong language at times. One fellow
you haven't got down on your list who was sore at Warren at times
is Judge Welsh in San Francisco — James Welsh, municipal judge.
He wanted to be appointed to a judgeship, and Warren would never
go for it. Finally, [Pat] Brown got him another job and then
appointed him to the judgeship. He resigned from the Industrial
Accident Commission with the understanding that he'd ultimately
be appointed to the judgeship. I don't know whether Warren
thought he wasn't qualified or what. I think they "jammed" a
bit. He was his clemency secretary for quite a while. He might
give you some stuff you might not get from anybody else.

Most of it's going to be very pro-Warren from most of these
people. I don't think any of them are going to tell you what I
said a minute ago — that he was a "loner." I might say, between
the three of us, he was a very selfish man. Most politicians are,
but Warren was very selfish. And what Ike told me one day about
Warren I couldn't repeat to ladies; he was so disappointed in the
appointment. He was disenchanted early in the game, I think,
but — last time I saw Ike was two years ago at Christmas dinner at
Jackie and Floyd Odums. We were discussing some of the war stuff.
I don't think Ike liked the school decision. More than that, some
of those communist things Ike couldn't stomach.

Fry: Can you suggest any anti-Warren interviewees within the Republican
party?

Behrens : Werdel, who's down in Bakersfield, who ran against Warren as
head of a delegation in 1952. He was an assemblyman here.

Fry: Were not some business interests, other than oil, opposed to
Warren?

Behrens: Oh, they were. Warren was a funny fellow.

Goodwin Knight ; Labor and Other Support////
[Interview 2: 21 April 1977]

Behrens : Just as soon as Warren decided he was not going to seek another
term — Knight was getting ready to run anyway, because he had
threatened to run against Warren once before, but then he
decided he couldn't make the grade; better stay where he was,
you know — Knight got himself out as a candidate right away.

But prior to that time, and right after that, he started
cutting capers with labor. That was one of the main things
down at the AFL-CIO convention in Santa Barbara; he surprised
all his conservative friends by announcing that he would veto
any repressive anti-labor measures. And he named some of them,
some of the things that the business groups were going to be
for at that coming session of the legislature. He particularly
antagonized the Los Angeles Times , Mrs. Chandler particularly —
at that time, she was on the board of regents — and she came out
flatfootedly in the Times and criticized him in editorials at
the time.

For a time, even when Warren was governor, privately he
[Knight] used to make a lot of cracks about Earl Warren and
criticize him very severely, on personal things, one thing and
another, and he said Warren was using the office for his own
benefit a lot of the times.

Knight got very angry at me one time. Of course, I'd known
Knight at Stanford, you know. I was asked by Newsweek magazine
to characterize him one time, and I said, "Well, Goodie has
never gotten over being a sophomore." It got into the magazine,
and he didn't like it very much. He always used to do a little
jig step when he felt good, you know. That's how he used to
express himself, like that. [gestures]

Behrens: He made a pretty good governor. Of course, then he was between
the conservatives and the liberals ; he was kind of more liberal
probably. He carried on a lot of the traditions of Warren, which
he had to at that time.

Fry: Do you know what it was that made him change over to his support
for labor?

Behrens: Well, I think, purely political. I don't know of anything else.
Fry: He saw this as a way to accomplish that?

Behrens: Yes. And he became quite a friend of Neil Haggerty, a head of
labor. Then some of his very close advisers for a long, long
time were Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter. They had fallen out
with Warren in one of the early campaigns of Warren's. They were
very powerful at that time in public relations, you know.

Of course, he long had figured to run for governor, even
before Warren had decided not to run again.

Fry: Yes. He'd tried, hadn't he, a couple of times?

Behrens: Yes. In 1948, he thought Warren would be elected to the vice
presidency, and he was all ready to move up permanently. I
think he sold his house, something like that, down south, in
anticipation. [laughter] And then Warren and Dewey lost out
in the 1948 race, and then he was back where he started from.

Of course, one year — I've lost track of it now; I don't have
the figures in front of me — I think he won the lieutenant gov
ernor's nomination from both major parties. I've forgotten who
it was running against him, but I think it was George Miller,
Jr., the senator. It seems to me that it was 1950, because that
was the year that Warren beat Jimmy Roosevelt.*

Fry: Who can we talk to who would be good to tell us about the labor
angle, since Neil Haggerty is no longer with us? Who would know
about that? Do you know?

In the 1950 primary, Mr. Knight received 854,207 Republican and
665,468 Democratic votes; George Miller, Jr., received 88,616
Republican and 492,544 Democratic votes.

Behrens :

Fry:
Behrens :

Fry:
Behrens

Fry:

Behrens :
Fry:
Behrens ;

Well, Leone Baxter might know about it. She's now practicing
public relations at Whitaker and Baxter International in San
Francisco. I'm not sure who else. There's a fellow named Harry
Finks, who was very close to [Knight], up in Sacramento, but he's
not very reliable; that's the trouble with Harry.

What was his position?

Oh, he was just a labor leader from Sacramento, but very close
to [Knight]. In fact, about 1955 and '56, he went along with
[Knight] to the national governors' conferences with a group and
was boosting — saying that if Nixon was renominated for the vice
presidency that Eisenhower would lose California. He tried to
peddle Knight as a candidate for the vice-presidential nomina
tion, you see. That was this fellow Harry Finks.

Finks tried to peddle Knight?

Finks was telling people, newspapermen particularly, this.

I said, "Harry, you know better than that." Newspapermen
would come to me and say, "What about this?" I'd say, "Don't
pay any attention to him. Ike's going to carry California, and
he's not going to dump Nixon yet; he's not ready." Later on, of
course, there was a movement to drop Nixon, but that died aborning.

So, Knight was all ready to jump 'in as governor. He carried
on quite a number of the Warren policies, particularly in highway
and education and things like that. Those things all are a matter
of record to look up in your records . You probably have all those
things anyway, and the newspaper clippings will tell about what
he accomplished and what he tried to accomplish.

Who is the best person to tell us about the efforts inside the
legislature? Do you know who carried Knight's legislation?

Most of them are gone now.
Oh, really?

Yes. I know that Al Wollenberg carried Warren's legislation, but
I don't think he carried Knight's, as assemblyman. Joe Shell
might know about it. He's down south. You can get in touch with
Joe Shell. I think Joe was majority floor leader during that time.
He might have carried some of it. I think he can be reached. He
was living in Sacramento.

Fry:

Yes, I know where he is.
he's still lobbying.

He is hard to reach, though, because

Behrens : Yes. [pauses] I'm sorry I can't remember more, but I haven't
all my records here.

Fry: Who besides you would know a lot about Knight's 1954 campaign for
election in his own right?

Behrens: I don't remember who handled his campaign at that stage of the
game, but I think probably Whitaker and Baxter had a lot to do
with it because they were very close to him then.

Fry: He was really close to Whitaker and Baxter.

Behrens : Yes .

Fry: Can you tell me more about that relationship?

Behrens: Well, when they first got in, it really was public relations just

on a business basis, and then they developed a personal friendship.
And then they had a falling out with Warren early in the game, as
I think I told you before. I think Warren and Whitaker fell out
on a speech in one of Warren's campaigns. Warren made a speech
apparently without looking it over, and it pledged and provided
that pensions were not a matter of need, but a matter of right,
and that caused a lot of trouble. And I think they were pretty
cold after that.

Fry: And was that what Whitaker had put in without Warren's consent?

Behrens: Well, he apparently had put it in, and I don't think Warren paid
much attention to the speech till he got where he started to give
it, and then he was stuck with it. Of course, it had been sent
around already anyway, you see, to the newspapers. And, of course,
Warren was quite a hater himself, you know. When he had a falling
out with anybody, he didn't forget things, and he knew that Goodie
was out looking for him, just waiting for something to happen so
he could move up there.

He [Knight] used to peddle stories that the Warrens, during
the summertime, when they were down at Santa Monica, would send
the highway patrol to take their laundry up to have it done up
at the mansion in Sacramento. Now, whether that was true or not,
I don't know, but Goodie used to peddle those stories.

Fry: Whitaker used to have a feature service for small newspapers.

Behrens: Yes, they still do that. There's a son with his firm that still
carries on that service to the small weeklies and others, and
they do a very fancy job. Generally, along early in the game,
they send a small check for a small ad to start it out, to butter
up people.

Fry: [laughter] Then when Knight came along, they felt rather warm
toward him?

Behrens: Oh, yes. They were always in the picture with Knight. Leone can
tell you whether they handled all the campaigns or not, and I
think they did though.

1958 Election: Republican Big Switch

Fry: Then prior to the Big Switch in 1958, the Republicans were having
quite a bit of problems as they began to split into factions —
the Knowland faction, the Knight faction, and the Nixon faction.

Behrens: Well, what happened was that they had pushed — largely it was

through influence of some of the Southern California people, and
the Los Angeles Times caused much of the thing. They always
claimed Nixon had a hand in it. Whether he did or not, I don't
know for sure. But anyway, they pushed Knight into the job of
running for U.S. Senator instead of running for re-election as
governor. He could have been re-elected governor, because labor
probably would have supported him.

And then, of course, Bill Knowland had ambitions, and they
couldn't push him out of it. When he got stubborn on things,
you couldn't move him. He wanted to run for governor, you know,
and so they couldn't have Knight. They were afraid of a bad
split in the primaries.

Fry: Knowland and I didn't finish our interview before he committed

suicide, so I never did get to ask him about the 1958 Big Switch.

Behrens: Let me tell you a little bit of background on that. Knight had
been ill with the flu or something, and he'd been home for a
time. Just before he left home to decide whether he was still
running for governor, he put out a very long statement saying
that the doctors had ordered him to go south to get a rest, and
that just as soon as he came back, why, then he'd get busy in
the campaign for governor — he called it a crusade or something
like that.

But while he was in a hideaway down in Phoenix, that's when he
finally was pushed out of the picture, and then changed,
announcing he'd run for Senator.

Behrens: I was down south at the time, and I tried to get a hold of Knight
(and you couldn't do it) to give him a chance to say in the
Chronicle what he wanted to say about how he was being pushed
out. But instead of that they decided to go east, to go to
Washington, to get the benediction. [chuckles] And when they
went east, he went incognito as far as El Paso, and then they
registered in the Carlton Hotel in Washington under the name of
Whitaker. Whitaker was there.

And I went back, because I knew what was coming. I'd found
out that he was going to run [for the Senate], going to announce
it. He went over to see the president, and then they had a kind
of perfunctory meeting; they went to see Nixon. Nixon, you know,
came out and had one of these darn political perfunctory things
in which Nixon and he were pictured together, and he [Nixon]
announced that he would support Knight for the senatorship.

Mrs. Knight was very sore. Mrs. Knowland got in the act
because of a letter she sent around, a very ill-advised letter,
in which she referred to Knight as having a spine like it was
made out of "spaghetti," or something like that.

Fry : Oh , yes .

Behrens: You've found that.

Fry : Yes .

Behrens: And then she was very bitter, always doing that in the campaign.
And, of course, then that fragmentary business among the Republi
cans gave the Democrats a chance to come in. Of course, Knight
had always been sold short by the conservative Republicans , and
pushing him out like that angered a lot of Republicans and had
made a split in the party and made it much easier for the Demo
crats to pick up then.

Fry: Yes. What were all of Knowland 's reasons for wanting the Big
Switch?

Behrens: Well, of course, the Democrats claimed he just wanted a stepping
stone to the White House. But there are some family matters that
get in there that we couldn't discuss because I don't have any
personal knowledge of it, about his coming back to California to
run the paper and all. I think you've probably heard those gossip
stories too that Bill was playing around a bit — now, I say, it
wouldn't have come from me — and that Helen said that he had to do
one thing or the other, and [he] decided to come back to California
and run the paper.

Behrens :

Fry:

What he wanted to come back for was to run. He didn't announce
he was going to run for governor until after he made a tour of
the state, but it was obvious from the very beginning that he was
going to run. As soon as he announced he wasn't going to run
for re-election, it was obvious that he was going to run for
governor, because he could have resigned and let Knight appoint
a Republican in his place, you see, but he didn't do that; he
hung on..

I say, I wish I had my records here from the office, because
I. could tell you a lot of these things that I don't remember,
unless you would have some questions that might refresh my memory.

I've worked out a chronology of this period that I could send you.
That might help. [pause]

Republican Weakness, Democratic Strength: 1962 Brown-Nixon Campaign

Behrens: Yes. I'm just trying to think who it was that Governor Knight
ran against in 1954.

Fry: That was the man who was head of the League of California Cities.

Behrens: Oh, Dick Graves. The man that Knight ran against was Richard
Graves. He [Graves] was a Democrat only for a limited period;
he'd been a Republican always before. And his campaign was much
contrary to the views he'd had and expressed to members of the
legislature when he was a lobbyist for the League of California
Cities. And, of course, he was more or less of a pushover, as a
matter of fact. He was not known and so forth.

Fry: As time went on, Pat Brown was elected and the Democrats made a
sweep of the state.

Behrens : Yes .

Fry: What was it that led to the more conservative wing of the
Republican party gaining control eventually?

Behrens: Well, of course, the Republicans were getting weaker as it was,
and I suppose that was going to come along some day.

Fry: Yes. But who was getting weak, and how did the others get strong?

Behrens: Well, you see, Warren did not build up the party people. He was
very selfish and kept everybody away from having a chance, and
the party hadn't been building up at all. But the Democrats had
been starting to build up.

Fry: Yes. Well, and then cross-filing was abolished.

Behrens: Yes. Of course, now, cross-filing wasn't abolished until '59.
That was when Brown was in office. It was still in effect when
Knight ran.

Fry: But then after the elections became more partisan — just when the
Republicans needed strength, they didn't seem to have it.

Behrens: Well, they didn't coalesce, you see, and they were splitting apart
and not uniting at all and not building up the party. And the
Democrats were coming along, you see.

Fry: Yes. Do you think that Nixon then was left more or less in power
after '58?

Behrens: Of course, the stories were that Nixon was behind all this because
he wanted to be the boss man, but I couldn't see any point to that,
to tell you the truth, because I didn't see why he'd want to have
a Democratic administration in California and be the boss man of
a party without a good strong [Republican] party.

Of course, it took Nixon quite a while to decide whether he
wanted to run for governor. He had advice from people all over
the country, some telling him to do [it], and some telling him
not to do it, and some thought it would hurt his chances for the
future. I did an article on it one time after going down and
looking at all the correspondence he had. I remember one letter
he had from Jimmy Burns , who had been governor of one of the
Carolinas, who just told him, "Go ahead and run." He said it
wouldn't do any damage, because Burns had been in and out of
several offices. A lot of people wrote to him not to do it, and
others said to go ahead.

Of course, what Nixon did was he cut down the margin more
than half by what Brown beat Knowland.*

The general election results were as follows:

1958 1962

Brown 3,140,076 Brown 3,037,109
Knowland 2,110,911 Nixon 2,740,351

Fry: Yes. Do you think that that was due to Nixon's strategies and
his type of campaign?

Behrens: I think so. It was a vicious, hard-fought campaign and so forth,
but, of course, his weakness was that he didn't have too many
local issues and he talked too much about foreign matters, foreign
policy, because I traveled with him a lot during the campaign.

Fry: And who were his main advisers in that campaign?

Behrens: Well, Haldeman was in the picture, very much so. Of course, most
of his advisers were down in Southern California — Haldeman was in
the picture, and so was Ron Ziegler, but Ziegler didn't have much
of a part; he was just a "flunky" at that time.

Other Issues: Capital Punishment, Jesse Unruh's Leadership

Fry:

Behrens :

Fry:
Behrens :

Fry:

Coming on up, I was wondering how important you thought that the
capital-punishment issue was as something we should document in
this period. Did you think that had many ramifications
politically?

Well, it was not a hot issue then. It was a hot issue for the
people who were for it, just like they were later on.

You know, the Chessman case came up.

Yes. Chessman — that was a hot issue in the Brown [administration]
That really helped to knock him over, because Brown's trouble was
his indecisiveness.

Some people think that the hangover from that had a lot to do
with Brown losing in 1966, and other people tell me that it
really didn't have anything to do with that.

Well, it did hurt him. Some people thought he was wishy-washy
about it and tried to pass the buck to the legislature. And so
then Reagan was able to make a big issue out of it, the same way
that Reagan made a big issue out of the University of California
disturbances. It was a big factor in Brown's problems with
Reagan. No matter what Brown tried to do about the troubles at
the University of California, he just couldn't get away from it.

Oh, after the sit-in?

Behrens :
Fry:

Behrens:

Fry:
Behrens

Behrens:

Fry:

Behrens:
Fry:

Yes. Because of the things that happened then.

There's something else we want to go into, and that's the rise of
Unruh and his power. What do you see as significant there? What
background information can you give us about Unruh?

Well, he made a run or two for the legislature, if I remember
right, and at first was defeated. But then he came along, and
he was just a powerful personality and very bright, a very smart
operator. And then later, after he got in, he found out the way
to do things was to put money into people ' s campaigns , and he did ,
you see. But he was just a great operator and a very clever
politician.

Who were some of his main lieutenants in the legislature?

Well, let me see. [pauses to think] John Knox was very close to
him. [looking at list] Alderman could tell you a lot about
Knight if you could reach him. Jerome Waldie is one who could
tell you a lot about Jesse Unruh. He was majority leader; he
could probably tell you as much as anybody.

I'll give some- thought to other names before you come again. My
stuff's all been turned over to the California Historical Society,
all my files.

That would be a marvelous source of information.
at that.

We could go look

Yes. You'd probably get everything you want right there.

No, no. We'd always have questions we'd want to ask you about.
And I'm sure you'd have more to tell us.

Transcriber-Final Typist: Marilyn White

TAPE GUIDE — Earl Behrens

Interview 1: 6 June 1969

tape 1, side A; This tape was inadvertently re-used.

tape 1, side B

Interview 2: 21 April 1977

tape 2, side A

tape 2, side B; poor quality recording

INDEX — Earl Behrens

Barkley, Alb en, 4

Baxter, Leone, 13, 14, 15-16

Breed, Arthur, Jr., 7 fn.

Brown, Edmund G., Sr. (Pat), 9, 11, 18, 19, 20

Brownell, Herbert (Herb), 3

Burns, James (Jimmy), 19

Cake, Ralph, 7

California Republican Assembly, 2

Cameron, George T., 2

capital punishment, 20

Chandler, Dorothy B. (Mrs. Harry), 12

Chandler, Harry, 2

Chessman, Caryl, 20

Chotiner, Murray, 7

Coakley, Frank, 2

Dewey, Thomas, 1, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13
Douglas, Helen Gahagan, 7

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14
election campaigns, national

1948 (vice-presidential) , 4-5

1952, 6-9
election campaigns, state

1958 (Republican "Big Switch"), 16-18

1962 (gubernatorial), 18-20

Finks, Harry, 14

Graves, Richard (Dick), 18

Haggerty, Cornelius (Neil), 9, 10, 13
Haggerty, Jim, 4
Haldeman, Robert, 20
Hearst, William Randolph, 2
Houser, Fred, 5

Johnson, Hiram, 5 '

Kenny , Bob , 3

Knight, Goodwin CGoodie) , 2, 3, 10, 11, 12-18 passim

Knowland, Helen (Mrs. William F.), 17

Knowland, Joseph R., 2

Knowland, William F. (Bill), 3, 6, 16-18, 19

Knox, John, 21

Landon, Alfred (Alf) , 2

Los Angeles Times , 2, 12, 16

Martin, Joe, 6
Merriam, Frank, 2
Miller, George, Jr., 13

Nixon, Richard M., 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, 16, 17, 19-20

Oakland Tribune, 2

Odums, Floyd, 11

Odums, Jackie, 11

Olson, Culbert L., 3, 10, 11

Pattee, Alan, 8

Patterson, Ellis, 11

Pauley, Edwin (Ed), 5

Pershing, John J. ("Black Jack"), 6

Phillips, Pete, 10

Reagan, Ronald, 20

Republican national conventions

1944, 3

1952, 5-9 passim
Roosevelt, James (Jimmy), 5, 7, 13

Sacramento Bee, 10

San Francisco Chronicle, 2, 10, 17

San Francisco Examiner, 10

Shay, Frank, 2

Shell, Joe, 14

Shelley, Jack, 3, 10

Sherman, William T., 6

Sweigert, William (Bill), 1, 4

Taft, Robert A. , 6,9
Truman, Harry S . , 4-5

U.S. Congress, 1980, the "Do-Nothing Congress," 5
University of California disturbances, 20-21
Unruh , Jesse, 21

Waldie, Jerome, 21

Wallace, Henry, 4

Warren, Earl, 1-21 passim

Webb, U.S., 3

Welsh , James , 11

Werdel, Thomas, 12

Whitaker, Clem, 1-2, 9, 13, 15-16, 17

Willkie, Wendell L., 4

Wollenberg, Al, 14

Ziegler, Ron, 20

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight/Edmund Brown, Sr., Era

Richard Bergholz

REPORTING ON CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT
AND POLITICS, 1953-1966

An Interview Conducted by

Gabrielle Morris

in 1979

Richard Bergholz
ca. 1979

TABLE OF CONTENTS — Richard Bergholz

INTERVIEW HISTORY

I FELLOW NEWSMEN, PERSONAL BACKGROUND

II COVERING THE STATE CAPITOL IN THE 1950s 5

Investigating the Board of Equalization 5

Richard Graves' 1954 'Clean^Up' Campaign for Governor 6

North-South, Rural-Urban Dynamics; Highway Funding 9

Governors and the Media 10

III WORKINGS OF THE LEGISLATURE 15

Amateurs , Leaders , Friendly Sources 15

Assembly Speakers 18

Differing Approaches of Jesse Unruh and Hugh Burns 21

Pat Brown's Declining Effectiveness 24

IV ELECTIONS AND CAMPAIGN STYLES 28

Television Influence, Party Organization 28

1958 Knigh't-Knowland Big Switch 31

Problem with Polls 33

1962 Candidates: Sam Yorty, Richard Nixon 35

Reporters as Audience 39

"Off the Record" and "Reliable Sources" 40

Ronald Reagan: Handlers and Administration 42

V A NOTE ON LOS ANGELES TIMES POLICIES 47

TAPE GUIDE 49

INDEX 50

INTERVIEW HISTORY

The symbiotic relationship between the press and elected officials
is the focus of this thought-provoking interview for the Knight-Brown era
study of California government with Richard Bergholz, now a senior political
writer for the Los Angeles Times . Bergholz describes this as often an
adversary relationship ; it is perhaps a truism to add that politicians and
reporters by the nature of their work require, on the one hand, an avenue
for conveying ideas and actions to the public and, on the other, details
of ideas and actions to convey to their readers.

Times historical files have been repeatedly helpful to the Regional
Oral History Office's research on government affairs and several Times
staff persons have been valued consultants to the project. The paper itself
continues to be a significant factor in California politics and several
books discuss in detail its positions on and coverage of specific events.
Therefore it was important to the scope of this project to include among
its interviews the reflections of a writer for the Times .

The interview session was recorded on February 21, 1979, in the
comfortable library conference room on the quiet, spacious editorial floor
of the Times Building in downtown Los Angeles. Above average in height
and dapper in plaid slacks, Bergholz welcomed the interviewer, provided
coffee, and in relaxed fashion addre'ssed himself to the questions, which
followed an outline sent in advance, occasionally suggesting they might have
been more precisely phrased.

A legislative and campaign reporter and political editor since 1941,
Bergholz provides a professional newsman's view of locating legislators
who are reliable sources of information, the camaraderie between journalists
and legislators and the cautions thereof, the inner ear that protects a
reporter on the campaign trail and the hazards of becoming part of a
candidate's apparatus. Along the way, he offers insights into technological
change and the art of reporting: the impact of television, political
polling, and professional campaign management. His comments combine
idealism with a practical objectivity about governmental process.

Of the legislature in action, he recalls: "It used to puzzle me how
some guys could go up there and spend term after term and have absolutely no
influence whatever in what happened. They were just figures." But, in
press post mortems on legislative sessions, "it always used to amaze me
that. . .somehow the collective judgement worked. . .most of the bad bills
were defeated and sometimes the good bills passed."

Before the legislature became fulltime in 1962, Bergholz frequently
drove back and forth from Sacramento with Jesse Unruh (Democrat), Joe Shell
(Republican), or others, whiling away the hours by discussing the background

and development of pending legislation. Understandably protective of these
companions, he was not expansive about the content of those sessions, but
did allow that they provided insight into issues of the day.

Later, in discussing travels with Richard Nixon and Edmund G. Brown, Sr,
during gubernatorial campaigns, he examines the related matter of information
provided off-the-record or not-for-attribution. In situations like this,
he notes, sometimes "they want you to do their work for them." And, firmly,
"the press shouldn't be used." "Inevitably. . .you pal around with people,
sooner or later. . .you've got to guard against becoming part of the
campaign." As Theodore White points out in In Search of History, the
significance of press-political interactions can be immeasurably greater
when the newsman is a leading representative of a major paper than when he
is younger and less experienced.

A rough-edited transcript of the interview was sent to Mr. Bergholz in
November, 1979. He returned it promptly with only two minor emendations,
a compliment to a fellow wordsmith.

Gabrielle Morris
Interviewer-Editor

7 December 1979

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

Los Angeles Times, 6/9/66

Party Could
Regain Power
Nominee Says

BY RICHARD BERC.HOLZ

Tlnwt P«mc*l Wrttw

Tne sweet smell of prospective
success permeated P^epublican
quarters Wednesday — mainly be
cause Ronald Reagan ran such a
strong race for the nomination for
governor.

Reagan trounced former Mayor
Oorge Christopher of San Franci.«-
ro. promptly issued a unity plea, col-
lected pledges of support from all his
partyx opponents and predicted the
GOP. for the first time *inrc the 1904
election, now is in position to sweep
back into power in California.

Reagan's Novemlx?r opponent. De
mocratic Gov. Brown, readily recog
nized he's in for a tou?h fipht and
said that's the way he likes it. And

Statewide and Lot Angeles-Orange
rountiei election returns on Pages
2 and 3, Part 1.

he added th;U whatever his showing
in the Tuesday primary election it
will be different in the November
finals' when he rnn "zero in" on
what he termed the ultra-conserva
tive policies of Reagan.

Actually, Brown's position isn't
fiuite as precarious now as it was in
the early returns Tuesday night.

When the vote counting began, re
ports spread that Mayor Samuel W.
Yorty of Ix>s Angeles, Brown's ma
jor party foe, was beating him in Los
Angeles County.

Actually, Registrar of Voters Ben
Hite said Wednesday, Brown led In
the returns from the very beginning
and at the latest count held a slim
but steady lead over the mayor.

Statewide, Brown's strength in
northern and central California was
more than enough to turn back Yor
ty1* challenge.

Results from -26.34.~j precmcu of
the state's 30,586 in the Democratic
primary showed:

Brown 1,211,687

Yorty 900,269

Regan had a veritable tfreeze In
his contest with Christopher. It nev
er was in doubt. The only question
was: Will Reagan's vote in the Re
publican primary be bigger than
Brown's vote in the Democratic pri
mary?

With 26,943 precincts of th« state1!
30,586 reporting results in the- Re
publican primary gave:

Reagan 1,223,951

Christopher I17TT1

The rest of the^ rtatewida Ucket
looks like this:
Lieutenant Governor — Demoen-

PleiM Turn to Fa*« 13, Cd. 1

tie incumbent Glenn M,
who t&tii?
back Thomu Bra*
den, president of the itau
botrd of education, and
Lloyd Hand, former chief
<tf protocol at the White
Rouse, versu«_ Robert .jH.
jTioch, Loe Angeles attor-
and longtime political
of former Vlc« Presi-
JU&ard Nixon, who
B«i tare* politically un-
opponent!.

" Steretary of Statt— Re
publican incumbent Frank
Jl Jordan won renomint-
tton with no itraln— and
no campaign; vertua Nor-
>ert SchJel, former ajiiit-
aftt U.S. atttrnty general,
who won in a Mdly-«plit
i e v e n • man Democratic
party.

AttoriMy G«nsTil — De
mocratic incumbent Tho
mas Lynch, who smashed
the challenge of WDliam
Bennett, public utilitiea
commissioner, and Marln
KrUtovich, Lo« Angelea
attorney; versus Spencer
Williams of San Jose, San
ta Clara county counsel,
who eajlly defeated two
challengers, including for-
jner Republican county
chairman Jud Leethara of
Los Angeles.

Controller — Democratic
Incumbent Alan Cranston,
an easy winner in the pri-
'ttary, versus Aaaembly-
man Houston I. Flournoy
(R-Cl*remont) who
topped a five-man field for
the Republican nomina
tion.

Factional Dliputt

TretiUMr — Democratic

^Incumbent Ben Bettj ver-

. ;tu« Mrs. Ivy Baker Priest,

'onetime treasurer of the

U.S. in the Elsenhower ad-

.minlatratlon. Both were

/unoppoeed in the primary.

The two ticket-leaders —
Brown and R e a g a n —
promptly gathered their
'fellow candidates around
them and planned for uni
fied campaigns in the fall.
' For Res^an, it was a par-
' tleularly heartwarming ex-
: pcrtence — and for Repub-
;lican Party leaders, as
tirell.

;' Th* party has been
'• wracked by factional dia-

yean ago, partly on "the"
f Birch iaaua, Murphy eaii

paten, which nw Demo-
tfnti sweep the beards,
Reagan, who emerged *a

• leader of the conserva
tives in the Goldwater
campaign two years ago,
made it clear in the poet'
primary interviews that
he 1* going to try hard to
bring all faction* together
in a unified assault on
Brown and the Democrat*
In the run-off election.

National OOP leaders
took heart from Reagan's
showing.

Ray Bliss, national Re
publican chairman, saw
the makings of "a com
plete victory In California."
And Nixon, at a Washing
ton news conference, said
Reagan will have greater
party unity In the month*
ahead than he had in his
unsuccessful bid against
Brown in the 1962 guber
natorial race.

Nixon predicted that Ca
lifornia's senior Republi
can senator, Thomas H.
Kuchel, eventually would
endorse Reagan and the
entire GOP ticket. Kuchel
backed Christopher in the
primary and has been cri
tical of Republican cand^
dates who won't repudiate
the ultra- conservative
John Birch Society.

Kuche!. in Freano for i
speech at the state college
there, s«nt a message of
congratulation* to Reagan
and said he hoped to dis
cuss Issues with him soon.
Then he said in an Inter
view that "I do not intend
to participate in the gov
ernor's race at all."

California's junior Re
publican senator, George
Murphy, failed to get
K u c h e Cs backing two

from

fYXf Reagan appeared to
havt the backing of llif

..party leaden, including',
tht defeated Christopher, :;
it waa consfierably differ-!;
ent between Brown and
Yorty.

Although Brown ap
peared to be willing, at a
newa conferenoe Wednes
day, to extend a few peace
feeten in Yorty'e direc
tion, the mayor wasn't
having any.

He said In a written
statement issued at City
Hall that Brown appear*
determined 'to pull the
Democratic Party down to.
defeat" in November, ac
cused Brown of "rule or
ruin* policies, assailed his
appointees and generally
made it dear he's in no
mood to support his par-.
ty's nominee. ^

Key D»r«lopm«nts

Yorty slso suggested
something akin to the days
of political crossflling
when he bemoaned the
fact that moderate Repub
licans were unable to vote
for him In Tuesday's De
mocratic primary.

The statewide races got
most of the attention, but
there were some signifi
cant development* in les
ser races.

So-called 'peace* candi
date* — those who want
the U.S. to pull back from
its Vietnam commitment*
—got absolutely nowhere
In Tuesday's elections, un
less they happened to be
Incumbents.

To considerable extent,
this tended to show that
President Johnson's Viet
nam policies, when made a
campaign Issue, have vo
ter support.

Every incumbent con
gressman won renomlns-

aotfw thsy pish to

acorin-j

Htrtv

AU 120 state legfeUtiv*

.sts w«r* Op for nornin*-
ooa at Tuecday'f prlffia-
and then^were few fur*
rises.

Four incumbent atate
mators fell victim to the
jurt-ordered redlBtricting
:t of list year and at least
iur more are certain lo
in in the finals. At least
s ruts assemblymen won
aminations for Senate
tata in their effort* to

Ck e advantage o f the
ipportionment scram-
!-

, In nonpartisan contests,
(r. Max Rafferty, state su-
jrintendent of public In-
ruction, saved himself
om the necessity of any
ore campaigning this
sar. He beat three rela-
unknown opponents

badly he got a majority

all votes cast and thus
wsn't have to run In
ovember.

Locally, County Asses-
5 r Philip E. Wataon,
leriff Peter J. Pitchess
id Supervisor Ernest E.
ebs won new four-year
fcrms without strain.

All incumbent judges on
juesday's ballot won new
irms but there will be
inoffs between the top
vo finishers for Offices 1
id 2 in the Los Angeles
unklpal Court.

The $8.50 million Metro-
olitan Water District
and issue, which only
eeded a majority vote,
as approved.

I FELLOW NEWSMEN, PERSONAL BACKGROUND
[Date of Interview: 22 February 1979]<

Bergholz: — Jack Burby , Brown's first campaign speechwriter and his part-time
press secretary are sitting right across the hall here, writing
editorials.

Morris: You're kidding.

Bergholz: They know all of this stuff backwards, forwards, and sideways.

Morris: Well, a part of what we do is a treasure hunt, to find out what's
happened to people and try and collect as much data as we can
to reconstruct the past. Sometimes we lose people for no visible
reason, and when we do, we hope that we will find sufficient
supplementary funding to pick them up and include them.

Bergholz: All I'm saying is that at least you should know that they're here,
and if there are points that come up that obviously I don't know
anything about, I can at least point you where the answer is.

Morris: You mentioned Mr. Burby. The speechwriter — ?

Bergholz: Roy Ringer. See, Roy and I worked on the Mirror together. I
was a political writer, and he was a reporter. When Brown —
In 1960, Roy went up there as a speechwriter and worked in the
press office. And then Burby came in about that time as press
secretary. So as I say, they've each gone their separate ways
since then, and now, lo and behold, they come back here, working
the same paper, doing the same thing — writing editorials.

MThis symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 49.

Morris: They would have a slightly different perspective than you.

Bergholz: Sure. If you're looking for factual material, they'd probably
see it, from their standpoint, differently than we would. And
their memory is probably much better.

Morris: That's a variable that we contend with. I have quite a lot of
faith in your memory, since you're still working in the field.
One of the things we're interested in is how a reporter develops
his sources, and whether or not they are useful over the years.
In other words, if what you learned and worked with twenty years
ago is useful today, and what kind of directions of points for
where things may come up.

Bergholz: That's interesting to a school of journalism, but it's not much
in oral history. [laughs]

Morris: We never know who's going to use our documents. Have you worked
with oral history at all? Are you familiar with it as a field?

Bergholz: No. History is history. Journalism techniques and methods are
a little different field. So what do you want to know?

Morris: I'd like to run along through the outline.

Bergholz: How much time are you going to need? You've done this. How
long does it usually take?

Morris: About an hour and a half to two hours is about what my powers of
concentration are.

Bergholz: That's fine. You ask the questions, so you can regulate how fast
you want to go.

Morris: Okay, and sometimes you get involved in something which is inter
esting that I would not have picked up on, in which case I'd
rather go with that than to stick firmly with my outline.

Bergholz: All right.

Morris: So where I would start is with a little bit of your personal
background.. Are you a Californian?

Bergholz: Okay. This is all in Who's Who, and reasonably accurate. I was
born in Oregon, raised in the Pacific Northwest, graduated from
the University of Washington, came to California in 1938, worked
in the Ventura Star-Free Press. In 1941, December, I went to
Sacramento to work for the Associated Press, covered the

Bergholz: legislature, went overseas as a war correspondent in 1944, came

back in '46, and started covering the legislature again in 1947,
this time for Copely Press. I was political editor of the San Diego
Tribune, and covered the legislature until — came to the Los
Angeles Mirror in 1954, February, and covered the legislature
until 1963, when I went to work for the Times . I've been
political writer for the Times since.

Morrris: Was politics what you wanted to write when you started in
journalism?

Bergholz: No. [pause]

Morris: How did you happen to become a political writer?

Bergholz: Because I was covering the legislature, which is political, and
I was intrigued by the interplay of political forces in the
legislature. You cover the legislature, you get to know
politicians. Covering the legislature was a problem for me
because I lived in San Diego or in Los Angeles, and I was away
from home a great deal of the time. It's a family strain with
children growing up. So after about twenty years, it was evident
. that I had enough of covering the legislature, and I wanted to
specialize strictly in politics.

Morris: When you say "strictly in politics," that means — ?

Bergholz: I don't cover the legislature any more.

Morris: Politics is strictly campaigns?

Bergholz: Everything else, yes.

Morris: At the local level, the city council?

Bergholz: Primarily state and national, recently. And the last fifteen
years have been primarily state and national.

Morris: Did covering the legislature, in the years when you were doing
that, give you a background of the political forces operating
in California?

Bergholz: Sure. Oh, sure. It's a great help.
Morris: You've used that since —

Bergholz: Covering the legislature was a lot of fun. I think I had more
fun covering the legislature because there's just a fascinating

Bergholz :

Morris:

Bergholz :

Morris:
Bergholz:

Morris :

Bergholz ;
Morris :
Bergholz :

array of people that go parading past there. Some stay for a
while, and some stay a long time, but it was always a great
challenge to look at a session after it's all over and feel that
we had reasonably well represented what had happened. It's a
very complicated business. It's very hard to do.

How did you select what things you would cover? From one
legislative session you couldn't report everything that was
going on.

Of course not. It's simply a case of trying to specialize in
areas that are helpful and to try to avoid duplicating the wire
services. Wire services cover everything, and you can't possibly
try to be another wire service — one person.

How did you make that choice?

Well, you're getting into a lot of techniques about journalism
now, that really aren't pertinent to this, are they?

Well, if you feel not. One of the aspects is, how much leeway
does a reporter have in deciding what he's going to cover? How
much is there direction from the editor?

Are you talking about my case?
Yes.

In my case, I was the only one representing Copley papers when
I worked for them, and I was the only one representing the
Mirror when I worked for them. So it was simply a case of what

What did the Los Angeles
And that would

did San Diego papers want, in coverage.

Mirror want in coverage out of the legislature.

be the criteria.

Morris:

What did the Los Angeles papers want?
interests?

Did that reflect local

Bergholz : Yes .

II COVERING THE STATE CAPITOL IN THE 1950s

Investigating the Board of Equalization

Morris: Could you give me an example of what some of those were?

Bergholz: Yes. The Los Angeles Mirror was struggling to make it in the

PM newspaper field — afternoon paper. And one of the things that
I'd worked on I'd started in San Diego and carried on when I got
to Los Angeles was an investigation of the State Board of
Equalization and the peddling of liquor licenses. This sort of
investigative reporting was the type of thing that the newspaper
wanted, both in San Diego and here.

Morris : Does that mean that you would have paid closer attention to
Caspar Weinberger, for instance, who was in the assembly, as
chairman of their committee investigating?

Bergholz: Yes. He paid more attention to me because I was in the field.
We were in the field before he was.

Morris: Really?
Bergholz: Yes.

Morris: What was it that brought that issue to the attention of the paper
here in Los Angeles?

Bergholz: I can't remember any specific incident. The reputation of board
member William Bonelli was intriguing to investigate, and one
thing led to another. I can't remember a specific incident that
got us onto the question of liquor licenses, except that in the
course of things I used to cover the Board of Equalization and
watch how the board handled these problems.

Morris: From the board meetings, could you tell that something was not
as it should be in the issuing of liquor licenses?

Bergholz: Could well be, but as I say, I don't remember specifics.

Morris: That goes back to when Warren was governor. One of the sources
that we have said that he appointed Paul Leake to the Board of
Equalization to do something about the problem. Is that your — ?

Bergholz: To do something about "the problem?"

Morris: The problem of liquor licensing. That they were concerned not
only about liquor licensing, but that there was possibly —

Bergholz: Whether they were when they appointed Paul Leake — that was pretty
early. I don't know. I've got to say that I don't recall that
Paul Leake was terribly helpful all the way through this. He
would make an occasional statement or speech, but I don't recall
that he ever provided much help. That may be unkind, I don't
know.

Morris: How about George Reilly? He's been on the Board of Equalization
forever.

Bergholz: No.

Morris: Was he a hindrance at all in your kind of reporting?

Bergholz: No.

Morris: It finally went to a constitutional amendment after Goodwin Knight
became governor. Was that something that Knight made a big
point about?

Bergholz: He had nothing to do with it.

Morris: So it was a legislative decision, rather than the governor's?

Bergholz: Right.

Richard Graves' 1954 'Clean-Up' Campaign for Governor

Morris: Did Governor Knight take any particular part, do you recall?
Bergholz: I don't recall any. As a matter of fact, in the '54 campaign it

Bergholz: seems to me that Dick Graves was the clean-up campaign candidate,
rather than Knight. I don't remember that Goodie was ever
particularly hot for this at any time.

Morris: We did an interview with Mr. Graves several years ago, and he was
concerned that Mr. Bonelli had connections with the Democratic
party that caused Graves problems in getting the party nomination.

Bergholz: Yes.

Morris: Would that be the kind of thing that would come to your attention?

Bergholz: Yes, in part. Except I can anticipate your next question, and I
can't tell you what he did.

Morris: It was the question of whether or not Elizabeth Snyder would get
to be chairman of the state central committee, and he didn't
want her to be chairman.

Bergholz: Graves didn't, but Bonelli did.
Morris: Yes.

Bergholz: But as I say, I can't remember anything that Liz did that was

particularly hurtful to Graves. Graves was sort of a political
aberration. It didn't follow the normal course of events. Here
was a guy who'd never been active in the party, never run for
anything. He was "Mr. Clean" at a time when the liberals were
looking for a Mr. Clean.

Morris: Was there any truth to the thought that Pat Brown didn't think
that he could beat Goodwin Knight , so that he was perfectly
happy to have somebody like Graves as a candidate?

Bergholz: That was mentioned at the time. Pat was very cautious in those
days.

Morris: Yes. Well, he'd been a Republican, too, earlier.
Bergholz: Very briefly. He outgrew it.

Morris: How strong a figure in the legislature was George Miller, Jr.
at that time?

Bergholz: Very strong.

Morris: Would he have been a decisive factor in selecting Dick Graves as
a candidate?

Bergholz : I think he played a big part in it, yes. In large part, you see,
George worked through CDC, which had just been formed, and this
was really Graves' launching pad — was CDC.

Morris: Normally you think of Alan Cranston as being more closely
connected with the Democratic Council than George Miller.

Bergholz: I don't know why. He was the first president but George was
a much more aggressive, much more political operator than
Alan Cranston ever was, or is.

Morris: Why didn't Miller himself ever run for governor?
Bergholz: He ran for lieutenant governor.

Morris: Yes. But somehow that doesn't seem as significant a job as
governor.

Bergholz: [laughs] No, it isn't. I think George was abundantly aware of
the difficulties of somebody from Richmond, representing
Standard Oil, running on a liberal Democratic ticket. That's
kind of tough.

Morris: Was he identified as being close to Standard Oil?

Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: How did he manage to combine those two?

Bergholz: Very carefully. [laughter] You know, this is one of the things

you learn in covering the legislature — the voting record of people
with conflicting sponsors, and it's a very neat bit of footwork
to keep them all happy, or keep them all from getting unhappy.

Morris: Did you feel that he feLt an obligation to Standard Oil?

Bergholz: No, no. They were a very substantial employer and political

force in his district, and state senators represented districts,
very specific districts. They don't have a statewide view at all.

North-South, Rural-Urban Dynamics; Highway Funding

Morris: Senators don't have a statewide view?

Bergholz: Very few. You can't survive long, I'll tell you.

Morris: Is this a factor in what's referred to as the north-south split
in California politics?

Bergholz: It's a factor, yes. When I first covered the legislature, I was
appalled that a county the size of Los Angeles would have one
tiny little voice in that forty-member house, the senate, and
as you are aware, the senator at that time was Bob Kenny.

Bob was one of the most fascinating political figures I
ever met. I was quite impressed by him originally because he
had a certain amount of pragmatism that went with his basic
liberalism. He was dealing with thirty-nine other senators,
each of whom had pretty much an anti-Los Angeles bias, and
that's pretty tough.

Morris: Why was there an anti-Los Angeles bias?

Bergholz: It's where all the votes are. The interests of the strictly
urban portions of Los Angeles are totally different than the
interests of Merced County, in the state senate — at that time.

Morris: At that time. Do you feel that has changed over the years?

Bergholz: Some. Some. Busing is still not an issue in some areas, but
it obviously is in Los Angeles. But the old fight used to be
over division of highway funds, and it always seemed incredible
that sparsely-populated areas would wind up with a disproportion
ate share of gas tax money.

Morris: Because of the square miles involved?

Bergholz: No, because of the political clout of the senate. You couldn't
get a bill through unless it took the so-called "rural vote" as
opposed to city vote.

Morris: Was this difference in north and south as noticeable in the
assembly as it was in the senate?

Bergholz: Oh, no. It was there, but obviously there were at that time —
gosh, I don't remember the figures, but — say, twenty-five,

Bergholz ;

Morris:

Bergholz;

Morris:
Bergholz :

twenty-eight assemblymen from Los Angeles county, out of eighty,
which is quite different than one out of forty. No, it was much
more diffused in the assembly. But the senate had the whip hand.
You couldn't pass a bill without getting it through the senate.

Some of our interviewees have said that their observation was
that a number of pieces of urban legislation had not only the
support, but had originally been thought up by some of the rural
senators. Did you have any sense of that?

It could well be, but they don't come to mind,
some?

No. My memory is not working too well.

Could you name

Well, the bill that created the state freeway system was co-
authored by a senator from Humboldt County, and his interest —
Why would he want a state freeway system? The reason is that
he happened to be chairman of the Senate Transportation
Committee at the time, and then subsequently, Senator Collier
came in — also Senate Transportation Committee — and co-authors
were people who obviously controlled the destiny of legislation.
The freeway system, sure it had a great effect on urban develop
ment. Obviously it opened a lot of suburbs to commuters, but
it also had a great effect on some of the rural areas.

Governors and the Media

Morris: What about press conferences? How did Goodwin Knight and

Pat Brown compare with Warren in terms of dealing with the
press?

Bergholz: As far as Warren's press conferences were concerned, when it

came to responding to anyone's question, calling anyone by name,
he had a terrible time. I think he probably knew who people
were, but he just couldn't remember names. He knew who I was.
He knew who Squire Behrens was, and he could handle names — some
names , anyway .

The first governor I knew when I went up there was
Governor Olson, and Olson had a terrible reputation as a very
hot-tempered, intransigent type of guy, but he always impressed
me as a real gentleman because when we would come into a press
conference — that white hair, that classical profile — he would
stand up and greet us by name, everybody, and very friendly.

Morris : Did they have any differences in the use they made of press
conferences?

Bergholz: You're going to have to be more specific. I don't remember. I
can remember there were some times with Knight when it got a bit
tense. I think we would be trying to get something out of him,
and he didn't want to talk, but all governors go through that.

I think sometimes we may have been a little overly impressed
with Warren's abilities. I don't know, he was governor at a
time when the Republican party was going through a change. He
was obviously more liberal than most of his party.

Goodie had some things about him. He was sort of a mixture
of liberal and conservative. But how they used the press
conference, every governor uses it the best way he knows how — gets
the most out of it.

Morris : In terms of getting ideas back from the press?

Bergholz: Oh, no, no. He didn't care about that. He wants us to write
• what he wants .

Morris: And that means floating their ideas and programs.
Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: Will they call in the press to exhort the legislature to pass a
measure?

Bergholz : Sometimes. They all use us as a means of whipping the legislature
at one time or another.

Morris: So is it a matter of a weekly press conference that you can build
your schedule around, or do they call them when they need them?

Bergholz: Again, you have to ask the people who did it. It seems to me

they were all regularly scheduled, all of them. With the advent
of television, we used to have terrible problems because, initially ,
television would send people who didn't have the foggiest idea
what they were doing there, and they would rely on us to ask the
questions that would give them the picture that they could use
on their news shows .

And we, I'm sure, were real dogs in the manger there. It
got so bad at times that we wouldn't ask a question if there was
a TV camera there. We'd say, "Okay, you guys go ahead and ask
your questions," and they'd just sit there. "Now are you through?

Bergholz:

Morris:

Bergholz:

Morris:

Bergholz:

Morris:

Bergholz ;

Okay." Get them out, then we'd go ahead with the press conference.
But fortunately, as we all matured, learned a little more, we
outgrew that.

It got to be a sort of a status thing. Certain people would
sit at certain chairs every press conference, largely on the
basis of seniority or how big their newpaper was or whatever their
classification. And there used to be competition between AMs
and PMs, whether you have a press conference in the morning for
the PMs or in the afternoon for the AMs. And I'm sure all the
press secretaries had to wrestle with this and resolve it one
way or the other. They used to alternate, it seems to me, in
Knight's day, and maybe under Brown's, too. I don't know.

It'd be the press secretaries that you'd go through if you
wanted to go in and talk just one-to-one with the governor?

Depending on the activities of the press secretary.
Did they vary from governor to governor?

Yes, yes. Warren's, Verne Scoggins, was a very quiet, sedate
Stockton reporter who — Well, I don't know. He was helpful,
but he sure as hell didn't originate anything as I recall. Now,
maybe I was so green and far down the totem pole that he didn't
mess with me, paid more attention to others.

Goodie's, Newt Stearns, was very good in the sense that he
was 110 per cent devoted to Goodie, and everything was — if
it looked like it was going to be an embarrassment to the
governor, he would try his best to see that it never came off.

"If it was going to embarrass the governor" — you mean something
that a reporter — ?

Yes, if he knew you were going to ask him something that Knight
didn't want to talk about, he would try to see that you just
didn't get to him. I guess all press secretaries go through that
in one form or another. It does seem so strange — they were such
organized events, press conferences, that it seems so strange
now to have a governor that has absolutely no press conference
at all. You may have one or two a year, and that's about it.
But conversely, if you want to see the governor, you can see him
almost any time, any day, if you just have the patience to stand
there wait.

Morris: Pat Brown's press secretary was Hale Champion.

Bergholz: Started out, it was Hale Champion, and then he went to finance
director, and Jack Burby came in.

Morris: Let me turn this tape over so I don't stop you in the middle.

Bergholz: Then when we began to get transcripts of press conferences, we
used more direct quotes than we used to.

Morris: It takes time to go back through the tape and get the quotes.

Bergholz: Sure does. Sure does. But you can really embarrass somebody if
you quote them verbatim. I'm trying to remember, did anybody
ever talk about whether — Did we get transcripts of press
conferences in the old days, with Warren and, particularly, Knight?
I wonder if we did. We probably did, at least probably under
Knight.

Morris: Let me check on that.

Bergholz: Oh, it's a small matter, but I was just curious. See, when I
worked for the AP, it was terribly competitive, timewise. You
came out of that press conference, and you wrote just as fast as
you could because you knew that UPI right next door was writing
just as fast as they could. And we'd often serve the same papers,
and the first one in there got the play.

Then, as I remember, we started getting transcripts, and
now — at least the way it used to be — you would write an initial
story just as fast as you could, right off of what you heard,
but you would wait for the transcripts to come up to do your
re-write and do your second leads or your overnights. It makes
it a lot nicer having that typed-up transcript right in front
of you of what the governor said.

Morris: The governor's office provides those, from the press secretary?
Bergholz: Yes.

Morris: Hale Champion and Verne Scoggins are generally considered to have
had a fair role in the governor's political planning and decisions,

Bergholz: Scoggins? Who said Scoggins?

Morris: Scoggins.

Bergholz: He thought he had an influence?

Morris: Yes. That he went to work for Warren as Irving Martin's boy.

Bergholz: Yes, but the influence part. Gee. Maybe, I don't know, you see,
what goes on behind the doors of the governor's office, we don't
know. He would know better who decided what. Jim Welsh is my
source. Ask Jim Welsh and see what he says.

III WORKINGS OF THE LEGISLATURE

Amateurs. Leaders, Friendly Sources

Morris: How about the legislature?
Bergholz: How about the legislature!

Morris: All hundred and twenty of them. Did you deal with them as
individuals, or is there any kind of a mechanism for press
conferences?

Bergholz: At what point? When I went up there, as you know, they got $100
a month, and there was one secretary for two assemblymen. They
shared an office, as well as a secretary, and it was a totally
different operation. The senate had all the political power —
most of it, anyway.

They were obviously in many parts amateur legislators. They
would be a legislator ninety days a year, and a lawyer, merchant,
chief — whatever — the rest of the year.

Morris: Would the speaker or the senate pro-tern have the press in for
words of wisdom?

Bergholz: Rarely have them in, but that's where you would go to find out
what's going on.

Morris: Your view was that the speaker and the pro-tern were the most
important sources of information?

Bergholz: You can't generalize on that. It depends on what you were looking
for. Each legislator has a vote, but some of them obviously
are more influential than others.

It always used to amaze me when I went up there — I was

Bergholz: exceedingly idealistic. I guess I still am. But it used to

puzzle me how some guys could go up there and spend literally
term after term and have absolutely no influence whatsoever in
what happened. They were just figures. And I said, "Hell, I
could send my little daughter up, and she could tell the differ
ence between red and green, and if she sees nothing but red lights
up on that board in assembly, vote red. Vote no. And if everything
is green, vote green. And she could have just as good a voting
record as any of you guys."

But to get some of those reds to move over to green or
greens to red, that's where the test comes. There were some
very good guys up there, who were good at persuading people,
and then there were others who just were persuadees. They just
went along for the ride.

Morris: Were the persuaders generally the people who had a position, a
point that they were trying to make?

Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: So that in the legislature, your observation is that a few people
with strong ideas can make the difference as to what is passed.

Bergholz: Sure. They always have. They always will. Sometimes it's a

negative force. At the end of every session, the press used to
get together and have sort of post-mortem drinking sessions.
We'd consider all of the good things and bad things that had
happened — by our standards — and when I was first there, it always
used to. amaze me that out of the several thousand bills that
we would have gone through, most of the bad bills were defeated,
and sometimes some of the good bills passed, and somehow the
system worked. There was no divine force that said, "These are
all good bills, and these are all bad, and act accordingly."
But somehow the collective judgement worked.

Now, sometimes we'd get distressed that what we thought
were very important and necessary bills didn't get passed. But
if they didn't get passed this session, they'd get passed the
next one, or the one after that — sooner or later. If a bill was
palpably bad — a crooked, terrible bill — somewhere along the line
it probably would get stopped.

Morris: What kind of percentage of bad bills?

Bergholz: I'd never attached a mathematical proportion to it. It's just
that it is an amazing system.

Bergholz: Again, when I was up there for the wire services and then for
a newspaper, we really had to read the bills to know what the
bills did, and there were great numbers of legislators who didn't.
They didn't have to read the bill. They just knew that when it
came out of committee, and if Ways and Means Committee recom
mended "do pass," and they had faith in the Ways and Means
Committee, they'd vote "aye." But you'd ask them what's in it,
and they wouldn't 'have the foggiest idea.

But there were always some legislators that we could turn
to who would tell us what's in the bill. If we didn't understand
ourselves, we could usually go to somebody that we trusted that
could tell us.

Morris: Who would you go to?

Bergholz: There were a number of people, but I don't want to name them

because if I leave somebody out, they're going to be hurt. There
were identifiable people, and of both parties. It was no partisan
thing. There are just some people who worked at their job, and
others didn't.

We're getting into personal history now. When I lived in
San Diego, I would go up to the legislature, and I'd — You know,
about a week is long enough to be away from home, but two weeks
is the absolute limit. So at least every other week, I was
making that long trip, all the way from Sacramento to San Diego.
I used to drive back and forth as far as Los Angeles with a
couple of legislators here, and then I'd catch the bus or train
or something and go on to San Diego, get there just in time to
turn around and come back again. But during those long trips,
we would discuss the file — bills that were coming up, and what
they did and the aspects of them. Similarly, as you probably
know, Jesse Unruh and I used to come back home just about every
other weekend, and we couldn't — obviously — afford to fly. So
we would have these long car trips where we would discuss
legislation and everything else.

I used to occasionally fly back with Joe Shell when he was
up there as a legislator. He was a pilot — had his own plane —
and would fly home weekends, and I can remember flying down to
Burbank airport with him and going back and forth. Same way with
an assemblyman by the name of Stuart Hinkley from Redlands . He
used to have a plane, and I'd fly back with him.

But in all of these long hours going back and forth, you
would spend time talking about what's going on in Sacramento
and, as I say, regardless of party, get an insight.

Morris: Would you feel that they would be kind of sounding out their
ideas on you?

Bergholz: No. Purely personal friendship. Joe Shell was a very conser
vative assemblyman, and probably was aware that the paper I was
working for then, the Mirror, was not conservative. As a matter
of fact, I think we opposed him when he ran for governor. He
was aware of what the political outlet was that he was talking to.

Morris : Did you feel that you represented your political views with him?

Bergholz: No. I'm a newspaper man, which is a neuter. It doesn't represent
anything.

Morris: That's the theory or policy on which you operate.

Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: And it works?

Bergholz: I don't know. I've survived.

Assembly Speakers

Morris : Luther Lincoln was speaker of the assembly when Goodwin Knight
was governor.

Bergholz : Yes , he was . I see Abe about every two years now when I go up
there, keep in touch with him now and then. Saw him last year.

Morris: Did he work closely with Goodwin Knight?

Bergholz: Yes. He was, I'm sure, frustrated at times by Knight. Abe was

an interesting guy. I think he had fairly progressive instincts,
but he had pretty conservative sponsors, and it was a conflict
every now and then.

Morris: How would that come out in his leadership of the assembly?
Bergholz: Just in the people that he dealt with and appointed, talked to.

Morris : When you say "conservative sponsors , " do you mean the people in
his district who financed his campaign?

Bergholz: Yes. He was a builder, a construction contractor, and the

building industry is not exactly one of the liberal f ountainheads ,
But Abe was a very nice guy, very personable, and I think we all
got along very well with him.

Morris: Was his election as speaker a major struggle?

Bergholz: Oh, yes. I think Sam Collins was his predecessor. Silliman was
in there somewhere, but I don't remember where it was. Was
Silliman before Lincoln or after?

Morris: He was before Lincoln and after Sam Collins — because didn't
Sam Collins leave under a cloud?

Bergholz: Yes, he did, and that was the old-style politics changing to the
newer style. Sam was a real old-style operator.

Morris: How would you describe that old-style politics?

Bergholz: Well, again, these are impressions and they may not be valid at
all, but I seem to recall that Sam preferred to operate
essentially in private — closed doors, private meetings, a very
strong speaker. He knew exactly what he wanted and how to get
there.

Morris: And Silliman was kind of a reform candidate.

Bergholz: Yes. He didn't last very long.

Morris: Did Luther Lincoln challenge Silliman for the speakership?

Bergholz: No. As I say, I think Silliman ran for something and lost. It
must've been lieutenant governor that he ran for. Again, you'd
have to research the record.

Morris: But you said Abe Lincoln had a struggle getting the votes to
become speaker.

Bergholz: No, I don't remember that well. I just don't.

Morris: Was he of a new breed, looking for new kinds of people to be
candidates for office and trying to develop his own —

Bergholz: I don't remember that well. I'm 'particularly close to him

because one of my closest friends was Don Thomas, the political
editor of the Oakland Tribune — who you should talk to, by the
way. Don was from Alameda county, and he knew Abe personally,
whereas I was from Southern California, and I just came to know
him through Don.

Morris: Through Mr. Thomas, rather than through seeking him out yourself.

Bergholz: Well, he was there, of course, but Don was much closer to him.
He knew him personally. Don's up in Santa Rosa, by the way,
and would be delighted to talk to you.

Morris: He's retired now?

Bergholz: Yes. He was also very close to Bill Knowland, and sooner or
later you're going to get into Bill Knowland, I suspect.

Morris: Yes.

Bergholz: Don came up to the legislature about '46, '47, and covered it
until 1958, when Knowland ran for governor and was Knowland' s
press agent in the campaign, and then he went back to — Let's
see. He wrote TV scripts for a couple of years — a very
successful series. Then he went back to the Oakland Tribune,
and he came down here as editorial writer and retired two, three
years ago .

From the press, he would know as well as anybody this era,
from the tail end of Warren to the end of Goodie's.

Morris: And somebody who worked closely with Knowland, too. As you say,
that —

Bergholz: He had worked for Bill Knowland and J.R., his father, for many
years. He knew him well.

Morris: Would he be interested in this kind of a historical, reflective — ?

Bergholz: He sure would.

Morris: Paul Manolis has been very cautious and not very —

Bergholz: He hates Paul Manolis with a vengeance — which makes him all right.

Morris: Let's see. Then after Luther Lincoln, they had Ralph Brown as
speaker.

Bergholz: By now, the Democrats had taken over control.

Morris: Yes, and they have a majority. So it's automatic that a Democrat
will become speaker?

Bergholz: Well, it's not automatic, but that's the way it usually works.

Brownie was just a competent but not spectacular assemblyman from

Bergholz: Modesto. I remember the press was quite appreciative of his

efforts in opening up public meetings. The Brown Act, of course,
is a tribute —

Morris: Is that — ?

Bergholz: That's Ralph Brown. So in matters of press freedom and press

accessibility and open government, Brownie was very helpful to
all of us. So he became speaker, and he was speaker for a
relatively short time when Pat appointed him to the bench.

Morris: Is that what Mr. Brown wanted?
Bergholz : Ralph Brown?
Morris : Yes .

Bergholz: If he didn't, he didn't have to take it. I assume he did. I
guess most lawyers, when they get up in the morning, they look
in the mirror, and they say., "Good morning, Your Honor." I don't
know.

Differing Approaches of Jesse Unruh and Hugh Burns

Morris: So the job was vacant then in '61 and did Jesse Unruh have other
rivals for the job of speaker?

Bergholz: Oh, I'm sure he did, but again, I couldn't tell you who he was
running against. I don't remember.

Morris: He made more impression on the assembly than most people in
those years .

Bergholz: He certainly did.

Morris: Could you evaluate why he was so successful in the control of the
assembly?

Bergholz: Control?
Morris: Yes.

Bergholz: Nobody had better control than Sam Collins. What do you mean,
control?

Morris :

Bergholz:

Morris:
Bergholz:
Morris:
Bergholz ;

Morris :
Bergholz:

Morris:
Bergholz :
Morris:
Bergholz :
Morris :

There are a number of people who feel that he had really strong
ideas about government, and as time went on, came to disagree
with Governor Brown, and he was strong enough to challenge the
governor.

Oh, heavens! Speakers have challenged governors from time
immemorial. So there's nothing unusual in that. It's a matter
of degree. Jesse did challenge Pat Brown. I don't know what
you're getting at. You can ask the question another way.

Jesse was a practitioner of the idea that a legislator should
have adequate staff and facilities to know the answers to problems,
even if he didn't vote right when he got them. At least he
should have the machinery to make it work. Obviously it was
during his time that they started adding research staff and
personal staff and all the accouterments that made life at
least easier for a legislator — assemblyman.

By then the legislature is a full-time job.

No, it wasn't, but it became during his time.

Did that make any difference, say, in the job of a reporter?

It meant you didn't have one home down here and another one up
there, sure.

It 'meant that you were full-time in the — ?

Yes, but you see, in '62 I stopped it. So I didn't have to live
up there. The people who did cover for us lived there full-time,
right — as they do now. Well, most of them do. San Diego still —
I guess they've even changed. It used to be there were some
reporters that would still go back and forth, but most of them
live up there the year round — except for the Bay Area people.
God knows what they do.

The L.A. Times people in the Bay Area?

No , no .

Oh, you mean the Bay Area press?

The people from San Francisco who cover the legislature.

Yes, it was '66 that we have a full-time legislature. Through

most of this period, Hugh Burns was the pro-tern in the senate.

Was he as strong a person in the senate as Unruh was a speaker
in the assembly?

Bergholz :

Morris :
Bergholz:

Morris :
Bergholz :
Morris :
Bergholz;

Morris:
Bergholz ;
Morris :

Bergholz:

Morris :
Bergholz :

It's hard to measure,
style of operating.

In what way?

He may have been. It's just a different

Well, you've heard it expressed many times that the senate is,
to a large degree, a gentleman's club, and the assembly is a
rabble molded into some kind of a functioning force. The

senate has been very clubby and still is, I
extent. It certainly was under Hugh Burns.

guess , to some

It used to be terribly frustrating to me to go to a senate
committee meeting and find that all the decisions had been made
before they even held a hearing. They had had a meeting before
hand and decided what bills were going out and which ones weren't.
They had a regular program they were following, but we didn't
have the benefit of it, down below.

They never invited the press to any of their informal meetings.

No.

Or told you what their program was?

No, rarely would they tell you. Sometimes they would, but

mostly — As I say, these are the key committees, important things.

Finance?
Rev and Tax.

Jesse Unruh was also involved in developing legislative funding
for campaigns. Was this also unusual?

Maybe it was to some extent. There may well have been some
funding of campaigns by the speaker or by the Republicans,
particularly, there in the earlier days, but it certainly came to
flower anyway, under Unruh and his successors.

Is this an unofficial activity, or is it a state law that says
that — ?

It's very official now. It's not state law. It's just that
they have a regular organization. They have caucuses, and they
form political committees out of that, and it's legal and it's
functional. It works.

Morris: Was this developed by Mr. Unruh, the idea of a party caucus?

Bergholz:

Morris:

Bergholz :
Morris :

Bergholz :

Morris :

Bergholz:
Morris:
Bergholz :

Oh, no. They've always had caucuses, but I guess he advanced it
as a campaign mechanism. I don't know. You have to ask the
question another way. Jesse was a very effective political
operator.

Was one of the things that he wanted to do as speaker to see
that like-minded people were elected to the assembly from
other districts?

"Like-minded."
that was.

Yes, that's fair enough. Like-minded, whatever

I assume that on different issues Mr. Unruh would have different
opinions. In other words, that he wanted a say in who was going
to be elected from other districts.

His first concern was seeing that there were forty-one votes in
the assembly to elect him speaker. Their opinions about child
welfare or hospital benefits notwithstanding. He wanted to be
sure they were votes for speaker.

So therefore he was interested in finding the money for
campaigns?

Right.

Any information as to his sources of funding?

They're all a matter of record. Honestly, I don't know what
you mean.

Pat Brown's Declining Effectiveness

Morris: And the sources of his difficulties with Pat Brown — were those
political, or were those philosophical, on how the water plan
should be developed, or — ?

Bergholz: I don't think there was much of a problem with the water plan.
There sure were other things, though. You've got to remember
that Brown had been governor for a couple of years before Unruh
became speaker. Brown had a marvelous first two years of his
term. He came in and did everything that a governor wants to
do. Then things began to stumble a little and he had the
Chessman case. He did get himself re-elected in '62, but from
then on the governor — any governor — develops a whole growing

Bergholz: stable of enemies the longer he's in office, and Brown certainly
accumulated more than his share in his second term. By the
middle part of his second term, his effectiveness was pretty
badly shot.

Unruh abhors a political vacuum. He goes where there's an
opening. I don't mean to belittle Jesse's motives. I'm sure
he must've had conscious issue differences with Brown. Again,
you'd have to go over each one, but it was Brown's growing
weakness as much as Unruh' s lust for power that brought this
about.

Morris: Did he think seriously at all, would you know, of trying for the
governorship himself, either in '62 or '66?

Bergholz: Not '62. In '66, yes, but not '62. I don't remember any.

Morris: There's some thought that Mr. Brown and Mr. Unruh had different
friends in Washington and that there was some rivalry on party
matters.

Bergholz: I'm sure there was.

Morris: And that this could' ve contributed to some of Pat Brown's
difficulties in the '66 election.

Bergholz: In '66?

Morris: Yes.

Bergholz: Sure. He got no help from Unruh in '66.

Morris: Did you spend a lot of time covering the water plan, reporting
on it?

Bergholz: You mean during Brown's term?
Morris: During Brown's term.

Bergholz: I just covered the legislature. Whatever happened in the
legislature.

Morris: Up North it's considered a very hot topic. Was it — ?
Bergholz: As it was here, too. For different reasons.

Morris: There were various stuggles developing it and getting it through
the legislature.

Bergholz: Oh, yes.

Morris: Our understanding is that as it came down the point of being
approved that Hugh Burns was the last holdout, and nobody has
been able to -determine what .Mr. Burns' objections were. There
have been some suggestions that he held out for budget conces
sions — things he wanted funded or cuts in things he didn't
want funded — in return for supporting the water plan.

Bergholz: That's where he's most effective, yes.
Morris : Because he had been there so long?
Bergholz: That was the way he operated.

Morris: Did the senate ever let any of the assemblymen into their
discussions?

Bergholz: Gee, I wouldn't know. I don't seem to recall that — well, I don't
know. It may have, but I doubt it.

Morris: You touched on the Chessman case. Was that one of the first
instances where Pat Brown began to develop enemies?

Bergholz: One of the first. Yes, I guess that's fair enough. It wasn't
so much enemies as it was a feeling of ineffectiveness or
weakness. He really had a terrible time with that decision.

Morris: Because of personal beliefs or because of political pressures?
Bergholz: Ask him. I don't know.

Morris: In his speeches and his budget messages, he made much of

financial pressures on the state, that the costs of government
were going up. From your view, were there real financial
difficulties, or was he looking for leverage to get some of his
programs through — in other words, looking for ways to cut money
from one item so that he could fund new programs?

Bergholz: I'm not aware of that. I don't know. All of us who covered the
legislature were, to almost a disgusting degree, reliant on
the state government to tell us what the financial picture was.
If they said they had deficit of X hundred million dollars, we
either had to accept it or be smart enough to disprove it,
and that's a pretty Herculean task. So generally, we went with
what they told us.

Morris : Would things like the financial pinch and tax reform and the
Chessman case and then, later on, the minority problems and
farm labor — did you see those as legislative issues, or did
they also become election, political issues?

Bergholz: They were both.

Morris: How can you separate what's a political story and then what's
the difference between ongoing politics and the election year?

Bergholz: I don't follow that. I don't know what you meant by that.

Morris: For instance, the farm labor question went on for some years

while they were debating whether or not to expand or discontinue
the bracero program. When does it cease becoming a legislative
matter, and when does it become a political matter?

Bergholz: I don't know. What difference does it make? Whatever a governor
does, or a legislator does, it becomes part of the campaign —
cumulatively or separately. So I don't know —

IV ELECTIONS AND CAMPAIGN STYLES

Television Influence, Party Organization

Morris :

Bergholz:

Morris:

Bergholz;
Morris :

Bergholz

How about campaign styles and issues? How have they changed over
the years since you've been reporting?

Television has made a great difference. Earl Warren would've
had a terrible time as a campaigner because he was a lousy
speaker. He had a monotone, kind of a squeaky voice, and he had
practically no sense of humor in his speeches, and he would have
had a hard time. Just like Goodie was almost a caricature
politician, bouncing all over, kissing babies. That's great,
but it also reaches a point where it almost becomes a caricature.
So, obviously, television has required candidates to meet
different demands.

Reagan was a quintessential candidate because he came in at
a time when, one, you had to be photogenic and speak well; and,
two, he had absolutely no record of politics, so that you
couldn't reach anything out of his political past to attack him.
But obviously television, and electronic media generally, has
made candidates pay more attention to their style.

Do you think television has led to more people being interested
in politics?

Sure.

Does that have an effect on making politicians more cautious
or more energetic?

I don't know what you mean. There are more candidates, and that
means more incumbents get challenged. I guess that's what you
mean. And that's good.

Morris :
Bergholz :
Morris :
Bergholz ;

Morris:

Bergholz :

Morris :
Bergholz :
Morris :

Bergholz :

It's a good thing there should be more candidates?

Sure.

That's an interesting view.

Why? Competition is what keeps them on their toes. I've been
represented by an assemblyman for the last twenty, twenty-five
years — same guy. He never has a contest. His own party rarely
challenges him. The other party — you know, it's hopeless. I'm
not saying he's a bad legislator. All I'm saying is that he
certainly has had no competition. In some regard he's a very
good one because he can probably take positions that he might
not be inclined to if he had to worry about whether he was going
to lose his seat or not. But for everyone who sees independence
in this, there are others who see absolute sloth and they don't
do anything.

How about the end of cross filing?
difference?

Did that make any noticeable

Sure. Parties didn't amount — well, the Republican party did, but
the Democratic party was virtually meaningless as long as there
was cross-filing. But when that ended, there was competition
for party nominations. Again, competition is the key to this.

Do the party political structures help or hinder competition?
What do you mean?

Well, it sometimes appears that there isn't really much connection
between the party and the candidate. More and more — and I guess
it's always been true — candidates have had their own organization,
and what the connection is between those campaign organizations,
whether the party organization helps or hinders the process of
getting people to run or to get elected.

I'm not sure of what you're getting at. The party, particularly
in the recent decades, has been interested in challenging the
opposite party incumbents and, sure, they'll go out and try to
recruit people, get the best people they can. They also will
protect as best they can their own incumbents that are in danger
of losing. But that "party" is kind of a general term. Neither
the Republican nor Democratic party has much influence — or perhaps
ever did have — but party caucuses and groups within parties may
have some. Again, television and electronic media have changed
a lot of this. Obviously, as we have seen, candidates can now
run virtually without a party — just ignore the party.

Morris: Is that a growing trend, do you think?
Bergholz: It seems to be.

Morris : It also appears that there is not necessarily much connection
between legislative campaigns and statewide or national ones.

Bergholz: That's probably true. There's some, but not much. Usually when
there's a trend going one way, there'll be a trend the same way
in the other, but not necessarily.

Morris: In terms of campaign interrelationships?
Bergholz: Who wins and who loses, yes.

Morris: No, I was thinking more — during a campaign, is there much inter
action between campaigns for different levels, statewide and
local?

Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: In addition to the official party organization, how important
have the grassroots organizations, like the Democratic Council
and the California Republican Assembly, been?

Bergholz: Minimal. Particularly CRA never has had— As I'm sure you're

• aware, that started out as a Warren organization, as a so-called
moderate, middle-of-the-road Republican, and it wasn't until
the early sixties until it suddenly, for whatever reason, did
flip over to the staunch conservative side. But its influence
in either life was relatively limited. Their only power was
endorsement. As other mechanisms of campaigning developed, their
endorsement meant less and less.

Morris: How about the other organizations — the United Republicans of
California and various others? Is their purpose then mostly
for their members, to give them a feeling of power?

Bergholz: Yes, and it is a source or manpower in campaigns, to some extent.
And it's a philosophical guide for people who want to be guided
by it. Just like CDC, when it started, was a revolt against
machine politics and a desire to get more people involved. But
it ran into troubles, and the membership got so relatively small
that it wasn't a major factor in politics.

1958 Knight-Knowland Big Switch

Morris : Could we touch on some of the elections in particular? We touched
on 1958 before, and I wondered if there was any relation between
Knight's try for vice-president in '56 and Nixon and Knowland —

Bergholz: Where did- you get the idea he tried- for vice-president in '56?

Morris: That's one of the things we're trying to check out. Various

people who worked with him said that he had national ambitions.

Bergholz: He may have treasured them in his own heart, but he had about as
much chance as I did. This was when Eisenhower was president.

Morris: Right.

Bergholz: There was a predictable development. They weren't going to dump
Nixon .

Morris: I would agree that it was an unlikely chance, but would Knight

have been at the '56 nominating convention and made some gestures
about his own candidacy?

Bergholz: I can't even remember whether he was there, but if he was, he was
just a non-person, a non-factor. I'm surprised that anybody was
trying to tell you that.

Morris: When somebody does, we try to check them out. Were there any

sources of conflict between Nixon and Knight that would have led
Nixon to endorse Knowland' s effort to run for governor?

Bergholz: That led Nixon to endorse Knowland 's effort, is that what you
said?

Morris: Right.

Bergholz: I don't know what differences there might have developed between
Nixon and Knight. Just going from a very bad memory, Knowland
decided he wanted to run for governor, and Knight had to either
oppose him or get out, and he chose to get out. It pretty much
came down to that. But I don't see that Nixon was a factor in
that.

Morris: Nixon ended up supporting Knowland.
Bergholz: Knowland was the only candidate.

Morris :

Bergholz:

Morris :

Bergholz :
Morris:

Bergholz:

Morris:
Bergholz :
Morris:
Bergholz:

Yes, he was, but in the preliminary effort — because apparently
Mr. Knight struggled long and hard trying to develop support for
his own candidacy. What we understood was he did not want to
run for the Senate.

He didn't. But as I say, he had a choice — he either got out, or
he ran for Senate, or he opposed Knowland. He didn't want to
get out, and he found out that he didn't have — at least, he felt
he didn't have the resources to oppose Knowland. So he did all
that was left, run for Senate.

So he did.
decision?

Do you remember talking with him at all about his

Morris:

Sure! He was very bitter.

Yes. And continued to be. Did he have any chance at all of an
organization that would've elected him to the — ?

In hindsight, any number of us could 've said, "Goodie, if you
had stayed in there, you would have won." But he didn't feel
like it.

Was this a serious suggestion, that he stay in the primary and
challenge Knowland?

I'm sure, in his own group. I'm sure there must have been some
of his people said, "Hang in there."

I hate to ask this of a Times man, but was the Los Angeles Times
the decisive factor, do you think?

You're getting into an area now where I'm not totally competent
to inquire. I think you probably already talked to Jim Bassett,
and Bassett, I'm sure, must have covered this. He was very
much closer to it that I was. See,- I was working. for the Mirror
and the Mirror was sort of the poor relation to the Times ; but
at that time, the Times political editor was obviously an
important factor in Republican politics, and it would appear
that he indeed endorsed Knowland 's decision to run for governor
and in effect force Goodie to go for Senator. But whether this
was the decisive factor — again, I'm sure Jim's stuff will cover
that better than mine. Did you do Jim's?

He is an advisor to the project. We had several background
discussions with him, but they were not tape-recorded.

Bergholz: Well, he's dead now. But his researcher is downstairs.

Bergholz: His whole research on this is available downstairs. I assume it's
available. It hasn't been published and he —

Morris : In your reference files at the Times?

Bergholz: He was writing a book for the Times , about the Times , and a
good part of this dealt with this very subject — what was the
influence of the then political editor, and the Times , and the
Chandlers, in the political developments of the time.

Morris: I should say, yes. The book is not going to be published now?

Bergholz: Let's say it's in abeyance.1 I don't know. It wasn't quite

finished when he died, and I don't whether they're going to try
to complete it or not. They may, I don't know.

Morris: Going back to '58, were the right-to-work or agricultural
interests an important factor in that campaign?

Bergholz: They were decisive, yes.

Morris: Because of the initiative was on the ballot. And was that feeling
stronger in Southern California, that right-to-work should not
be passed?

Bergholz: I don't know, comparatively. We didn't have the advantage of

polls. At least, I don't remember polls at the time, but it was
obviously a tremendous factor, all across the state, as far as I
can tell.

Problem with Polls

Morris: Have the polls also made a difference to your work and to the
major political campaigns?

Bergholz: Sure. For several years, I ran the poll that the Times had. We
contracted with Opinion Research of California, and we would
order and conduct polls during campaigns — issue polls, candidate
polls. And then we gave that up and went to Mervin Field. Now
we've given that up, and we're back into commissioned polls.

Morris: When you say "commissioned polls" —

Bergholz: We hire a pollster to do what we want him to do.

Morris: In other words, you develop the questions you want asked — ?

Bergholz: With him, with the pollster.

Morris: And the kind of a sample you want?

Bergholz : Right .

Morris: Once you've got the poll results, do you use that as a basis for
any analysis or interpretation that you — ?

Bergholz: Sure. That's what it was for.

Morris: Mr. Field has said a couple of times recently that he didn't

think that people did analyze his results, that they just printed
his reports .

Bergholz: That's all he wants us to do.
Morris: Is that why the Times discontinued — ?
Bergholz: Well, there are other reasons.

Morris: You mentioned commissioned polls. Nowadays candidates' campaigns,
I understand, use their own commissioned polls, and sometimes
the suggestion is made that they design a poll which will get
the answer that they want.

Bergholz: That's very likely. It makes it very hard on us.
Morris : Can it have an effect on a campaign?

Bergholz: Sure, if the media is so gullible as to fall for it. We had that
problem for a number of times. Field is what we call a published
poll. That is, he doesn't work for a client. He works for a
group of newspapers or his subscribers. But it is fairly common
practice among candidates to take a poll and then release just
the part they want to release. Of course, they're privileged.
But a reputable pollster will not be party to that, and so we
have worked out a code of conduct with the American Association
of Published Opinion Polls to provide that whenever a candidate
tells us what a poll shows , we can then go to the guy that took
the poll and say, "Okay, give us the facts. When was it taken?
What was the size of the sample? What was the specific wording
of the question, and are the figures that the candidate gave us
truly representative of the finding?" In other words, we can
check the validity of the poll, and that is a protection which

Bergholz: I've used several times when I haven't felt comfortable with

what a candidate tells me. And as I say, reputable pollsters,
who belong to this organization, they're as anxious as we are to
see that their information is not tilted by what a candidate
wants you to know.

Morris: I'm interested that there are enough pollsters that they have
an organization like that.

Bergholz: Every special interest has an organization of some kind.

1962 Candidates; Sam Yorty, Richard Nixon

Morris: Somebody else we're interested in is Mr. Yorty and the fact that
he's been a continual candidate, and why he's been so popular
with the Democrats to get elected over the years.

Bergholz: He's never been elected by the Democrats, except as a congressman.

Morris: Didn't he run against Pat Brown in the primary?

Bergholz: And lost.

Morris: Okay. And his mayor elections are —

Bergholz: Non-partisan.

Morris: Non-partisan. What does he represent in the political spectrum?

Bergholz: You've got to ask it another way. I don't know. Sam was a very
effective personal campaigner. He understood politics, but not
really as a Democrat. Aside from his election to Congress in
essentially a safe Democratic district, he was never elected to
anything by the Democrats.

Morris : He was a Republican in the assembly?

Bergholz: No, a Democrat — in a safe Democratic district. Then he went to
the Congress, briefly, from a safe Democratic district. But
other than that, everything else that he's won — Obviously his
three terms as a mayor were bi-partisan.

Morris: I misspoke. I meant to say "Democrat." Did I say "Republican?"

Bergholz: No. You did once) but he was a Democrat all his life, as far as
I know.

Morris: But as an individual, his personal politics — am I right? — shifted
from the left to the right. He was elected first as a reform
candidate?

Bergholz: Reform. I don't think "reform" is the right word. When he first
came to the legislature, he was — I guess you could call him a
liberal. Yes, I guess — briefly.

Morris: Briefly, and then within short order he became a member of the
Assembly Un-American Activities Committee, according to my
information.

Bergholz: I guess so. Yes.

Morris: Was his running in the primary in '62 because he thought he had a
chance to beat Pat Brown?

Bergholz: I guess so. I don't know what you mean. If he didn't, what
would he be in there for?

Morris: Well, that seems to have been an odd campaign. Joe Shell was in
the primary, and I think I found Howard Jarvis running for the
senate, our Howard Jarvis of Proposition 13.

Bergholz: The very same one, yes. I can remember covering a couple of his
meetings. He was the most wild-eyed, radical right-wing guy
[laughs] you ever saw.

Morris: Was he then campaigning for tax limitation and that kind of thing?

Bergholz: I don't recall that ever being mentioned. As I say, he was very
conservative. He still is.

Morris: Yes. But it was a surprise to find him campaigning that far back.

Bergholz: Oh, yes. He's been active a long time.

Morris: Would you recall how he did?

Bergholz: Badly.

Morris: He just did not give up.

Bergholz: He gave up for a long time. There's a big gap between '62 and
1978.

Morris: Was he involved at all in any kind of — ?

Bergholz: Oh, I think he had run for Board of Equalization or county

supervisor. I don't know. The record would show. I think he's
run for a couple of other things, but with no success, obviously.

Morris: Could you compare the 1962 campaigns, Mr. Brown's and Mr. Nixon's
campaigns? What was the press view —

Bergholz: Tell me what you want to know.

Morris: What was the press view of why Nixon ran for governor?

Bergholz: Why he ran?

Morris : Yes .

Bergholz: It's all printed. It's all there. It obviously speaks for
itself. He wanted to stay alive politically, and I guess he
decided this was the place to go.

Morris: Did you have any sense that there was a likelihood of his winning?
Bergholz: Of his winning?
Morris: Yes.
Bergholz: Heavens, yes.

Bergholz: I know what happened, but I don't know why, if you ask me why
Nixon's campaign flattened out, and Brown's came on. I recall
that Nixon became more and more shrill and abrasive in the
latter stages of his campaign. Brown had pretty good management,
and began to take advantage of it.

Morris: You said, "Nixon's campaign flattened out." Would that be the
phenomenon called "peaking?" Does that exist?

Bergholz: Yes, well, campaigns are either going well or they aren't. He
calls it "peaking."

Morris : Is that a campaign management phrase?
Bergholz: Oh, sure. Sure.

Morris: But "peak" indicates that there is a curve effect, and was that
what happened to Nixon?

Bergholz: Obviously he lost, so he must have gone down, yes. Polls became
a considerable factor in that race, and as the polls got closer,
Nixon obviously became more shrill, and it just mushroomed on him.

Morris: What about the John Birch Society at that point? Were they a
factor, or beginning to be?

Bergholz: Yes, only in the sense that they were probably given more

influence at that time than they deserved in point of numbers.
They were extreme in their views, and perhaps Nixon's opposition
to the Birch Society may have cost him some support. I don't
know. It's hard to tell.

Morris: Was the John Birch Society a sign that there was an increasing
conservative feeling beginning to build in the voters?

Bergholz: No, not at that time, ^because there obviously wasn't. Increasingly
liberal view at that time, nationally as well as state.

Morris: Before we get past that, were there more or different dirty
tricks than usual in that campaign?

Bergholz: Oh, yes. [laughs]

Morris: I'm thinking of the postcard poll that the Democrats sued the

Republicans over, and it finally went to court. Were there more
of that kind of thing?

Bergholz: I don't know. Numerically, I wouldn't know.

Morris: Do they have a noticeable effect on campaigns?

Bergholz: Did they?

Morris: Yes.

Bergholz: Gee, I have no opinion. I don't know. Were they? You're talking
about then.

Morris: I'm talking about '62. There were also charges that the Democrats
had done a similar dubious mailing, and they didn'/t go to court.
Is this the sort of thing that the press likes, to add interest
and liveliness to the campaign?

Bergholz: It's not a question of liking. We covered it, sure.

Reporters as Audience

Morris: Sometimes, in talking to a politician, their feeling is that the
press looks for —

Bergholz: They're just deliberately out there looking for some of this.

Morris: Looking for dirt, and whatever a politician says, the press will
quote in a bad light.

Bergholz: There has always been an adversary relationship.

Morris: That's interesting. You kind of need each other, don't you?

Bergholz: I suppose it's inevitable in the two different functions. There
are obviously examples where the press gets friendly with a
candidate or with an officeholder and they can't see his faults,
and coversely, I'm sure there are candidates who feel so mad at
all reporters that they can't see good reporting when they come
across it.

Morris: Do you usually travel with candidates during campaigns?

Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: Do you pick one candidate throughout the campaign?

Bergholz: No. We try to keep rotating because, I can tell you, you hear
the same speech day after day for a couple of weeks, and you
find yourself listening for what he doesn't say, rather than
what he does say. You start losing your perspective. Two to
three weeks is usually about the maximum. That's what I did in
presidential races.

Morris: When you say, "listening to what he doesn't say," you mean things
you think ought to be addressed?

Bergholz: No, it's just that some candidates — many of them, I guess —

develop your standard speeches, because they're presumably talking
to a different audience every time, and they will give the same
speech, and if you're sort of listening with one ear, and you
find that point A isn't followed by point B, you prick up your
ears. But as long as point B follows, you just sort of go to
sleep.

It is one of the strange things about candidates that they

Bergholz: seem to feel that if they talk today in Paso Robles and tomorrow
in Yreka, they're two different audiences. Therefore you can
give the same speech, and one audience won't have heard the
other one. What they don't consider is that us, the reporters,
are the same audience, and they really don't care what the
audience in Yreka thinks as much as they care what we write.
That's why it always puzzled me why candidates didn't gear their
speeches and their press conferences and their activities to
what appears in print or on TV, rather than what some local
women's group or chamber of commerce wants to hear.

It was one of Nixon's great attributes that he could take
a standard speech and drop in two or three paragraphs of new
material, something topical, and he would know that two or three
paragraphs would make the story. The other forty-five minutes
of the speech would just be a blank.

Morris: That the press would pick up the new material, so that there was
a sense of continuity.

Bergholz: As a matter of fact, he would promote the idea that this is new
in the speech.

Morris: In passing it out beforehand?
Bergholz: Sure.

Morris: What about the story that has come to us that Mr. Nixon told the
press they couldn't travel on his bus with him at some point
because at a press conference, you said something about, "We
don't have background discussions with candidates in governor
races?"

Bergholz: I don't remember that specific incident. I know there were

times in the '62 campaign when he was terribly unhappy with me
and with the Times — both of us — and he may have said, "You can't
travel." I don't remember a specific thing about not traveling,
although there may have been. I just don't remember.

"Off the Record" and "Reliable Sources"

Morris: It sounded as if at one point he had said something was off the
record. He didn't want it reported, and you challenged that
concept.

Bergholz: May have been. Most reporters these days will resist candidates
who want to hide behind anonymity on what they're saying,
saying that they will talk to you off the record, but they don't
want to say it on the record. This is an easy way out. They
want you to do their work for them. So there is a feeling that
the press shouldn't be used. The candidate should talk straight
out.

Morris : But you do respect that request that it be off the record?

Bergholz: If you agree to off the record, you've got to respect it. Sure,
if you agree.

Morris: In non-campaign —

Bergholz: In anything. Once you make an agreement, you can't then say,
"I don't want it off the record."

Morris: How are you doing a politician's work for him if he tells you
something off the record?

Bergholz: Well, he doesn't really mean off the record. He means attributable.
If it's off the record, that means you can't use it under any
circumstances, but that doesn't often happen. If they don't
want you to know it at all, they won't tell you. I don't know.
You have to ask the question differently. I don't know what,
specifically, you want.

Morris: What kind of controls are there on information that is given off
the record or that you acquire — ?

Bergholz: You don't take stuff "off the record." You take it "not for
attribution." You're not using the terms right. If it's not
for attribution, you can go ahead and use it, but you can't
say that candidate Joe Doakes said so. You can say, "Sources
close to," or "a campaign aide," or something like that. But
you can't say that he said it. Then he can always back off and
say, "Hell, I didn't tell him that."

Morris: So that's the way a candidate gets an opinion or an attitude out,
and then he sees what happens to it?

Bergholz: Sure. Better they should just come out and if they want to say
it, just say it.

Morris: Do you find that often that material that's given to the press
is somebody on a fishing expedition, trying to — ?

Bergholz : Sure. All of us have taken stuff on a "not for attribution"

basis. There are times when you can't get it any other way and
if you trust the guy you're talking to, you have reason to believe
that they're being square with you, then you go ahead and do it.
But that's not "off the record." That's "not for attribution."

Morris: All right then, what's the distinction? What's "off the record?"

Bergholz: "Off the record" you can't use under any circumstances. If you
can't use it under any circumstances, then there's no point in
even talking, or there's no point in the candidate or the official
saying it if he doesn't want it used at all.

Morris: It's of no use to you.

Bergholz: No, if that's what they really mean. The term, just like you,

has gotten kind of screwed around. There's background, and then
there's deep background, and there's all the various shades of
it. But what it comes down to is: You can use it, but don't
let anybody think it's coming from me.

You know, Henry Kissinger made a career out of this. He
would never say it, but "a high State Department official" would
say it. Same guy, and yet if anybody ever asked, he could say,
"Don't see my name on it."

Morris: And in recent years, that's caused some problems for the press.

Bergholz: Sure. We all have trouble with these blind quotes — "a reliable
source said so and so." What reliable source?

Morris : Does a reporter ever make up a reliable source?

Bergholz: Unfortunately, some do. Yes, indeed. There are, unfortunately,
reporters who start out with their own idea of what a situation
is, and then they will call people to say, "Isn't it true that — ?"
You make enough calls, you'll find somebody who says, "Yes, that's
absolutely right." So then you go ahead and write what you
started out to say anyway.

Ronald Reagan: Handlers and Administration

Morris: Okay. I've got just a couple more questions here,
Bergholz: Yes, because we're running out of time.

Morris: In '64, by then it looks as if there was a strong conservative
tendency, at least in the Republican party.

Bergholz: The state committee, the volunteer organizations, had all been
captured by the conservatives, right — Republican party.

Morris: In the Republican party. Was it the superior Goldwater

organization, or was it Rockefeller himself that gave Goldwater
the nomination for President?

Bergholz: The nomination, or the California primary? Which?
Morris: The California primary.

Bergholz: Okay. The California primary, the Goldwater people had a

superior organization. There was also a different style in
campaigning, but it was primarily organization. Rockefeller
had virtually no organization.

Morris: The impression is that he put a lot more money into it.
Bergholz: Indeed he did. He had to make up for the lack of having people.

Morris: His family life and the fact that his second wife had a baby just
before the election — does something like that affect the voters?

Bergholz: Some.

Morris: Enough to make a difference?

Bergholz: I don't know. Enough to make a difference, you never know. They
may have voted against him anyway. It's hard to get people to
tell you why they vote the way they do — and believe what they
tell you.

I used to have an aunt who would vote — this was in the days
when the Los Angeles Times endorsed candidates — and she'd clip
that out and take in the polling place. I'd ask her why.

"Well, I believe what the Times does," and that's why she

votes the way she does. If you took that away from her and asked

her to vote, I don't know what she'd do. But there aren't many
of those people.

Morris: And the Times no longer endorses?

Bergholz: No we don't do that. We don't have a marked ballot, where we give
a check and say — Sure, we endorse some candidates, but not in
the form of a ballot.

Morris: Because you didn't think people paid attention?

Bergholz: That has been suggested as one reason. It's not the reason, but
that's been suggested.

Morris: Why did you take out the ballot?

Bergholz: The editor and the publisher have spoken on that.

Morris: Okay. Did the fact that the national convention was in San
Francisco in 1964 give California forces influence?

Bergholz: Well, I don't know. California's influence — obviously, it was

at that time the second largest state, and it had a winner-take-
all primary. So that all of California's votes were for
Goldwater. Numerically it had an effect. That fact that it's
in California I don't see had anything to do with it. The
gallery was anti-Rockefeller, but —

Morris: And that was local Calif ornians , presumably?

Bergholz: Presumably, although I don't know. I suppose a lot of them were.

Morris: One of the things we're kind of curious about is the Brown and
the Reagan campaigns. You mentioned a different style of
campaigning coming along. Did that mean that the two campaigns
were different to deal with from a reporter's point of view?

Bergholz: Sure — different people.

Morris: How were Reagan's people in terms of providing information or
access to Mr. Reagan as a candidate?

Bergholz: Generally very professional. Now, you understand that the

people who were handling Reagan were the same people that handled
Rockefeller two years before, and they knew — and they do now
know — the requirements of the media. They were obviously dealing
with a candidate who was totally unschooled in dealing with the
campaign press. So he had problems with issues that their
briefings hadn't prepared him for. But it was a difference in
style. He was kind of standoffish — He wasn't necessarily
unfriendly. He just was not comfortable, I think, around the
press, whereas Pat Brown was just like an old shoe. He knew
everybody, and everybody knew him, and you called him "Pat."
I don't know anybody who ever called Reagan "Ron." Mabye they
did. I don't know. It's just that they're different individuals.

Morris: Was it evident during the campign that Brown was having problems?

Bergholz: Oh, sure. Repeatedly.

Morris: Were the problems organization, or finance?

Bergholz: Part organization. Finance — he had a lot of money. Any governor,
any incumbent — I don't know whether he had enough, but he had
a lot. But there were organization problems, differences within
his campaign staff over some issues. As I say, he had an
accumulation of black marks against him from two whole terms,
and they began to crowd up on him.

Morris: And you think those were more important than Reagan's style of
campaigning?

Bergholz: I don't know whether they were more important. They were

obviously important. Even if he hadn't had them, Reagan still
might have won. But you came away from that election with a
feeling that Brown lost, rather than Reagan won. Maybe that's
unfair.

Morris: That's interesting, because it looks like two terms is becoming
almost standard for a governor.

Bergholz: That's what Jerry Brown says. "No governor can last longer than
two terms." Warren was kind of the aberration because he came
at a time — Well, the war intervened in there, and it was a
period of non-partisanism where parties really didn't amount
to much. But since then it's going to be awful tough for
anybody to go more than two terms.

Morris: You said earlier that when Pat Brown first came in, he had things
he wanted to do, and set out to do them. Is is possible for a
governor, or even a legislator, to keep renewing his concept of
what he wants to do?

Bergholz: I would hope a legislator would. Take Reagan's case. When he

came in, he and his people had some rather dogmatic views of the
legislature and the relationship between the governor and the
legislature and as a result, there was almost total impasse for
the first four years. You look at the record of what was done,
and relatively little was done. I think when he got re-elected
and went into his second term, I think he suddenly realized that
he's going to go down in history as a do-nothing governor unless
he starts moving stuff and starts getting going, and that involves
backing off from some of the intransigence he had shown before in
the legislature. So they did start to cooperate a bit better,
and things did start happening in his second term.

Morris: But legislators do tend to be elected again and again.

Bergholz: They certainly do, and they do.

Morris: Why don't they suffer the same problems that a governor does?

Bergholz: Anonymity. It's one of the great mysteries, why voters don't
know or pay more attention to voting records. The most recent
case is last year, when Prop 13 was so much in everybody's minds.
The very people who opposed Prop 13 and who said it would never
work and who are fairly well identified in Sacramento as, if not
big spenders, spenders anyway — they generally succeeded, at the
same time the Prop 13 movement was going.

Now, why? Because somehow they never made the linkage
between being wrong on Prop 13 and being up there, incumbent,
running for re-election.

Morris: Is that a function of the campaign that was run for Prop 13?

Bergholz: Part of it is, but it amazed me that opponents of quote, "big
spenders," whichever party, never seemed to be able to make a
case despite those things. I don't know.

Morris : I was thinking that one of the things that has been said is that
campaign-management firms have packaged issues like Prop 13, or
packaged somebody like Ronald Reagan. So that it's not a true
picture of the situation that the voters are getting.

Bergholz: Candidate's a free soul. He can either accept it or not.
Nobody really gets dragooned into running for office.

Morris: True, but in some cases are campaign-management firms actually a
part of the decision-making — ?

Bergholz: Oh, sure. In most cases. Sure. In many cases that's true.

Morris: So that they really come to be more than just technicians who
place your advertising.

Bergholz: Indeed.

Morris: And that affects, then, what happens in political campaigns. It's
more than the candidate that you're actually getting. You're
getting the campaign firm, too.

Bergholz: Yes, it all comes out as a total picture. Yes, sure.

V A NOTE ON LOS ANGELES TIMES POLICIES

Morris: One last question. We may have touched on it in some of the

other things we've said. When the L.A. Times was re-organized
in the sixties, did that have any impact on how political
coverage —

Bergholz: Oh, yes. It sure did. That, I think, gets back to the Nixon

thing. The '62 gubernatorial campaign really was the first one
in which the Times coverage varied sharply from what it had been
in the past. At that time, Otis Chandler had just taken over,
and the editor here was Nick Williams. We were all dedicated
to getting out of the conservative -Republican-oriented news
coverage that had marked the Times in the past. So I was brought
here from the Mirror, and Carl Greenberg was brought here from
the Examiner , and the two of us covered that campaign with a
clear understanding all the way around that we would simply
report the campaign. We weren't going to get involved in any
slanted coverage of any kind whatsoever, and this obviously was
a shock to Nixon, who had had very favored treatment by the
Times in the past. I'm sure he felt that something had happened,
and he didn't know what it was. I gather he blamed Carl and me,
when it was really a change in the policy of the paper.

Whatever the case, I had occasion to look over that coverage
a while back, and we did pretty well, considering all the things.
There were stories that I wish we had expanded more on, but we
still did a good job, the two of us. Ever since then, we've
tried to expand on that. That's why I say we do not stay with
a candidate long enough so you become part of the campaign.
Inevitably, you drink and you eat and you pal around with people,
sooner or later you become part of them. I'm not saying you
should be unfriendly. It's just that you've got to guard against
becoming a part of the campaign apparatus.

Morris: And partisan?
Bergholz: Yes.

Morris: Does that mean that after the reorganization there's been more

distance between the publisher's office and the editorial office?

Bergholz : Oh, they never told us what to write. The publisher's office

never did. The news coverage is out of the news room. I'm sure
there were complaints about the way we were writing things, but
nobody ever said "Hey, go easy" on somebody or "Do something for
this guy and not that guy" or anything like that. It just didn't
happen. Both Carl and I had been through enough campaigns so
that we knew how to write objectively — at least as best we could.

Morris: So does that mean that there are not any occasions when a

reporter's personal opinion will differ from the official position
of the paper?

Bergholz: Oh, heavens. You're asking a question where there's no answer.
I don't know what the official position of the paper is. So
whether it differs, I wouldn't know. How is it expressed, in
our editorials?

Morris: That would be the most visible.

Bergholz: Well, our editorials — they're all over the lot. I don't know
what our position is on some things, and it wouldn't make any
difference anyway, since we have no connection with the
editorial page.

Now, there is getting to be more news analysis, which is
bordering on commentary where there is opinion involved in that.
But that, again, as far as I know bears no particular relation
ship to editorial policy. Maybe to some people it does, but —

Morris: And that's up to the nature of the news analysis and the person
who writes it.

Bergholz: Yes. It's like what you would call a background story — why did

something happen? You can reconstruct it, and you can say, "This
happened because this happened." It'll be your opinion, and
presumably your opinion is based on your experience. But it is to
that extent subjective. And it's dangerous, you know. You can't
let your biases show up in your analysis.

Transcriber: Bob McCargar
Final Typist: Matthew Schneider

TAPE GUIDE — Richard Bergholz

Date of Interview: 22 February 1979

tape 1, side A 1

tape 1, side B 13

tape 2, side A 26

tape 2, side B 37

INDEX — Richard Bergholz

Birch, John, Society, 38

Bonelli, William, 5, 7

Brown, Edmund G., Jr., 12

Brown, Edmund G., Sr. , 7, 21, 24-26, 37, 44-45

Brown, Ralph, 20-21

Brown Act, 21

Burby, Jack, 1

Burns, Hugh, 22-23, 26

California, assembly

Ways and Means Committee, 17

Speakers , 20-22

Revenue and Taxation Committee, 23
California, legislature, 15-17, 45
California, senate, 8-10, 23
California Democratic Council, 8, 30
California Republican Assembly, 30
California State (appointive)

Equalization, Board of, 6-7
Chessman case, 26
Collins, Sam, 19, 21
Cranston, Alan, 8

election campaigns, national
1956 vice presidential, 31-32
1964 presidential, 43-44

election campaigns, state, 24, 29
1954 gubernatorial, 6-8
1956 gubernatorial, 25
1958 gubernatorial, 31-33
1962 gubernatorial, 36-38, 47
1966 gubernatorial, 44-45
1978, Proposition 13, 46

election campaign techniques, 30, 46
cross-filing, 29
opinion polls, 33-35, 38

Field, Mervin, 33-34

Graves, Richard, 7-8
Greenburg, Carl, 47-48

highways, funding, ,9-10
Hinkley, Stuart, 17

Jarvis , Howard , 36

Kenny, Robert, 9

'Knight, Goodwin, 6-7, 11-13, 28
1958 campaign, 32-33

Leake, Paul, 6

Lincoln, Luther ("Abe"), 18-19

Los Angeles

political influence of, 9-10
Los Angeles Mrror, 4-5, 18
Los Angeles Times, 32, 33, 43-44, 47-48

Miller, George, Jr., 7-8

Nixon, Richard M.

1962 campaign, 37-38, 40, 47

Olson, Culbert, 10

Opinion Research of California, 33

the press, political coverage, 3-4, 8, 16, 23, 28, 41-42, 47-48
press conferences, 10-13, 15

and accessibility of information, 21
influence of television, 28
use of polls, 33-35

on election campaigns, 39-40, 43-44

Reagan, Ronald, 28, 44-45
Ringer , Roy , 1

Scoggins, Verne, 12-14
Shell, Joseph, 17-18
Snyder, Elizabeth, 7
Standard Oil Company

and the legislature, 8

television, 11

influence on election campaigns, 28-29
Thomas, Don, 19-20

Unruh, Jesse, 17, 21-25

Warren, Earl, 10-12, 28
Weinberger, Caspar, 5
Welsh , James , 14

Yorty, Sam, 35-36

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight /Edmund Brown, Sr., Era

Sydney Kossen

COVERING GOODWIN KNIGHT AND THE LEGISLATURE
FOR THE SAN FRANCISCO 'NEWS, 1956-1958

An Interview Conducted by

Sarah Sharp

in 1979

SYDNEY KOSSEN
1980

TABLE OF CONTENTS — Sydney Kossen

INTERVIEW HISTORY i

I BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND 1

II EARLY CAREER NOTES 4

III ASSESSING GOVERNOR GOODWIN KNIGHT'S RELATIONSHIP WITH

THE LEGISLATURE: AN OBSERVER'S VISTA 6

Highways 6

Water 9

Private Meetings 15

Taxes and the Budget 16

Lobbying Efforts at Several Levels: CTA, Oil, and Labor 18

Conclusions 24

IV THE DAILY SCHEDULE AS REPORTER IN SACRAMENTO: GETTING

INFORMATION 26

V CAMPAIGN COVERAGE: 1956, 1958 30

TAPE GUIDE J6

INDEX 37

INTERVIEW HISTORY

Because of the special role that newspaper reporters have in observing
state government, the staff of the Goodwin J. Knight-Edmund G. Brown, Sr.
era oral history study was eager to interview Bay Area journalist Sydney
Kossen for his perspective on Goodwin Knight as governor of California. Mr.
Kossen had covered the state legislature for the San Francisco News beginning
in 1956, after previous experience as Sacramento reporter for the International
News Service. His comments included contrasts of Knight with earlier Republi
can governors Earl Warren and Frank F. Merriam, whose activities Kossen also
covered.

Mr. Kossen now holds the demanding position of political writer for the
San Francisco Examiner and lives in San Francisco. He took time from constant
deadlines to talk with the interviewer on 5 July 1979 at his office in the
Examiner building in downtown San Francisco. Mr. Kossen kindly met the inter
viewer at the elevator and guided her to a large wood-paneled conference room.
A large window that looked out over the city was set into one wall of this
room, while an oversized map of the world covered another wall. Interviewer
and interviewee sat in suede cloth chairs at one end of a long, heavy wood
table.

The main topic for this single, brief interview was Mr. Kossen*s insights
into Governor Knight from the viewpoint of a political reporter. Focusing on
the larger picture rather than on many fine details, Kossen assessed Knight's
relationship with the legislature and his handling of controversial issues
such as highways, water, taxes and the budget, and various lobbying efforts.
Mr. Kossen also displayed a special capacity to recognize the complex dimen
sions which lobbying adds to state government. In addition, since the San
Francisco News had assigned him to cover the capital from the perspective of
San Francisco, Mr. Kossen kept a watchful eye on legislation that would
critically affect this city. Also, he delighted in describing Governor Knight
in his frequent press conferences and Knight's able juggling of questions from
the press.

Kossen quickly reviewed and returned the rough-edited transcript of this
interview, making slight changes in wording only. His interview is a worthy
contribution to our knowledge of Goodwin Knight and his relationship with the
legislature and the press in Sacramento.

Sarah Lee Sharp
Interviewer-Editor

15 March 1980

Regional Oral History Office

486 The Bancroft Library

University of California at Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office

Room 486 ^

The Bancroft Library

University of California

Berkeley, California 94720

Governmental History Documentation Project Interviewee

Your full name Sydney Kossen

Date of birth Oct- 24' 191S

Father's full name Harrv Kossen

Father's place of birth Mogilev, Russia

Mother's full Sadie Grisdov Kossen

Mother's place of birth Mogilev, Russia

Where did you grow up? Seattle

Education B.A. (Journalism & Poli Sci) U. of Washington

Early employment International News Service, San Francisco News

& S.F. Examiner (reporter, assist, city editor, political _
editor & editorial page editor)

Positions held in state government none

Employment after leaving state government

San Francisco News_. 11/1/57

«*•_

Trr --, - »'.< -:- .- '

htfor

r ' "

l^^^*1!"**

i^ecBG

BY SYDNEY KOSSEN

A'ru-t Political Idiiar

Governor Knight has backed out of his campaign
to bf re-elected.

He'll let. Senator Knowland have a clear field for
the. GOP nomination for governor next year.

Knight will nm for the U. S. Senate against Mayor
(Jeorge Chri.stophrr and other Republicans.

Mayor Christopher has no intention of getting out
of the Senate campaign.

THE MAYOR TOLD THE NEWS hy phone from
Athcn^. Greece, today that he is "in the fight to the
finish "

Ho said Knight had "broken his solemn \vord of
honor" by entering the Senate rare.

"My campaign is all set, and my financing is all
«pt " declared M.ivor Christopher. "I'm happy and
eager al the thought of an exciting campaign "

Kmsht did not directly announce his switch.

HE WENT INTO SECLUSION a coupte of days ago,
then U't the word "leak" out through Republicans in
California and Washington.

When reportora tried to reach Knight today, they
got (hi- brush-off from his secretaries, who. said he
'simply is not available."

Rut the fart that Knight was "not available", and
did not -immediately deny the reports of his switch^

RELATED \EWS- Ruth FMHIPJ/ tells C,OP prrs.wi?
or Kn»fj/!f. Pnqr 7 Arthur Crnjlnr and Jack Poscnbnvm
ron/wrtit.'/'nfje 37.

made it clear he had yielded to pressure from high-
rankyjfc-ftepubli< ans. ano woi^d give^Kn.owland the
cMnce to run for the governorship without sl-rious
(W)P opposition. .'•

MAYOR CHRISTOPHER T»tKED to Ttye NVus
from his Alhrns hiXel suifp. whrtre he-i.s- reslin^ bofors
jiomj; to fsrl^ol. . -'

"I have talko'l with holh Mr Knouhnd and' Mr.
Knight »N at least thrcr occasions about thev Senate
race, the mayor said. '•"

"Iti each caw, thev ass)irnl, me ..they 'Wrttfld not
M-y to interfere wjlh my camp.Ti£n.

"THE LAST TI'ME f talkcd/with* Mr. JCnlght was In
the presence of Jiis wife and mine.

"He gave me his word of honor that -he wo'ufd; not" ~
run for the Senate. ~ -•-

"If it is true that he now is fn Ou? Senate -race, he
has brpken his Solemn void of honor.

"I am unhappy U> learn that Mr. Knight may not
be a man of his word 1/fjave had every reason t6 be
lieve that he. was.^

THE MA VCR denied reports that he had received
phone calls from California last night and today, with
drawing financial support to him.

"I have had no calls from back home until yours,

just TOW," he said
"My financing is assurrd and
I am in the race to the finrsft"'

I -

THK NEWS inform*"! 'Mayor
ChriMopher that hi.x r<tmp*icnj
manager. f)on V. Nirhol^on. hail j
isMirrl a slalfmont. today that ,
chri^tophor v-culd "r«?vi'iw hi< j

"I have nul hern in toiich w;th t
N'iiholsim He is not speaking j
with any authority from me on
ihis -subject. If he is saying
that I will get out of the raee. he
i.s dead wrong,'' said Christo
pher.

("hristopher said he d be hack
Nov. 9 "full of fisht "

"It's a matter for the mayor's
persona! derision." Nicholson
said. "Obviously, he will reap
praise hi* position upmi his* re
turn to San Francisco Nov. 11.
He i« a Republican— a psrty,man
— and unuld probaMy/fei-ide i
what i.s the hcs» tjxTTftor th'
party, as against his own ambi
lion.

"THE GOVERNORSHIP ap

parenily has been harmoniously j
resolved. It would be desirable j
(or the party, of course, if »imi-
•lar aciion rould. be achieved in
the senatorial rm-e.

"The mayor is the oii'^t;tndins

can.j'-late. a* shown hy a state-

ui-ie {.oil taken hy our commit-

t>':. However. Knisht '• name

; was not on that poll because he

j wa*- not considered a candidate

i at 'hat time " •

and -->:•! in Oak
land lod»i' lTT3*-4ny Knigh'. de-

cision "has hren taken hy him
on his o*n responsibility."

"THKRK HAS 6KEN.no com
mitment directly or indirectly
on my part or my represent
atives to support Knight for any
other offirp. rlcrthe or appoint
ive." Knowland said

Knowland said hU_orily infor
mation on>.Kni2hts plans was
based on newspaper reports to
day.

"A* 1 stated in my announce
ment of candidacy, the purpose
of the direct primary is to offer
the voters a choice," Knowland
went on.

"REfJARDLKSS of what Gov
ernor Knight finally determines
to do. we shall still 6ive the
Republican and D e m oc r a t i c
See KNIGHT. Page 4.

KM IGHTi Scared^

Of feace for Governor.

Continued Jnrn Page 1-

vnten a choice between the at
torney general (Democrat Ed
mund G. Brown) and nryself."

Knight, just over a tiege of
the flu. reportedly reached hU
decision yesterday at his out-of-
state hideaway.

Knight's campaign managers,
the San Francisco husband and
wife team of Clem Whitaker and
.Leone Baxter, also were report
ed out of town. This suggested
that they had "a 'hand inShe
strategy, recognizing Knight
could not be re-elected.

The move, if completed, would
leave Democratic .candidate
Brown in a lone struggle with
Knowland in June.

BROWV HAD counted on the
GOP rivals to rip their party
ipart. He had expected Knight
to get a large labor vote but
Knowland to win.

Unopposed in Lis own party,
B,rown, of course, will get the
Demo nomination. Then, in Nov
ember, Brown figured he would
pick up Knight's labor sXpport,
plus Democratic votes, and win.

NOW BROWN charged the
Republicans have pulled off a
"cynical deal."

It's part of a pli>< to help build
up Knowland for Pr sldcnt,
Brown believes.

State Demo Chairman Roger
Kent said that with Knight out
"of the governor's race Brown's
changes' are improved.

"Knight's labor support is not

transferable," Kent said ''He

can't take it with him if he runs

for another office.

^ "It certainly won't go tn

Knowland. with ijis anti- labor
record"

BROWN, in Los Angeles, cited
polls showing Knowland running
3-to-i. ahead of Knight

He said Knight "became the
victim, of a plot that dried up
the aources at his campaign
funds and enticed away many of
his big-name supporters," and
"then was served with an ulti
matum to get out of the gov
ernor's race and campaign for
the Senate."

KENT AND other Democrats
predicted that a member of their
own party would stand a better
chance of getting elected to the
Senate than would Knight, for he
would be viewed as a man who
ran away from a fight.

While Knight maintained last
week that he was in the race for
re-election to stay, Rep. Pat
Hillings at the same time said it
had already been arranged for
Knight to shift his political goal.'

TWO OTHER announced GOP
candidates for the Senate are
State Controller Robert C. Kirk-
wood and Warren Atherton,
Stockton attorney.
.. Kirkwood said:

"I don't know what my'posi-
tion will be until I have a chance
to know what's going on.

'•If Governor Knight has lined
up solid support for his candi
dacy for the Senate, I will have
to re-examine my position."

ATHERTON SAID he was

"surprised at the sudden
change." „

"Of course 4 would want to'
size up the situation in view of
the governor's past record and
popularity.

"However, hundreds of sup

porters throughout the * Stato
have indorsed me and agreed to
work on committees with me. I
wish to contact them, before

making a final decision. vunuj I
learn their opinion I -intend to
continue my campaign." ".. '__

I BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND

[Date of Interview: July 5, 1979] ##

Sharp: Well, I wanted to ask you first of all what your full name was.

Kossen: That is my full name. Sydney Kossen. I have no middle name.

Sharp: When were you born?

Kossen: October 24, 1915,

Sharp: What were your parents' names?

Kossen: My mother's name was Sadie, and my father's name was Harry.

Sharp: And your mother's maiden name?

Kossen: My mother's maiden name was Grisdov.

Sharp: Did you have any brothers and sisters?

Kossen: Yes. If all had lived there would have been seven children in the
family. I have two brothers and one sister.

Sharp: And what are their names?

Kossen: The oldest one is my sister and her name is Rose Abrams. My
brothers' names are Jack and Carl.

is symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 36.

Sharp: What was your parents' ethnic background?
Kossen: They were Russian Jews.

Sharp: Did you have religious influences in your family when you were
growing up?

Kossen: Yes I did. I was raised as an Orthodox Jew.

Sharp: I now have a few questions about school, which may seem humorous
to you, but future researchers like to know more about you than
just the fact that you were a reporter. So, bear with me; I'll
go ahead and ask them!

Kossen: Sure.

Sharp: First of all, did you like school?

Kossen: Sometimes, not always.

Sharp: What did you like best about it?

Kossen: Well, the old gag, recess, [laughter]

Sharp: Yes. [laughter] Did you like to write when you were a child?

Kossen: Yes, yes.

Sharp: Did you think about being a reporter or a writer?

Kossen: Yes. Well, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be an engineer or a
journalist, kecause my father was a blacksmith and he worked with
mechanical engineers. He thought it would be nice if I were one,
too. So, when I entered the University of Washington I started out
as an engineering major, but I soon switched.

Sharp: Did you have a lot of books at home to read?

Kossen: Yes.

Sharp: Were they more religious books, or — ?

Kossen: No, not many. The sort of religious books I read were those that
I was exposed to during the seven years I went to Hebrew school,
after school. A lot of that. Some of the only religious novels
and so on I read were part of lit courses and so on. I didn't sit
around reading religious tracts, by any means at all.

Sharp: Just magazines and periodicals, and stuff like that?

Kossen: Yes, just a normal diet for a kid.
Sharp: What did you do for fun as a child?

Kossen: For fun? I'd swim; played a lot of baseball. I grew up in Seattle
[Washington] and swam in Lake Washington whenever I could. I played
basketball, too. The usual activities — sports. Tennis a great
deal. One of my brothers was an all-city high school champ. I
took tennis too. Finally beat him after I got out of the navy.
Took a long time!

Sharp: Really!

Kossen: Well, that was because he was in the army and didn't have much
opportunity to play during the war. The navy had courts near
Pearl Harbor and we'd get to use them whenever our ship came in.

Sharp: That's great,
there?

So, you grew up in Seattle and went to the university

II EARLY CAREER NOTES

Kossen:

Sharp :
Kossen:
Sharp :

Kossen:

That's correct; I went to the University of Washington. Actually,
I was a couple of years behind because I got out of high school
during the Depression and worked. After getting out of the
University of Washington, in 1938, I went to Sacramento and
started as a reporter there. Then I came here [to San Francisco]
a year later.

When did you first get interested in reporting on politics?
Maybe when I was taking a lot of poli-sci courses at Washington.

Was doing political reporting your first assignment when you got to
the San Francisco News , or — ?

No. You see, I started in Sacramento working for International
News Service, which is gone now, merged into United Press. That
press got the international news, yes. The bureau was in the state
capitol in Sacramento, so I was exposed to government workings
there.

Sharp: We can pick that up again a little bit later.

The next section of questions I have I just called your early
impressions of Goodwin Knight. You have told me when you first
came to Sacramento. When were you first aware of Goodie Knight
being around? Was this when he came up to be lieutenant governor?

Kossen: Yes, I was aware that he became lieutenant governor, but I had no

contact with him until 1956, when I was put on political assignment
for the San Francisco News and sent back to Sacramento to cover the
legislature.

Sharp: Was Goodie Knight popular with the press when he was a lieutenant
governor?

Kossen:
Sharp :
Kossen:

Sharp :

Yes, he was; he was well-liked.

Was he more popular than Earl Warren?

Well, I don't know. I can't compare them because I didn't cover
Earl Warren in this era. I had this lag; a year in Sacramento,
and then down here [San Francisco] , and then the war and so on.
Then when I went back to Sacramento it was after the Warren era
already. He'd already gone on to the [U.S.] Supreme Court. But I
know Warren was highly regarded by the reporters.

Those who've covered both [governors] have told me that Goodie
was more accessible than Warren. Warren often brushed off reporters'
questions with "no comment." Knight didn't do that. He would give
you an answer. It might have been an evasive answer, but at least
you went away with some quotes.

I want to go back to that later on, about Knight's evasiveness,
because it seems pretty important.

Ill ASSESSING GOVERNOR GOODWIN KNIGHT'S RELATIONSHIP WITH
THE LEGISLATURE: AN OBSERVER'S VISTA

Highways

Sharp: The next set of questions, I think, will probably take up most of
our time because it's about Goodie Knight and the legislature,
from '53 through '58. I'd like you to make some general comments
about Goodie Knight's relationship with the legislature, later,
but first of all I broke this section into seven different parts:
the development of the ABC (the Alcoholic Beverage Commission) ,
highway development, water and the Feather River Project, lobbyists,
oil, tax increases, and labor. I thought I'd just ask you a few
questions about each of those to see if we can get some kind of a
story.

Kossen: Some of those projects were completed before I got there, though.
The ABC particularly. That went through before my era.

Sharp: Okay. I don't know if there were still any rumors floating around
by the time you got there [1956] or not, but Caspar Weinberger's
Joint Investigative Committee on Liquor Law Enforcement came out
with criticisms of William Bonelli's running of the State Board of
Equalization in '54. After that, Mr. Weinberger came out with a
plan for the Alcoholic Beverage Commission, and Goodie Knight,
somehow, tried to claim this as his own bill, as a governor's bill.

Kossen: This is true, and he [Governor Knight] did that with many bills
that went through the state because it happened during his
administration. He wanted it to reflect on his honor. Goodie
isn't the only governor, or president, or mayor, to do something
like that with legislation. They call that "highjacking" the bill.

Sharp: There were other attempts by Goodie Knight to do this?

Kossen: There must have been. Yes, he was taking credit for a lot of good
legislation, and by the same token he would shun any association
with what might have turned out to be embarrassing legislation.
He was more of an extrovert about that than some other governors.
It was quite evident what he was doing in those cases, yes.

Sharp: The development of highways is seen as one of Knight's best
accomplishments . We were wondering if you would remember if
there was any particular struggle about where the highways would
go?

Kossen: Yes, there was. There was a lot of jealousy, particularly among

the legislators, because in those days communities weren't fighting
to keep highways out; they were trying to get them. They didn't
want them splitting the cities; this was one of their fears. San
Francisco was an exception. Neighborhood organizations, homeowners,
and park lovers didn't want the freeway running up the [Golden Gate]
Park panhandle. But the rural counties particularly wanted the
highways, and the legislators, particularly state senators, were
the most outward ones who were getting the most freeway money.

Randy [Randolph] Collier, of Yreka, is a good example. I can
remember driving through northern California — we used to go up
there every summer. We'd drive to Seattle. We found freeways in
the best condition up in his district, and that figured.

Same was true over in Solano County where the state senator
there had a great deal of influence.

Sharp: Can you remember who that was?

Kossen: The man who was publisher of the paper there, Luther Gibson; he
was the state senator from Vallejo, Solano County, for a number
of years.

Sharp: Was there also a north/south struggle for the highways?

Kossen: Yes, there was a split on the money. The north tried to get most
because they had the most mileage, but the south tried to put it
on a population basis claiming that it contributed more to the gas
tax than we did up north, which was true. We [northern California]
had a valid argument too because of the distance. I believe they
ended up on a 55/45 formula, the south getting the 55 because it
put more money into —

Sharp: Do you mean 55c?

Kossen: Fifty-five percent. Fifty-five percent of the road construction
money went to the south; forty-five to northern California.

Sharp :

Kossen:

Sharp :

Kossen:

Sharp:

Kossen:
Sharp :
Kossen:
Sharp :
Kossen:

Sharp :

Kossen:

Were there any particular senators or assemblymen who were really
strong in defending the south' s position on that?

Oh yes. There were men from San Diego [Hugo Fisher and Jack
Schrade] and there were some from the desert counties whose names
I don't remember right now.* The entire Los Angeles delegation
was in on the battle; that's how they got so much of that freeway
money down there. Los Angeles is just honeycombed with freeways,
as you know.

Oh, it sure is.

Yes, the freeway system is a tribute, or a curse — [laughter]

How did Governor Knight talk about his position on highway develop
ment?

He always took the sort of noble stance that he was for the people.
Yes, and could you ever break through that veneer?
It was difficult, and we got that on water, too, especially.
Yes, I want to ask you about that.

It's one of the situations where [he said,] in effect, "Half my
friends are for it, and half my friends are against it, and I am
for my friends." Knight was used to talking out of one side of
his mouth in the south and the other side in the north — but he
denied that, of course.

Of course, he was from southern California. Did you ever try to
document any meetings that Governor Knight might have had with
southern California legislators, talking about highway development?
Could you ever break through that kind of barrier?

No, I never broke through that kind of barrier. I don't think I
ever tried, because there was no feeling that he was trying to
shaft the north, really. He was trying to be the governor of all
the people. He was being tugged from both sides.

*Mr. Kossen remembered Fisher's and Schrade 's names during his
editing of this transcript.

Water

Sharp: Okay. Let's move on to water. I think, of all these topics,

water is probably the most complex one. To help you come through
this, a little bit, did you report at all on any of the committee
hearings that Caspar Weinberger held in '54 and '55 on water
development?

Kossen: No. That was before I got there. I got there in '56.

Sharp: I just thought, maybe, you might have heard something about them.

Kossen: But I had to play catch-up on a lot of the water development stuff
when I got there.

Sharp: How did you do that?

Kossen: Reading, talking to these people. Of course, I'd been reading the
paper all the time I was working on the paper.

Sharp: This article by Harvey Grody — I sent you just a brief portion of
it — sees Governor Knight as a real failure, in the sense of not
being a leader, not being a real governor in terms of water
legislation.* Grody says that Knight really failed in that '54- '55
period, and failed again in the '57- '58 period. But in '56 he did
sort of get it together in the sense that he pushed for two things:
the separate agency, the Department of Water Resources; and then
the budget appropriation. Knight tried and did get through
$25,000,000 to begin the Feather River Project. Do you remember
reporting on all that?

Kossen: Yes, I remember reporting on that. True, Knight did fail in the
early parts, but I wouldn't blame him entirely for it. He had
terrible obstacles. There were legislators from the northern
counties, the counties of origin, where the water came from, who
didn't want to part with their water under any circumstances.
There were other northern legislators who didn't feel that the
north should give any water to the south.

*See Harvey P. Grody, "From North to South: The Feather River
Project and Other Legislative Water Struggles in the 1950s,"
Southern California Quarterly, Fall, 1978.

Kossen: Also, there were legal complications — riparian rights, and that
sort of thing. Who owns the water, and how far down the stream
can you start tapping it, or how far upstream? Debates like that
just went on for weeks and weeks — in fact, months. They'd just
wear you out.

A lot of lawyers have made careers out of water law. They'd
get the case in court that lasted as long as some of these anti
trust cases that IBM gets involved in now. I remember a state
senator named Eddie [Edwin] Regan who went up from San Francisco
to Trinity County to practice water and timber law. He made a
fine living at it [because] his cases lasted so long.

Sharp: As a reporter, how did you try to report on the squabbles and the
differences that you saw in the state legislature, for water?

Kossen: Well, being a San Francisco reporter my first consideration was

what facet of it [the water controversy] would interest my readers.
Then too, as you know, writing is a process of selection, and you
try to pick what you consider the most interesting. Conflict is
always interesting — you get drawn into it. At the same time, you
want to get in what's important to you; you must not overlook the
important developments. It's just a case of judgment, picking out
what you thought was important reading. And then, trying to
compress it limits the amount of space you'd give. News editors
weren't fascinated by the subject of water. [laughter] If you
could get conflict in the lead then you'd have a better chance of
getting the story in the paper.

Sharp: Well, there was plenty of conflict to draw on, it seems.
Kossen: Yes.

Sharp: There was, of course, a north/south position as far as the water.
The south was the main geographic area that needed the water, and
the north was the main geographic area that had it. So, there was
that basic squabble.

There were also, I guess, differences, say, among farm groups
regarding federal versus state water, and the 160-acre limitation.

Kossen: Labor and liberal Democrats wanted to apply it to the state water,
too. That came up later, during [Governor Edmund G., Sr.] Pat
Brown's administration; he tried to resolve that.

Sharp : Right .

Kossen: But you're right. Those conflicts went under all sorts of conflicts
of jealousy. Again, in keeping with Goodie Knight's character,
because he was trying to be nice to all sides and trying to compro
mise the issue, he wasn't able to get anywhere for a long time on it.

Then finally, Pat Brown came along and in the first year got the
water bond passed, as you know. Fresh face, new approach, and all
that, plus a Democratic majority in the legislature, of the same
party as the administration; that helped a great deal too.

Goodie had to fight a rear-guard political battle, too, a
partisan battle, because the Democrats were becoming stronger and
stronger in the legislature.

Sharp: There were differences among farm groups also, and probably in the
Metropolitan Water District of L.A. [Los Angeles] , over whether the
state should be involved in a water project at all. Did the Metro
politan Water District loom as a very large, powerful body at this
point?

Kossen: Yes, they had a very powerful team of lobbyists there and they even
hired some retired newspapermen from Los Angeles such as Chester
Hansen, a former Los Angeles Times political writer, who would try
to make friends with the press and try to get them to see their
viewpoint .

Sharp: Did you have any contact with these people?

Kossen: Yes, but they weren't too interested in me. They were more

interested in the southern California press because they thought
they could do more good.

Sharp: What was San Francisco's position on the Feather River Project?

Kossen: Well, I don't know if the city had an official position, but the
papers were against it at first. Then some of them went for it.
I know we did, at the News, at the time, and I believe the Examiner ,
which came a little later, did too for the same reason. That was
because of the big flood control feature. The 1955 Marysville
flood was the horrible example; Christmas Day the Yuba overflowed
and did a great deal of destruction.

Sharp: That seemed a real selling point for Goodie Knight.
Kossen: Right, yes, that was.

Sharp: I had one interview with Doug Barrett and he was telling me that as
one of Governor Knight's executive secretaries he went up in a
plane and took the governor up there to see the flooded area. Were
you on one of those planes?

Kossen:
Sharp :

Kossen:

Sharp :
Kossen;

Sharp :

Kossen:

No, I wasn' t, no.

He showed me some pictures of the Yuba City area,
was pretty complete.

The devastation

Yes. That's what brought a lot of northern California newspapers
around, the flood control feature. And the south pushed that; that
was a great opportunity for them.

And also, there was the recreational feature. Pauline Davis,
who represented Plumas County and some other northern counties
up there in the area or origin along the forks of the Feather
[River] , wanted to be sure that there was water left there for
recreation areas. That's how Lake Davis came to be.

I didn't know that.

Yes. It was named for her husband, actually. He was an assembly
man and then, after he died, she replaced him in the assembly. It
[the lake] was supposed to be a memorial to him.

So, Goodie Knight had quite a bit of balancing to do in terms of
all the conflicts and the different interests that he needed to
appeal to. There was also the general political overlay of his
running for re-election, at least in 1958, and he had to try to
balance these people.*

In your article that appeared in Harper' s was when I first heard
you say that Goodie Knight said that he was for his friends so he
couldn't make any decision about any particular legislation. ' I
wonder if you ever were able to find out who he meant by "his
friends" in terms of water legislation; who were the people who
got to him, who convinced him?

Oh, he used the term "friends" in sort of an umbrella sense, that
all the people were his friends. He seemed to be saying, "Half my
friends are for it, and half are against it, and I'm for my friends."

*He planned to run for re-election but got pushed into the U.S.
Senate race so that Senator William Knowland could run for
governor .

**See Sydney Kossen, "California's $2 Billion Thirst," Harper's
Magazine, March, 1961, pp. 94-95, 100, 102.

Kossen: I don't know that he was thinking, necessarily, of the manager of
the Metropolitan Water District or somebody from San Francisco.
With all these friends he was trying to play the Solomon-like role.

Then another facet in his politics was that he was politically
ambitious. He wanted to run for vice-president, too. For a while
he was a candidate at that Republican convention [in 1956] .

Sharp: Yes, I want to ask you about that later on when we talk about the

campaigns. That's a pretty intriguing episode; it's sort of a half-
episode, really.

Back to water, what do you think ultimately produced the final
compromise of getting the Department of Water Resources established
and getting the $25,000,000 budget appropriation?

Kossen: A long series of trade-offs accomplished it. Some happy group was
given something — half a loaf — and this [group] was given something
else. Finally they worked out a satisfactory compromise by every
one being able to go home and say that he got something out of it
to brag about. Pauline Davis 's streams and lakes they called
Pauline's Fishing Pond, as an example.

Sharp: This compromising that occurred, does that seem pretty typical, for
you, now looking back on it as a reporter, for. the legislature?

Kossen: Yes. When most legislators get into something complex then they
live by the credo that politics is the art of compromise. It's
better to take a half a loaf than nothing. That's something that
young people today find hard to understand.

Sharp: Yes. Did you observe Paul Mason, who was Goodie Knight's legis
lative secretary, working in this compromising?

Kossen: No.

Sharp: Did Caspar Weinberger seem a leader in the assembly in getting the
legislation passed?

Kossen: Yes, Caspar was. He was one of the brightest legislators up there.
I was fairly close to him because we were both from San Francisco.
He was chairman of the Ways and Means, which is a very powerful
committee, as you know. It controls the budget — pursestrings — and
so on. Caspar always was a loyal Republican and he worked hard to
make the administration look good.

Sharp: Was he, then, primarily loyal to Governor Knight, or was he more
pushing his own interests and his own concerns?

Kossen: I think it's a combination of both of those; trying to help the

governor look good and at the same time, he [Weinberger] was going
to do what he felt was right and involved his own concerns. He
never lost sight of the fact that he represented San Francisco and
a northern constituency.

Sharp: Did you talk with Weinberger about his having to be convinced that
the Feather River Project was a good idea or, even though he was
from San Francisco, did he seem to think it was a good idea
initially?

Kossen: I don't recall. But San Francisco really wasn't worried about a

water shortage itself because it had its own water system. It was
cited as a beautiful example of a foresighted city in the develop
ment of the Hetch Hetchy Project near Yosemite.

Sharp: Were there any particular leaders in the senate, pushing Governor
Knight's water legislation, that you could remember?

Kossen: I remember several fighting it.

Sharp: Who were the ones who were fighting it?

Kossen: Well, Randy [Randolph] Collier, I think. He was opposed to it first
of the northern state senators. [pauses] I don't recall. It's
hazy. I must have it in some place.*

Sharp: Well, I'll write you a note when I send you the edited transcript
and maybe they'll come to you between now and then. Randy Collier
seems to have been a problem for Governor Knight several times .

Kossen: Oh yes, he was a problem for a lot of people I
Sharp : Why?

Kossen: Oh, he was a feisty old guy and he sort of liked to bend with the

political wind. He started out as a Republican in the legislature,
and then rumor was around that he was going to change his registra
tion to a Democrat.

*Mr. Kossen later remembered the names of others: George Miller,
Jr., Edwin Regan, Virgil O'Sullivan, and Stanley Arnold.

Sharp :
Kossen:
Sharp :

Kossen: I asked him about it and he said, "Yes, I'm probably going to do
that, but not yet." He said why he was thinking of doing it was
because, "All these lumberworkers coming into my county are Demo
crats. Just as soon as there are a few more of them, I'll have to
be a Democrat too to get re-elected."

That's pretty realistic.

Yes, it -is; a practical politician. [laughter]

There was some idea that one of the chief water engineers, whose
name was A.D. Edmonston, and Governor Knight had quite a few
disagreements and that's why a real California water plan never
got off the ground. Does that story ring any bells with you?

Kossen: No, it doesn't.

Sharp: Harvey Banks was the man who was appointed the head of the new
Department of Water Resources. Do you know where he came from,
or why he was appointed by Governor Knight?

Kossen: No, I don't. I don't remember his background. I did at the time.

He made a good impression at the start there; he was highly regarded,

Sharp: We just didn't find any background on him and wonder why Knight had
chosen him.

Kossen: Yes. Wasn't he working for the state at the time?
Sharp: Yes, I think he was.

Kossen: Yes, he came to Goodie's attention as a competent engineer, I
believe, as I seem to recall.

Private Meetings

Sharp: On another topic, there were luncheons that Governor Knight held
twice a week. Some of the people who were invited to these
luncheons were like Luther Lincoln, when he was speaker, and some
of the other key senators and assemblymen. Did you ever get wind
of any of these luncheon meetings?

Kossen: Yes, we knew they were going on, but this was not considered
unusual, for a governor to eat with the legislative leaders.
Luther Lincoln, known as "Abe" Lincoln, was a Republican just as
Goodie was, and they used to talk about legislation and anything
else Knight wanted to talk about.

Sharp: Did you ever get to go — ?

Kossen: No.

Sharp: Or know where they were, or get to report on them, or anything?

Kossen: No. They were private luncheons. I'm sure there were breakfast
meetings. You see, Pat Brown walked across the park for private
breakfast meetings at the El Mirador — we thought nothing of it.

Taxes and the Budget////

Sharp: I wanted to ask you about taxes. From the research that we've done
on the budget increases that occurred during Goodie Knight's
administration, they were considerable and Knight always avoided
raising taxes. So, the money had to come from somewhere and it
came from various funds like Earl Warren's rainy day fund that he
had set up, and the tidelands oil revenues. How did you perceive
this finding of funds that Goodie Knight and his subordinates were
able to do?

Kossen: We were critical of it, the papers were, because he was emptying
the cookie jar. Warren had accumulated a surplus during the war
[World War II] because there was more revenue coming in than the
state could spend. The feeling was that you shouldn't eat up all
your savings and Knight seemed to be doing that to avoid taxes, or
increasing taxes.

Sharp: Did he avoid raising taxes because it was politically unfavorable?
Kossen: Yes, I think that's the reason for that.

Sharp: Did anybody ever confront Governor Knight about this raiding of
the cookie jar?

Kossen: Yes. Well, Knight read the editorials and also his opponents in
the legislature were always making speeches about that, but he
tried to justify it, saying that he was protecting the people;
he wasn't raising their taxes and, "Who could dislike me for not
raising their taxes?"

Sharp: Yes, that's true. Did you, for instance, press him on how the
state was going to pay for the Feather River Project?

Kossen: Oh, yes, we always asked him where the money was coming from.

Sharp: And what did he say?

Kossen: He said there were ways of funding it; bonds — that would pass

later, in Pat Brown's era — were one way. And then there was the
tidelands oil money which was supposed to be earmarked for that.
As a matter of fact, Cap Weinberger — getting back to him — played
a big role in that, dedicating — they called that dedicating —
money from resources to resources; tapping one resource, our oil —
taking that out — and devoting the money to the development of
another resource, water.

Sharp: There's a fairly long story about how the state, meaning California,
got to have those tidelands oil revenues anyway. A bill was passed
in 1956 that said that those revenues really did belong to the
state. I was amazed at the enormous amount of money that came into
state coffers as a result. Long Beach had been feathering its own
nest for quite a while and rebuilding its whole city.

Kossen: Sure, rebuilding the city and overcoming its subsidence problem.
The city built a lot of waterfront projects that it didn't need —
buying the old ocean liner Queen Mary, for example.

Sharp: They bought that with — ?

Kossen: Yes. They sure did the British a big favor there.

•

Sharp: Really. They didn't know what they were going to do with that big
old ship .

Kossen: No. The British wanted to get rid of it. [laughter] These
suckers from Long Beach —

Sharp: Really. [laughter]

Kossen: Another big tourist attraction.

Sharp: It is, I guess.

Kossen: Yes, but it's not that good though; it doesn't generate as much
revenue as it costs. It's a real white elephant.

Sharp: Very white, and very large I
Kossen: Yes.

Sharp: I had a question about Alan Post, who was the legislative analyst
at that time. For the '58- '59 state budget, Post really trimmed
it down considerably from what Goodie Knight had asked. Then

Sharp: Knight heard Post's recommendations and agreed automatically with
those recommendations. I wondered if you ever interviewed Alan
Post and [asked him about] his feelings about the budget and these
increases, and what he thought about them.

Kossen: We often interviewed Alan Post, yes. I had a lot of respect for
him. He was very non-partisan, very objective, I thought. The
only thing that motivated him was the desire to guide the state
toward more efficient operation.

Sharp: What was his relationship with Goodie Knight?

Kossen: None. He was very careful about that. He worked for the legis
lature and he worked for both Democrats and Republicans. He was
very careful to maintain this non-partisan image throughout his
career, and he was highly regarded. He had a good mind, knew the
problems of the state. In fact, that's why he was brought back
out of retirement in fall of 1977 by [Governor Edmund G., Jr.]
Jerry Brown for that Prop [Proposition] 13 study commission.
Unfortunately, his work wasn't taken more seriously; it turned
out to be just a facade on Jerry Brown's part. I think — that
he [Jerry Brown] gave people the impression that he was going to
do something. But Post was a real professional.

Sharp: His position would be certainly a tricky one.

Kossen: Yes. He managed to carry it off and now his nephew has succeeded
him as legislative analyst.

Lobbying Efforts at Several Levels: CTA, Oil, and Labor

Sharp: I did send you this article about the CTA [California Teachers

Association] lobbyists written by Jackson Doyle.* [leafing through
papers]

Kossen: Oh yes — California Teachers Association —

Sharp: That one; it's a very small one. Jackson Doyle was not too

charitable towards Goodie Knight and essentially said that Knight
bent very easily to the CTA.

*See San Francisco Chronicle, 7 March 1954.

Kossen: Well, in a sense he's right. The California Teachers Association,
at that time, was the most influential lobby; bigger than the
highway people, and the truckers, and liquor at that time. They
had some very bright lobbyists, capable; they were respected, had
access to the legislators. And the postwar baby boom was coming
along and a lot of school money was needed, and they were lobbying
for that.

Sharp: As a reporter for mostly the legislature, how did you perceive that
lobbyist, "third house" dilemma?

Kossen: Well, I had to fight off the notion that all lobbyists were sinister
characters. They really weren't; a lot of them were really helpful.
Some of them had very fine minds and could explain bills to these
legislators that didn't understand — and would help draft some good
bills. On the other hand, there were some of the sneaky types who
would put in special interest bills that were of no value to the
people. You just had to sort them out.

Sharp: Did the lobbyists seem then just another ingredient to covering a
legislature?

Kossen: Yes — a major ingredient to covering a legislature; they were part
of it. I tried to get to know them, but I tried not to be too
friendly toward them so that I didn't owe them anything.

They could often come up with good tips on stories. They
wouldn't stand still and be the source of a story because if you
quoted one of them, he knew that this was the end of his career
in Sacramento .

Sharp :

For example, I knew one San Francisco lawyer who was a lobbyist
for a couple of industries up there and told me of an attempted
shakedown by some state senators. "Gee, that would make a great
story." [Kossen 's thought] He [the lawyer] said, "Well, if you
print it I'll have to deny it because I'll just have to go back to
writing wills for old ladies, and practicing business law back in
the city."

So, this was a consideration, but you could take it from there
and try to develop a story. I found them useful, but at the same
time I didn't want to know a lot of them too well. On the other
hand, the city of San Francisco had a lobbyist in those days,
named Don Cleary, and he was very well informed.

I did have one interview with George Christopher about this period
and, primarily, about his running in various state campaigns for
governor and U.S. Senator. He was telling me about Donald Cleary
and his role as a lobbyist for the city of San Francisco and it
seemed a very unique position. Cleary, I guess, was pretty well
respected as being a very successful lobbyist.

Kossen: He was. He was a successful lobbyist, and he was a former news
paperman and he could smell a good story, too. He often tipped me
off to a good story.

Sharp: Oh, that's right!

Kossen: Yes. I knew his wife — I worked with her for a while, once — and so
we were good friends.

Sharp: Did you ever do any reporting on Donald Cleary's activities as a
lobbyist for the city?

Kossen: Yes. All the San Francisco reporters, from time to time, would do
a story on Cleary. He didn't seek publicity, but we did stories
on him.

Sharp: Was he the lobbyist when BART was being bandied about?

Kossen: I believe he was, yes. In fact, I'm sure he was because BART was
bandied about for a long time before it came to fruition.

Sharp: Did you report on that?

Kossen: Yes.

Sharp: How was BART perceived by the state legislature?

Kossen: Well, they weren't sure that it was the state's problem. They
always take that attitude at first; why should the state go in,
especially if they [the legislators] are from some faraway county,
namely rural county, which had little sympathy for urban problems —
they had to be sold. Why should the state come and finance it, or
why should the state be involved? Why couldn't San Francisco get
together with San Mateo, for example, and set up a regional agency
and take care of it on their own? We will just pass the authoriz
ing legislation, and don't come to us for money or anything like
that.

There's always a problem with something. Then, also again, the
regional jealousies of San Francisco and Oakland — that if the
communities around it were going to get something like that [BART] ,
why shouldn't Los Angeles and its neighboring towns get the same
thing?

Sharp: Sure, and Los Angeles certainly needs it because it is so spread
out.

Kossen: That's right, yes. Well, they once had a good rail system when I
first went to Los Angeles — red trains that ran to Long Beach and
to Santa Monica. Then, I believe, an oil company bought them out
so that people would drive.

Sharp :
Kossen:
Sharp :

Kossen:

Sharp :
Kossen:

Sharp :

That seems sort of dumb to me, but anyway —

Yes, in retrospect. It was dumb at that time too — selfish.

The whole question of lobbyists, especially in the 1950s, I think
is an important one because it seems like there were so many famous
lobbyists. For instance, talking about the CTA, which has only
increased in power since then, but also the various oil companies
like Richfield and Standard, and all of the rest of the oil
companies .

Did you ever get any sense of the structure of the oil companies'
lobbying efforts in California — the majors versus the independents,
and any of that?

Well, first, I don't consider the CTA, as a teachers' lobby, as the
strongest anymore. They lost that position some time ago. But I
was always baffled about how the oil companies operated up there
[in Sacramento] . For example, there was Al Shults , a San Fran
cisco lawyer who came from the firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro,
the biggest law firm in San Francisco. He represented all the
major oil companies, plus DuPont Chemical and the Ethyl Corporation,
and yet, each of the oil companies seemed to have its own lobbyist.
Whether he was the team captain or not wasn't quite clear to me.

And then there were other oil lobbyists for the smaller compan
ies. They didn't seem to be fighting the big producers up there.
I know there was a ballot measure they were sort of party to.

Proposition 4?*

That's right — the so-called "millionaires versus the billionaires."
I know they were among the most lavish entertainers of the legis
lators; setting up golf tournaments for legislators, and wining
and dining them, and so on.

Did the battle for tidelands oil revenues threaten the oil
companies in terms of their profits?

*In 1956 major oil companies such as Richfield, Standard, and Shell
attempted to get state support for unitization of oil production
in California by getting passed Proposition 4 on the November
ballot. Although this effort failed, it set the stage for other
agencies to get unitization passed for state lands.

Kossen: Yes, it did. They wanted to keep the royalties for the state at
the lowest figure, of course, and they were constantly badgering
the legislators.

Sharp: Was that much of what the wining and dining was about?

Kossen: Yes, I would say so. They were always against raising the gas tax
because to the motorist it didn't matter whether the increase in
price was part tax and part the price of the gasoline. The total
price was up — so they [the oil companies] would rather raise the
price themselves and not have so much included in tax.

Sharp: The other part of the lobbying effort that the oil companies were
involved in certainly had something to do with the State Lands
Commission, because it was this commission that decided which
companies would get which leases where. I wonder if you had done
any reporting on the State Lands Commission and its granting of
leases?

Kossen: I did some, very little, because that wasn't a topic that involved
San Francisco so much. You might think I was rather insular or
parochial, but that's true. We had the wire services too, you
know, and they covered us on general stories. My major assignment
was to look for stories of San Francisco interest.

Sharp: Oh, I see. For this period, then, what were the major stories as
far as San Francisco was concerned?

Kossen: BART was one of them, as you mentioned, and sales tax problems,
highway problems. And then, our legislators are always involved
in something or other. I would often do a story of statewide
interest if one of our legislators were involved in it. At other
times, when there was nothing of great San Francisco interest, then
I would branch into an overall piece. I did a lot of stories on
the Feather River. It wasn't just San Francisco; the Bay Area and
then northern California, and the Feather River Project — which was
a big interest in our readers.

Sharp: Did Candlestick Park get in the papers too much during this period?

Kossen: It got in the papers, but I don't think it caused a stir in Sacra
mento .

Sharp: The acquisition of the park and everything — the building of the
park — did that have any state money involved in it?

Kossen: I don't recall state money going into it.

Sharp: I didn't think so. When I asked Mayor Christopher about it, he
didn't remember that there was any, but I wasn't sure at all.

Kossen: I don't remember any legislation involving it.

Sharp: To go back to the tidelands oil revenues, once this money began
flowing into the state coffers, there was sort of a pork barrel
aspect to where the funds were going to be going. Everybody had
their own idea about where they ought to go. For instance, Goodie
Knight thought that the development of beaches and parks shouldn't
be given such heavy weight and that this money should be saved for
water development.

Kossen: Some wanted it to go to schools — noble cause, you know, we'll give
it to the children, something for the children. They weren't able
to sell that.

Sharp: Then did everybody seem to think that the main source for the
Feather River Project was going to be this tidelands oil money
that seemed to be floating around?

Kossen: Yes, but there were still some, other than those who wanted to give
it to the children, who felt it should go into the general fund to
hold down taxes. But at the time, yes, thinking came around to the
point where they thought that the tidelands oil would be the major
source of money for water development.

Sharp: Another kind of lobbying effort was done by labor. Goodie Knight
was very close to labor in California throughout his whole admin
istration. It's clear that labor made tremendous gains, in terms
of increased disability benefits and unemployment compensation,
during this '54 through '58 period. I wonder why it seemed that
Goodie Knight was so predisposed towards labor and its needs?

Kossen: Goodie Knight was a friend of the people and he wanted to be

friendly to labor. It meant a lot of votes to him and his heart
may have been in it too. Maybe he was sympathetic to the cause of
labor, but he saw a lot of political capital in that, and labor was
strong politically in those days and remained strong for a long
time. It was only in recent years that its political influence
has kind of gone into some decline, but I still wouldn't write off
labor as being politically unimportant.

Sharp: Did you do very much reporting on Neil Haggerty or Tom Pitts or
the California Labor Federation, since that was a San Francisco
operation?

Kossen: Yes, I did. Yes, right. I knew them. I knew Haggerty quite well.
Pitts was from southern California. He was the one who replaced
Haggerty, wasn't he?

Sharp: Yes.

Kossen: Yes, right. I didn't know him quite so well. He was quieter.
Haggerty was more outgoing.

Sharp: We were just interested to see that Governor Knight was so inclined
towards labor, even though he was a Republican. I mean, it seemed
more like a Democratic thing to do.

Kossen: Yes, yes. Well, the San Francisco Republicans in the early days
were the labor people.

Sharp: Oh, I guess I didn't know that.

Kossen: It's an old tradition of liberalism in some wings of the Republican
party. In the old days, most of the San Francisco legislators were
Republicans .

Sharp: So Knight fits pretty well?
Kossen: Right, yes.

Conclusions

Sharp: What would you conclude about Goodie Knight's relationship with
the legislature, then?

Kossen: I think he had good relations with the legislature. He had his
battles with the two houses from time to time. But considering
the difficult period he was going through, and the programs he
was trying to put through, I thought he carried it off a lot
better than some of the other governors. When I first came to
California, there was Frank F. Merriam. As far as I could tell,
he was strictly a do-nothing governor. He seemed to hope nothing
would happen. Goodie was trying.

Sharp: Some people have said that Knight had sort of a laissez faire

attitude towards the state government, at least towards the state
legislature, that it was just a sort of "let them do whatever they
want" sort of thing.

Kossen: "And I'll veto the bill"?

Sharp: Yes.

Kossen: Oh, I don't know. Maybe at times he gave that impression. He was
a total extrovert and there were times he may have felt that way,
but he knew that he had to work with them too.

Sharp: How did you check out stories about Goodie Knight and the legis
lature?

Kossen: By going back and talking to the legislators involved.

Sharp: How did it work? Did you start by hearing something that Goodie
Knight said in a press conference and then work backwards through
the legislators?

Kossen: Well, yes. Well, if he said it in a press conference, that was
enough right there. We'd go on it. And if he accused some
legislator of something, of course, we wouldn't use it unless we
gave the legislator an opportunity to answer it. But if it was
just something he was saying in the form of an announcement or
talking about developments or things he was going to sponsor, that
was good enough to go on. But then always we'd talk to the
legislators involved and go out and interview them.

Sharp: For instance, Knight would say something about pushing the Feather
River Project, and then would you go back maybe and talk to Caspar
Weinberger, who was the key assemblyman?

Kossen: [We] might. Well, usually it was the other way around, that some
legislator would introduce a bill involving the Feather River
Project, and we knew, of course, eventually we'd get to him [Knight]
if it passed both houses and wonder whether he was for it or
against it and how he felt about it. Sometimes he'd comment on it;
other times he would sort of brush us off politely by saying, "I
haven't read the bill yet."

And next time we'd come back to him, and if he gave us that
answer, [I'd say,] "Well, I've read the bill, Governor, and it's
been translated for me. May I explain it to you?" He'd say no,
that the bill might have been amended since he last saw it.
[chuckles] If he didn't want to talk about it, he was very adroit
at side-stepping it.

IV THE DAILY SCHEDULE AS REPORTER IN SACRAMENTO: GETTING
INFORMATION

Sharp: What were your days like then? Did you do some of the same things
every day, like going and sitting and listening in the galleries?

Kossen: No, not in the galleries. We had press sections — reserved desks —
on the sides of the chambers, and in those days we had access to
the floor. The press could wander around on the floor and go out
and interview legislators during the session. Now they're barred
from doing that, but you can always get the sergeant at arms to
beckon one over to talk. Se we just listened, took notes, and
talked to the legislators when they'd come by or sometimes meet
them in the coffee shop.

Sharp: So you had quite a bit of accessibility.

Kossen: Oh, yes. And then there were committee meetings. In the committee
meetings there was far more accessibility. All the bills, as you
know, have to churn through committees. So you'd talk to them.

Sharp: I wanted to ask you then about Goodie Knight's treatment of the

press. You said that the press seemed to really like him when he
was lieutenant governor, and I wonder if this changed once he
became governor .

Kossen: Well, it changed to the extent that sometimes you felt that he

wasn't quite answering the questions. You'd come away frustrated
or you couldn't get him to confirm something you were after. But,
oh, I always respected him. I enjoyed covering his press confer
ences because he was so outgoing that you could always get a story
out of him. It wasn't like — again, going back to Frank F. Merriam—
where you'd just get a series of "no comments" or "I don't know
anything about that" answers.

Sharp: Did you think you had enough access to Goodie Knight?

Kossen:

Sharp :

Kossen:

Sharp:

Kossen:
Sharp :

Kossen:

Sharp :

Kossen:
Sharp :

Well, there were times when I wanted more, but yes, I think he was
accessible. I had more access to him than reporters have to Jerry
Brown now. Pat Brown was accessible.

He was?
Yes.

Did you ever get to make an appointment with Governor Knight and
ask him more questions yourself?

Yes.

And was there any specific incident that you remember now that you
wanted to talk to him about and then got to talk to him about?

Yes, there were a couple of times when I wanted to do some in-depth
stories, on the Feather River Project, for example, and I got the
governor's views. But I don't think the entire story was wrapped
around what he said, but it was a major part of it though. I got
more out of him than I did in the press conferences and we talked
about other things, about politics a great deal too. Yes, I set
up interviews with him.

I noticed in most of the articles that I read that you had written —
and that's about this era — and then a couple that I'd seen recently
in the San Francisco Examiner — that you always seemed really
interested in detail and in information and that that was sort of
your main effort.

Yes.

Was it easy to get that kind of detailed information out of Knight
when you met him in one of these private meetings, or was it very
difficult for him to be specific?

The latter part of your question [chuckles] — yes, it was difficult.
[I was] rephrasing the question quite often, but I enjoyed it.
It's sort of a game you play.

Did he seem any different in a private meeting than he did when you
met him as just another reporter in amongst other reporters at a
press conference?

Kossen: No. He managed to be friendly enough.

That was before the days when there were a lot of television

cameras around. I don't remember television cameras being there
at all.

Sharp: So it was a little more relaxed?

Kossen: More relaxed, that's right. You could see that when TV started to
come in all public figures knew they were on stage and they were
very careful about what they were saying.

Sharp: Yes. I'm a television baby and so when I see a press conference

it's sort of a frantic, aggressive experience, both for the reporter
and for the governor or the president or whoever is involved, and
they're obviously adversaries.

Kossen: That's correct.

Sharp: Was there a lot of planting of questions done by Governor Knight?

Kossen: Planting with reporters?

Sharp : Yes .

Kossen: No, not with me. I don't recall one question that they [Knight's
staff] planted with me. Maybe it's because I was young.

But Pat Brown's people a couple of times tried to plant questions
with me. Even in those cases, the ones that [Pat] Brown's press
secretary, Jack Burby, tried to plant with me were harmless; they
were on subjects we were interested in. It was really intended to
keep Pat Brown from having to put out some big formal announcement
on something that they were interested in.

Sharp: Did you cover any of the activities of the governor's office and

the occurrences that happened within the governor's office itself?

Kossen: You mean briefings with his cabinet and so on?

Sharp: Yes.

Kossen: No, I didn't.

Sharp: Did anybody?

Kossen: Yes. When they had open cabinet meetings, reporters would go to
them, but a lot of the meetings in those days were closed. That
was before the days of the Brown Act.

Sharp: What was the Brown Act?

Kossen: I think it was the Brown Act. Yes, yes, it was called the Brown

Act. That's the one that barred private discussion of legislative
matters. I don't know whether it applies to the legislature; they
made themselves an exception. It applies to county and state

Kossen: agencies. The board of supervisors, for example, is not allowed
to hold closed meetings and discuss city business unless it
involves personnel, the firing or hiring of somebody, or litiga
tion.

Sharp: Oh, that's right, yes.

V CAMPAIGN COVERAGE: 1956, 1958##

Sharp: The last set of questions I have, then, are on various campaigns.
You probably, then, weren't involved in Governor Knight's original
campaign for election in '54.

Kossen: I wasn't involved at all.

Sharp: Okay. Then we'll talk about '56 and the Republican national con
vention. Did you cover that convention?

Kossen: Very minimally. 1 was still on the San Francisco News in those
days and that was a Scripps-Howard newspaper. They sent out a
big team of national reporters from the Washington bureau and they
sort of pre-empted everything.

Sharp: I thought maybe since it was held at the Cow Palace that —

Kossen: On the Examiner , that's the way we work it. Even if it were held
in Chicago, we'd still have our reporters there, particularly to
cover California's role, its delegation and candidates for president,
if any. But I had very little to do with the '56 campaign.

Sharp: But you were aware of Goodie Knight attempting to run for vice-
president?

Kossen: Yes.

Sharp: What do you remember about that?

Kossen: That's all I remember. I know he fell on his face, but I don't
recall any of the details. [chuckles]

Sharp: [chuckles] Yes. That's sort of the end result that we get from
everybody, that it was not even an informal bid; it was just a
wish [on Knight's part].

Kossen: Yes. He tried to outflank [Richard] Nixon. Nixon got the nomina
tion again. I remember it was [President Dwight] Eisenhower who
renominated and that he took Nixon for the second time. I think
you expressed it well. It was more of a wish than a —

Sharp: Yes. Well, there was this feeling that Ike was not going to have

Nixon run a second time with him, although with the newspapers and

everything perhaps that was more just a story or an idea but not a
reality.

Kossen: Well, also, I think there was some reality to it because Ike treated
Nixon sort of cold, as though he didn't quite trust him. There was
that Checkers incident earlier, during the first time around; and
then Nixon obviously wasn't making the right impression. That came
out at the end of Ike's second term when reporters asked Ike what
Nixon had contributed to his administration, and Ike said, "Give me
a week to think about it." [chuckles]

Sharp: Oh, boy! [laughter]

Kossen: So that said something for Ike's regard for Nixon.

Sharp : Really I

I'd like to spend the rest of our time, then, just talking about
1957 and '58 and the occurrence of the "Big Switch." Now, you
wrote quite a few articles, from what I could tell, mostly about
1957, about what was happening with Senator [William] Knowland and
his deciding not to run for re-election, Knight's pretty early
announcement that he was going to run for re-election, and then
Knowland 's subsequent announcement that he himself was going to
run for governor.

The first article I saw that you had written was November 1,
1957, and you said that high-ranking Republicans had scared
Governor Knight out of the race.

Kossen: For re-election?

Sharp: Yes. I wasn't sure if you meant only Nixon and Eisenhower scaring
Knight or if you had California Republicans in mind as well.

Kossen: I had California Republicans in mind too. As I recall it, a dele
gation of them called on him [Knight] , but if you ask me to name
them, why, I just can't do it. I don't remember who they were.
But there were a lot of fat-cat California Republicans involved
in this cabal.

Sharp: Who were more interested in Knowland 's being governor?

Kossen: Well, they were more interested in doing what they thought would
help the California Republican party the most. It was felt that
Knowland would make it as governor and then go on to the presidency
from there, and that they would have a president from California.

Sharp: Oh, so they were looking ahead?

Kossen: Right, they were looking ahead, but they didn't want Nixon to be

their president, although at the same time they were taking program
from Nixon because Nixon was supposed to have been the Prince
Machiavelli who helped get this through.

Sharp: Would these be considered just conservative Republicans then in
California?

Kossen: Yes, largely.

Sharp: Did their lack of support for Knight for re-election then have
anything to do with right-to-work?*

Kossen: Yes, I would say it did, because much of Knowland 's money came
from the right-to-work people, big manufacturers who wanted to
break the unions .

Sharp: Do you know anything about the role of the L.A. Times and the
Chandlers in—?

Kossen: Only what I've read, actually. [David] Halberstam deals with that
in great detail in his book too now, you know, The Powers That Be.

Sharp: What I understand is there was a taking away of funds or possibility
of funds from Goodie Knight to run for re-election.

Kossen: I heard that too, but all I know is what I read in the papers
[chuckles] and heard in conversation.

Sharp: You also mentioned Clem Whitaker and Leone Baxter and that they

may have helped Governor Knight decide not to run for re-election.

*Right- to-work was an old controversy in the state legislature.
Briefly defined, those people who favored a right-to-work law
opposed the union shop concept. This battle was fought as
Proposition 18 in 1958 and the right-to-work forces lost.

Kossen: At the time, I may have been told that was true, yes.

Sharp: Were they acting as his public relations firm, or were they acting
as Republicans for somebody else?

Kossen: Well, yes, I always felt that they were his public relations firm
and political advisors.

Sharp: And they just said he wasn't going to make it?

Kossen: If that's what I said at the time, yes.

Sharp: Yes, that is. I just wondered if you still thought that.

Kossen: I'll stand by it, yes. [chuckles]

Sharp: Do you know anything about the role of Clint Mosher?

Kossen: Yes. I worked with Clint. In fact, I succeeded him as political

editor of the San Francisco Examiner. There was one man in between
us, but I knew Clint well. He was the one who encouraged me to
come to work for the Examiner . He told me that he called on Goodie
Knight at the Governor's Mansion in Sacramento and told him that he
wouldn't have the support that he needed if he wanted to run for
re-election.

Sharp: He seemed to us to have been very important because of what other
sources had told us about his having quite a bit of contact with
Vice-President Nixon.

Kossen: Right. He knew Nixon well and he used to phone him up and, yes,
he is supposed to have carried the message from Nixon to Goodie,
telling Goodie he'd be cast adrift by the GOP unless he got out of
Knowland ' s way .

Sharp: What was the main reason then that Goodie Knight didn't run anyway?

Kossen: Because he would have been cut off at the pockets. He wouldn't
have had the money. He wouldn't have had the important party
support.

Sharp: Do you think he might have won anyway, even if he had stayed in?

Kossen: Against Pat Brown? In 1958 I thought so, but a Democratic resurgence
was coming at the time. They had formed the clubs. The California
Democratic Council of clubs was formed at Asilomar. It [the re
surgence] grew out of the Adlai Stevenson movement. You might say

Kossen: it came out of the ashes of Adlai Stevenson's defeat. The Democrats
were getting their act together and were able to put together a good
team and they hired some very capable talent .

Sharp: Meaning Baus & Ross?*

Kossen: Baus & Ross, among others. There was Don Bradley of San Francisco,
who was working on northern California legislative campaigns. This
year, Republicans are winning the special elections for the legis
lature, these off-season elections. In those days, Bradley fs
Democratic candidates were picking up old Republican seats, so it
was sort of a reverse situation.

So whether Goodie could have weathered it and made it or not,
I really don't know. I think he would have been a more formidable
opponent for Pat Brown than Knowland turned out to be. Knowland
was a fiasco. He was a Johnny one-note. I can remember starting
to cover him on Labor Day weekend up at Lake Shasta the year before
the [1958] election, and we [reporters] covered his right-to-work
speech there, and we heard it again at a service club luncheon in
Redding, and then moved on to Red Bluff [where he] delivered the
same speech. And even at a Republican women's tea party in the
back yard of some fine home in Chico, he delivered the same speech,
[chuckles] You could sing along with him on his right-to-work
speech.

Sharp: That was his main idea.

Kossen: That was it, yes. He had a one-plank platform. Right-to-work was
on the ballot too and he felt that working with that, he'd be swept
to victory.

Sharp: How would you assess the press's reaction to Goodie Knight's

dropping out of the gubernatorial race — you know, the thoughts of
your other reporters?

Kossen: Well, we felt he had been done in, actually.
Sharp: And you felt more sympathy with him?

Kossen: I felt sympathetic toward him, yes. But then we accepted it and
went on and covered it, that's all.

*Baus & Ross was a political public relations firm.

Sharp: That's all the questions that I have. I wondered if we have not
covered something while you were a reporter that you may want to
add.

Kossen: Well, there's one thought that occurred to me about George

Sharp :
Kossen:

Sharp :
Kossen:
Sharp :

Christopher's role in running against Goodie.'
covered that with him [Christopher] though.

Yes, we did.

Yes. He accused Goodie of violating his solemn word,
how solemn his word was .

I'm sure you

I don't know

Yes. That's hard to assess because it's a political reality that
it's a rough ball game and that everybody goes out there and does
what they need to do.

Yes, yes. That's true. As much as I liked Christopher, and we all
did, we found it hard to buy that line though that he was a victim
of a broken solemn pledge. That's the way the ball bounced,
[chuckles]

Yes. Well, that's all the questions that I have.
I think you're a very thorough reporter.
Oh, thank you!

Transcribers:
Final Typist:

Nicole Bouche", Marilyn White
Marilyn White

*George Christopher and Goodwin Knight opposed each other for the
Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in 1958. According to
Christopher, Knight promised him he would not run for Senator.

Tape Guide — Sydney Kossen

Date of Interview: 5 July 1979

tape 1, side A 1

tape 1, side B 16

tape 2, side A [side B not recorded] 30

INDEX — Sydney Kossen

Alcoholic Beverage Commission. See liquor control
Arnold, Stanley, 14

Banks, Harvey, 15

Barrett, Douglas, 11

BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit]. See San Francisco

Baxter, Leone, 32-33

"Big Switch". See Republican party (state)

Bonelli, William, 6

Bradley, Don, 34

Brown Act, 28-29

Brown, Edmund G., Sr. (Pat), 10-12, 16, 17, 27, 28, 33-34

Brown, Edmund G. , Jr. (Jerry), 18, 27

Burby, Jack, 28

California assembly

Ways and Means Committee, 13
California Democratic Council, 33
California Labor Federation, 23
California legislature

Joint Investigative Committee on Liquor Law Enforcement, 6
California Teachers Association. See lobbyists
Christopher, George, 19-20, 23, 35
Cleary, Don. See lobbyists
Collier, Randolph, 7, 14

Davis, Pauline, 12-13

Department of Water Resources, California, 9, 13, 15

Edmonston, A.D., 15
Eisenhower, Dwight D. , 31
election campaigns, state
1958, 32-35

Feather River Project. See water
Fisher, Hugo, 8

Gibson, Luther, 7

Haggerty, Cornelius J. (Neil), 23, 24
Hansen, Chester, 11
Hetch Hetchy Project. See water
highway development, 6-8, 22

Knight, Goodwin (Goodie), 4-35
Knowland, William F., 31-35

labor, 6, 23

right-to-work, 32
Lincoln, Luther ("Abe"), 15
liquor control

Alcoholic Beverage Commission, 6

State Board of Equalization, 6
lobbyists, 6, 18-24

California Teachers Association, 18-19

Cleary, Don, 19-20
Long Beach, 17

media

Los Angeles Times, 11

San Francisco Examiner, 27, 30, 33

San Francisco News, 4, 11, 30

Merriam, Frank F., 24, 26

Miller, George, Jr., 14

Mosher, Clint, 33

Nixon, Richard M. , 31, 33

oil, 6, 20

gasoline tax, 22

lobbying by industry, 21

Proposition 4 (1956), 21-22

Richfield, 21

Shell, 21

Standard , 21

tidelands oil revenues, 17, 21-23
0' Sullivan, Virgil, 14

Pitts, Tom, 23-24
Post, Alan, 17-18

Queen Mary, 17

Regan, Edwin, 10

Republican national convention

1956, 30-31
Republican party (state)

"Big Switch," 31-35

San Francisco

BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit], 20, 22

Candlestick Park, 22-23

labor in, 23-24

representation in Sacramento, 14, 19
Schrade, Jack, 8
Shults, Al, 21

State Board of Equalization. See liquor control
State Lands Commission, 22
Stevenson, Adlai, 33-34

taxes, 6, 16-18, 22

Warren, Earl, 5, 16
water

Feather River Project, 6, 9, 14, 16, 22-23, 25

Hetch Hetchy Project, 14

Marysville flood (1955), 11

Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, 11, 13
Weinberger, Caspar, 6, 9, 13-14, 17, 25
Whitaker, Clem, 32-33

Yosemite, 14

Amelia R. Fry

Graduated from the University of Oklahoma, B.A. in
psychology and English, M.A. in educational psychology
and English, University of Illinois; additional work,
University of Chicago, California State University
at Hayward.

Instructor, freshman English at University of Illinois
and at Hiram College. Reporter, suburban daily newspaper,
1966-67.

Interviewer, Regional Oral History Office, 1959 — ;
conducted interview series on University history,
woman suffrage, the history of conservation and forestry,
public administration and politics. Director, Earl
Warren Era Oral History Project, documenting govern
mental/political history of California 1925-1953;
director, Goodwin Knight-Edmund G. Brown Era Project.

Author of articles in professional and popular journals;
instructor, summer Oral History Institute, University of
Vermont, 1975, 1976, and oral history workshops for
Oral History Association and historical agencies;
consultant to other oral history projects; oral history
editor, Journal of Library History, 1969-1974; secretary,
the Oral History Association, 1970-1973.

Gabrielle Morris

Graduate of Connecticut College, New London,
1950, in economics; independent study in
journalism and creative writing; additional
study at Trinity College and Stanford University.

Historian, U.S. Air Force, documenting Berlin
Air Lift, other issues of 1945-1952; public
relations and advertising for retail and theater
organizations in Connecticut; research, writing,
policy development on Bay Area community issues
for University of California, Bay Area Council
of Social Planning, Berkeley Unified School
District, League of Women Voters.

Interviewer-editor, Regional Oral History
Office, The Bancroft Library, 1970-present;
coordinator, Government History Documentation
Project, 1979-present.

Sarah Lee Sharp

B.A., University of California, San Diego, 1971,
with major in history.

M.A., University of California, San Diego, 1975,
with major field in United States history;
Teaching Assistant in Comparative Americas,
1972-1975.

Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1979,
with major field in United States history;
dissertation entitled, "Social Criticism in
California During the Gilded Age."

Interviewer-Editor for Regional Oral History Office,
1978 to the present, specializing in California
political and legal history.

•%. J»

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