University of California Berkeley
^ ^
c
\
r \
* .
<&-
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California
Berkeley, California
Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight/Edmund Brown, Sr., Era
THE GOVERNOR S OFFICE UNDER EDMUND G. BROWN, SR.
William Becker
Warren Christopher
May Layne Bonnell Davis
Richard Kline
Frank Mesple
Cecil Poole
Working for Civil Rights: With Unions,
the Legislature, and Governor Pat Brown
Special Counsel to the Governor :
Recalling the Pat Brown Years
An Appointment Secretary Reminisces
Governor Brown s Faithful Advisor
From Clovis to the Capitol: Building
A Career as a Legislative Liaison
Executive Clemency and the Chessman Case
Interviews Conducted by
Amelia R. Fry, Eleanor Glaser,
Gabrielle Morris, James H. Rowland
in 1977, 1978, 1979
Copyright (c) 1981 by the Regents of the University of California
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.
ii
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 Bassett
Walton E. Bean*
Peter Behr
William E. Bicker
Paul Bullock
Lou Cannon
Edmond Costantini
William N. Davis
A. I. Dickman
Harold E. Geiogue
Carl Greenberg
Michael Harris
Phil Kerby
Virginia Knight
Frank Lanterman
Mary Ellen Leary
Eugene C . Lee
James R. W. Leiby
Albert Lepawsky
Dean McHenry
Frank Mesple *
James R. Mills
Edgar J. Patterson
Cecil F. Poole
A. Alan Post
Robert H. Power
Bruce J. Poyer
Albert S. Rodda
Richard Rodda
Ed Salzman
Mortimer D. Schwartz
Verne Scoggins
David Snyder
Caspar Weinberger
Project Interviewers
Malca Chall
Amelia R. Fry
Gabrielle Morris
James Rowland
Sarah Sharp
Julie Shearer
Special Interviewers
Eleanor Glaser
Harriet Nathan
Suzanne Riess
Miriam Feingold Stein
Ruth Teiser
*Deceased during the term of the project,
iv
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". 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, 2954-1966. 1981.
Hills , Edgar , Boyhood Friend, Independent Critic, and Campaign Manager of
Pat Brown. 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 I ears.
Davis , May Layne Beraiell , 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, 1952-1958, 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,
1952-1953.
Lemmon, Maryalice, Working in the Governor s Office, 1950-1959.
Mason, Paul, Covering the Legislature for Governor Goodwin J. Knight.
vi
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, 1953-1966.
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-Brown Era.
Coffey, Bertram, Reflections on George Miller 3 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, 2948-1966.
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, 1952-1966.
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. , Sr., 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.
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight /Edmund Brown, Sr . Era
William Becker
WORKING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: WITH UNIONS,
THE LEGISLATURE, AND GOVERNOR PAT BROWN
An Interview Conducted by
Gabrielle Morris
in 1979
Copyright (cT) 1981 by the Regents of the University of California
WILLIAM BECKER
1960s
TABLE OF CONTENTS William Becker
INTERVIEW HISTORY i
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY ill
I PERSONAL BACKGROUND 1
II NATIONAL FARM LABOR UNION ORGANIZING IN THE IMPERIAL VALLEY,
1947-1952 4
Farmworkers Vulnerability 4
Cotton Pickers Caravans 8
State Conciliation Service: Growers Response 9
Union and Other Support 12
Other Tactics; Workers Concerns 13
End of the Organizing Effort 15
III CALIFORNIA COMMITTEE FOR FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES, 1953-1959 17
Jewish Labor Committee, Labor Federation, NAACP, Other
Participants 17
Voter Registration: 1958 Effort to Elect Pro-FEP Senators 18
Lobbying for a Good Fair Employment Bill 21
1958 Right-to-Work Initiative; 1954 Election 24
IV WORKING WITH UNIONS AND THE LEGISLATURE 27
Farmworkers: Ethnic Groups, Needs 27
Developing Liberal Support for Farmworkers 30
Some Friction between Unions 31
Dealing with Senate Resistance to Fair Employment Legislation 34
Rumford Fair Housing Act Passage 35
V GOVERNOR PAT BROWN S ASSISTANT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, 1963-1966 40
First Fair Employment Practices Commission: From Individual
Complaints to Affirmative Action 40
Racial Awareness: Government Employment and Contracting 42
Proposition 14: Fair Housing Referendum, 1964 45
Urban Unrest, 1965: Realities of Decentralized Social
Service Centers 49
McCone Commission Investigation of Watts Riots; Later Federal
Program Directions 51
Involving the Mexican-American Community 53
1966 Campaign for Governor; Voting Patterns 57
VI IN CONCLUSION 60
TAPE GUIDE 62
APPENDIX - Letter to Becker from Robert L. Coate, 2 March 1964 63
INDEX 66
INTERVIEW HISTORY
In 1963, Governor Pat Brown created the position of assistant for human
rights on his office staff. William Becker was eminently qualified for this
new spot.
As he relates in the following interview for the Edmund G. Brown, Sr.,
oral history project, Becker had spent several years in the late 1940s as an
AFL field organizer in the Central Valley working with Mexican-Americans in
the turbulent effort to establish a farmworkers union, and several more oh
the staff of the Jewish Labor Committee patiently developing support for
California fair employment legislation.
Then the JLC assigned him to work with the Committee for Fair Employment
Practices, a broad coalition of labor, minority, and church organizations.
With relish, Becker tells of putting together a campaign in 1958 to replace
state senators who had voted against earlier civil rights bills, lining up
local groups to support alternate candidates, and later seeing to it that
they sent people to Sacramento to talk to their local legislators about the
bill, which had been a major issue in Pat Brown s successful campaign for
governor .
The committee went on to work with the fledgling Fair Employment
Practices Commission, several of whose members were recruited from the
committee. Recalling the problems of the early FEPC, Becker says, "We
weren t experienced or wise enough to realize how much more adequate staff
should have been."
This background must have seemed to Governor Brown made to order for the
human rights job on his staff. Becker is soft-spoken and obviously dedicated
to the worker and minority principles which are his life s work. He speaks
of his responsibilities for improving the state s own minority hiring
practices and as the governor s man on the spot when troubles like the Watts
riots arose. Some departments, notably Natural Resources, he found more
responsive than others to recruiting minority employees. He also encouraged
the effort to respond to social unrest by making state services accessible
in neighborhood service centers, but found that finance officials in general
were reluctant to accept the concept.
The interviews were recorded, in July and August 1979, in Becker s
comfortable office in the State Building in San Francisco where he has been
deputy director of the Department of Industrial Relations since 1975. He
spoke easily and with increasing interest in his subject matter as the
ii
conversation went on. He reviewed the edited transcript carefully and made
minor revisions and deletions, and also donated to The Bancroft Library a
tape he had preserved of broadcasts on the 1964 Proposition 14 Fair Housing
referendum. Although it is hoped that additional interviews with Mr.
Becker will be possible, the present manuscript is a valuable documentation
of efforts to develop awareness and acceptance between racial groups.
"People aren t going to always love each other," asserts Becker, "But they re
going to have to treat each other right."
Gabrielle Morris
Interviewer-Editor
12 June 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 Prolect Interviewee
Your full name VJ I L L I fl*Y\ A (J I
Date of birth _ < / ^2-^ I
Father s full name
Father s place of birth G~ETR tf\-t tJ
Mother s full name C. L A-& A te &&lt;1^T f^t t4
Mother s place of birth X//?~M^/h> A! **
~
Where did you grow up?
Education
Early employment
Positions held in state government
Employment after leaving state government fjtT3 ~*li/\
iv
William L. Becker
4/53-9/63
Came to California in late 1940 "s to organize
farm workers for AFL. Came to San Francisco
in 1953 when the organizing drive collapsed,
to represent Jewish Labor Committee.
Also represented the gravedigger s union,
Local #265 including period of the long
strike in 1956, the 1st victory of the
cemetery workers in Bay Area.
Secretary and Legislative Advocate for the
California Committee for Fair Practices, the
Coalition of AFL-CIO s NAACP, CSO, Jewish
agencies, JACL and church groups which finally
achieved an FEPC law in 1963. The Unruh Civil
Rights Act, the Old Age Pension for Non-
Citizens, were also achievements of the Cali
fornia Commission for Fair Practices, (on loan
from the Jewish Labor Committee which paid the
salary
1958 - 1960
1963 - 1967
1967 - 1975
Currently
Director of minority voter registration of the
California Labor Federation in coordination
with the NAACP and the CSO. In 1960 we register
ed 137,000 Mexican Americans -- not counting the
gains made in the Black community and with Labor.
Assistant to Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr. for
Human Rights. Concerned with the employment
practices of the state, developing ways to break
the bottlenecks to integrated departmental per
sonnel in the civil service system; with communi
cation with minority communities and their in
volvement in government. Also served as person
who deals with labor problems.
Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission
of San Francisco, and or part of this negotiated
with the Building Trades Council for the establish
ment of the Apprenticeship Opportunities Foundation.
Chief Deputy Director of Department of Industrial
Relations, State of California. Participates with
the Director in administering the eight worker-ori
ented programs of this department with a current
operational budget of about $49 million yearly which
employs approximately 2,000 staff members distributee
William L. Becker
Currently throughout the state; acts for the Director
con t. in his absence; represents the Director and
the department before Legislative groups, cen
tral control agencies, other government agencies
from local to Federal, and public groups, in
cluding both labor and management organizations;
maintains continuing liaison with key labor
leaders and organizations in order to actively
promote full and effective communications;
develops, reviews and makes recommendations on
departmental policy, programs and procedures;
directs and initiates affirmative action pro
grams in the department; and coordinates the
review and study of legislation affecting de
partmental programs.
CIVIC GROUPS AND PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
State Advisory Comm. to the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights 1960, 1967
Board Member, Community Streetwork Center of
San Francisco
Board Member, Chinese Cultural Foundation
Board Member, Apprenticeship Opportunities Council
Board Member, Manpower Planning Council, City &
County of San Francisco
Member, United Professors of Calif. AFT, AFL-CIO
Member, NAACP
Member, Bay Area Urban League
Manheearsan Francisco Council for
The San Francisco Foundation Award 1972
Man of the Year Award, American Jewish Committee 1971
Man of Honor, Community Streetworkers 1974
Compadre Award, Centro Latino 1974
NAACI Freedom Award, 1963
Southern Calif. Human Relations Council Award, 1962
I PERSONAL BACKGROUND
[Interview 1: July 19, 1979]M
Morris: We like to start with a little bit of your personal background.
Are you a native Californian?
Becker: No. I was born and grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and went to
Columbia University. Upon graduation, I went to work in various
capacities in some union organizing drives and for the Socialist
party, identified with Norman Thomas.
Morris: Did you know Mr. Thomas himself?
Becker: Yes. During that period, one of my thrusts was in assisting people
in the unions to resist or beat down Communist party takeover of
unions. In that period talking now about roughly 1940 [to] 1947
or so, 48 the Communist party did have substantial bases in a
number of CIO unions.
This was a very difficult thing for the labor movement, because
as the needs of Russia changed in relation, for instance, to Hitler,
the Communist party s position in unions changed. So, at one point,
when Hitler and Stalin were aligned, they were totally opposed to
American participation in the war. And then when Hitler attacked
Stalin, they became totally in favor of American participation and
gave up many union issues, such as they were willing to go from
hourly wage to piece-rate payment in major industries where this
had already been won by the unions. They went heavily into a
##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 62.
Becker: no-strike format, whereas previously they had been generating
strikes. And so, from the point of view of the independence of
the American labor movement, this was an important principle.
Morris: It sounds like you saw their concerns as political rather than
related to workers.
Becker: It wasn t at all related to American workers needs; it was
related to the foreign policy needs of Russia. That, of course,
was a major problem with the Communist movement in this country
and I guess in other countries, although I don t know about other
countries.
Morris: What unions particularly were ?
Becker: Well, they were very important in the old UE; that was the United
Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers. They had some bases in the
old Shipyard Workers of the CIO. These are all CIO unions. They
were a factor in the United Automobile Workers until [Walter]
Reuther finally defeated the Thomas-Addis forces in that union.
They were in control of the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union,
I guess, pretty generally.
The people in the local unions I m talking now about the East
primarily who were concerned that the unions should represent the
needs of the workers who were their members needed and appreciated
some help in the form of producing leaflets and developing educa
tional programs for their members.
Morris : Is that what you worked on?
Becker: That s what I worked on, yes.
Morris : Did you come into this because you come from a labor union back
ground?
Becker: No. This was a result of my exposure to these problems in college.
Morris: What was your field?
Becker: Well, my degree is, let s see, a teacher of social sciences. But
the particular period when I was in college, which was 36 to 39,
was a period in which there was a lot of activity.
Morris : Student activity?
Becker: Student activity, right. And in America in general, you know,
there was a great deal of activity that related to the labor
movement. The CIO, you know, had started, was growing. Some
Becker: major labor struggles had been taking place. So it was a period
in which somebody who wanted to kind of open up, you know, could
get influence and input from a lot of experiences.
Morris: Was there any resistance to a college boy working in union organiz
ing?
Becker: No. The labor movement during the 30s got a lot of help at very
low prices, in terms of what it cost the unions, from the radical
movement in general from Communists, Socialists, Trotskyites, etc,
I think many of the union officials figured out that this was a
good source of free labor, or cheap labor, and they accommodated
to it.
I think that a lot of the organizing that took place during
that period would not have been successful if it weren t for the
fact that these kinds of people were available to help, because
it wasn t as though the labor movement had masses of personnel to
put in the field to do all of that organizing.
4
II NATIONAL FARM LABOR UNION ORGANIZING IN THE IMPERIAL VALLEY,
1947-1952
Farmworkers Vulnerability
Morris : How did you happen to get involved in agricultural labor?
Becker: Well, I decided in, I guess, 1948 to go to work full time in a
major way in the trade union movement. One of my children I had
at that point three children was said to have an illness which
required a hot, dry climate, and that, of course, pointed to the
Central Valley of California.
A friend of mine, a man who had gone to college with me, Hank
Hasiwar, was already out here at that point organizing for the
Farm Labor Union of the AFL, and he convinced me that this was a
good possibility.
At that point, William Green was president of the AFL. He was
interested in the Farm Labor Union, in farm labor organizing, for
a very specific reason, which I ll outline. He paid the expenses,
not the salary but the expenses, which, if I remember correctly,
were six cents a mile and ten dollars a day for three of us, Hank
and Ernesto Galarza and myself. The union paid our salary, which,
I think, was $200 a month, if I remember correctly.
Morris: That sounds about right, not munificent.
Becker: Yes. But Green had been president of the AFL by virtue of being a
Mine Worker; his membership was in the Mine Workers Union. And at
one convention it must have been about 1945 when John L. Lewis
sent him a note (the story is) written on a brown paper bag that
he tore off which said, "Bill, We disaf filiate. John," William
Green was at the podium of the AFL without a membership in the AFL.
Becker: And H.L. Mitchell was apparently not the only person, but was one
of the people who went quickly and gave William Green a membership
card in the union. And so, William Green was eligible to continue
to be president of the AFL. [chuckles]
So, at any rate, out of that act he apparently developed some
interest in farmworkers and so was willing to do something, to put
some money into organizing.
That particular relationship ended when Green died, and, I
guess, about a year after Meany became president, Meany said, "Gee,
these people aren t bringing in any members. They re not bringing
in any per capita," and ended the relationship.
Morris: So, from the labor movement s point of view, part of it is finan
cial. Their interest is in organizing ?
Becker: It s a way of measuring whether or not an expenditure is like
anybody, any family or any government or any business, you know,
in the sense: If you spend money, what do you get for it?
It s true that we had not succeeded in building a union, you
know, really building a union that was a stable organization of
dues-paying members, and when we get further on we can get into
that some more.
So, anyway, that s how I came out to California, specifically
because of one of my children s needs. I had a couple of other
possibilities. One was to go to Puerto Rico, and another one was
to go to Connecticut, and neither of those climates was as good as
this one.
Morris: Connecticut would be textile workers at that point?
Becker: No, that would have been government employees.
Morris: That would have been kind of pioneering at that point too, wouldn t
it?
Becker: I don t know. I don t remember what the situation was.
Morris: Well, moving on to the California organizing experience, is there
something different about organizing farmworkers than other groups
of workers?
Becker: Yes, it s different I guess it still is in the sense that the
people who are farmworkers are less aware of their rights, or more
vulnerable to being laid off or to having no income. In the period
when I was organizing, from 48 or 49 [to] I guess it was 53 or
something like that
Morris: 52 was when the specific project that you and Hasiwar and Galarza
were working on came to an end.
Becker: Came to an end, that s right. There was no unemployment insurance,
obviously; there is some now. The people had no resources to hang
on when there was a strike, and this was just always a terrible
problem that the union didn t have enough resources to support
people if they were on strike.
Also, it s one of the few fields in which the government is
involved, either positively or negatively, in providing strike
breakers. For instance, in 1951 we had a very bitter strike in
the Imperial Valley in the melon season, and we lost that only
because the government would not remove the contract nationals who
did pick some melons and kept the growers sufficiently serviced so
that they didn t have to agree to negotiate.
In the present conflict in the Salinas Valley, Chavez apparently
has the problem, or has had the problem maybe it s been changed in
the last few weeks that the growers hire illegal aliens, and the
Immigration and Naturalization Service doesn t round them up now in
the harvest season. There has always been a practice of Immigration
and Naturalization more effectively finding illegal aliens after a
harvest is over than during the harvest and especially during a
strike.
I guess these kinds of problems don t exist in most industrial
union organization. The main thing, I guess, is that the people
are so hungry, you know.
Morris: Physically hungry?
Becker: Physically hungry, yes. And when people come in from outside now
it s this continuing flow of Mexicans who are mostly here illegally,
I guess, in the sense of the continuing flow they don t have many
options about where to go. If they re in a rural area, if they re
in Earlimart or Tipton [Tulare County] or some place like that, you
know, if they don t work on the farm when the opportunity provides,
there is no work, nothing else for them to do.
This, of course, doesn t mean that the illegal aliens are
primarily rural. They re much more heavily concentrated in the
greater Los Angeles area than in the San Joaquin Valley.
Morris: In the 70s.
Becker: That s true now.
Morris: Was it true in the 40s?
Becker: No, I think in the 40s they were more of a rural agricultural
phenomenon.
Morris: Right. You said that you knew Hank Hasiwar in college. Had you
also known Ernesto Galarza?
Becker: No, I met Ernesto out here.
Morris: Was it a specific decision, do you think, to try and find somebody
with a Mexican-American background to help in that organizing
effort?
Becker: Yes, sure. And, of course, he was extremely interested in it.
Ernesto was one of the great men of principle, you know, and of
concern, whom I ve met. I m sure that he had wanted for years
before the union got active out here to try to do something in
this field.
Morris: How did you go about setting up your organizing effort here in
the Valley?
Becker: Well, by the time I came, the union had already set up a structure,
which were local unions in Arvin, Lament, Bakersfield, Delano,
Wasco, Porterville, Fresno. These were local unions which varied
in size with the seasons. And then we set up a statewide council
of the unions.
Morris: Of the agricultural locals?
Becker: That s right. We met once a month on a Sunday and broke bread
together across ethnic lines, which was, I guess, something of an
experience for some of the Caucasian members from Oklahoma and
Arkansas.
Morris
Becker:
But the structure is not as important really as the tactical
things that we tried. For example, the first major confrontation
was with Di Giorgio. That was something which the union hadn t
sought but which was created by the fact that the people there did
organize, did want to do something, and the company resisted, and
a strike was precipitated. It was certainly not a choice of Hank
Hasiwar to take on the largest and strongest employer first.
Did you people from the East know how powerful a company Di Giorgio
was in California agriculture?
I don t know whether they knew that before I got here, I just don t
know. But we certainly knew it soon. So, that was taken on, and
one ranch.
Cotton Pickers Caravans
Becker:
Morris:
Becker :
Morris :
Becker:
Morris :
Becker:
Morris :
Becker :
Morris :
Becker:
Then, in 48, 49, 50, and 51, I guess, we had cropwide activities
on cotton picking, which were a totally different kind of a thing,
and which were the most important organizing [activities] in terms
of membership, involvement of large numbers of people, and getting
people to sign up.
Because the cotton involved so many more workers?
Right. And because the tactical approach was to caravan the fields.
You d start off with fifteen or twenty cars and a loudspeaker and
go to a field and call the workers out, because they re only getting
$2.50 a hundred pounds for picking. Some of them joined the
caravan, and at the end of the day you d have masses of cars, and
the back roads would be clogged with cars.
This was in a relatively compact geographical area?
Yes.
You could go through a number of fields?
Yes, like in the west side of Kern County one day, and the east
side another day. Then as we got going better in those things,
we d have more caravans going, perhaps on the same day.
Yes. Whose idea was the caravanning? Had that been tried before?
I don t remember. But it was very successful. We, over the course
of our activity in cotton, drove the price for picking up from
$2.50 to $4.00 a hundred pounds.
In one season?
No, no. That s over three years. You had a few hundred people who
would initiate such an action, and you d involve a few thousand
people in actual caravanning, and you d get five thousand people or
so to sign union cards, pay a dollar initiation fee maybe, yes. But
it didn t result in people staying in the union and coming to the
next meeting. The next meeting, you know, which would be in the
middle of the cotton-picking season, they were, I guess, resting
up from picking cotton. It was a short-term goal, driving the
price up, and we were successful in it, but it didn t build the
union as a permanent organization.
Morris
Why not, do you think?
meetings?
Why wouldn t the people come to some other
Becker: It just tended to tail off, you know. The five thousand people
who paid initiation fees became a thousand people who paid the
first month s dues and, you know, it went down, I think because
the goal was a specific goal. It was to drive the price up for
picking cotton, and it wasn t seen as being part of a long-term
deal.
A lot of the people also, of course, were picking cotton away
from their homes. A lot of people came into the state for that
activity. I remember the third year people calling at the various
union offices, saying, "When are we going to strike?" They just
came in from Texas .
Morris: They came in to strike?
Becker: Yes, because that s the first thing. First, you struck; and then
you got more money; and then you picked the cotton.
Morris: When you say that you drove the price up you would sign people
up in the caravans, and did that then become a bargaining unit
for a higher price?
Becker: Well, it wasn t really a formal bargaining unit. It was just that
it was a pressure on the growers, and each time the growers
eventually raised the price because that was what it took to get
the cotton picked without this disruption.
State Conciliation Service: Growers Response
Morris: Who in terms of the growers would you deal with?
Becker: They mostly wouldn t deal. The first year, if I remember
correctly, the sheriff acted as a go-between. A state conciliator
came in, but the growers were terribly angry with the State
Conciliation Service for presuming that they could come in and do
something that approximated collective bargaining. The sheriff
acted as a go-between, and eventually the growers announced that
they were increasing the price to $3.00 a hundred pounds.
Morris: So, the growers presumably would meet somewhere together?
Becker: I don t know whether they even met, or whether they operated in an
informal thing, or whether the Farm Bureau was their base. I
don t remember what the mechanism was.
10
Becker: I, one year before the strike, went around and talked to major
growers. They said, "Well, if you strike, you know, the price
will probably go up, but we want you to know that the chief thing
you re going to do is to hasten the day when we use the cotton-
picking machines."
Morris: Who did you talk to? Do you remember?
Becker: No. Well, yes, one major one was the Camp family of big growers.
I forget which one.
Morris: Would that be W.B. Camp and his sons near Bakersf ield?*
Becker: Yes. But I spoke to three or four, you know, the most important
people down there. They weren t about to sit down and bargain over
it.
Morris: Were they difficult to approach? In other words, could you just
call up and say, "I m from the union. I d like to come talk to
you about the strike"?
Becker: No, no [they weren t difficult to approach]. They weren t friendly,
but they didn t slam the door and say, "We won t talk to you."
Morris: Who was the sheriff who acted as go-between?
Becker: That was a man named John Loustalot.
Morris: Yes. He d been the sheriff for a long time.
Becker: Yes, he had been. Right.
Morris: Was your sense that he was in sympathy with the growers or with
the workers?
Becker: I .think he wanted to do what he could to keep peace, because these
caravans and strikes in agriculture in general were problems for
law enforcement. There was always the possibility of some violence
and destruction of property and stuff like that.
Morris: Were there instances where the union people felt that the sheriff
and the police department were part of the problem?
See Wofford B. Camp, Cotton, Irrigation, and the AAA, Regional
Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley, 1971.
11
Becker: Oh, yes. I don t remember in what year, because it was just before
I got to California, but someone had shot into the union meeting in
Arvin and shot the man who was president of the local, Jimmy Price.
And the fact that the sheriff s agency never found any evidence of
who had done that was something which had basically undermined the
credibility of the sheriff, the law enforcement, with the farm
workers and the union.
fi
Morris: Did the union make much effort to use the Conciliation Service?
Becker: The growers were so hostile to the first involvement of the
Conciliation Service in the cotton strike, I guess in 48, that
I think it was an event which resulted in the eventual dismissal
of that conciliator. The Conciliation Service was manned by
some very fine people who were very competent as conciliators and
had a good concern that it was important to have viable collective
bargaining. But I think they nevertheless were instructed to be
very careful about how they got involved in agricultural disputes,
and they weren t able to be very helpful, because obviously, if
the other side doesn t want to bargain, it s hard for them then to
play a role.
Morris: Yes. There were various comments that some of the incidents were
difficult to document. Dr. Galarza mentions that you spent a lot
of time on this. I ve heard various references to Ernesto going
around asking people for any pieces of paper they had in regard to
either their salaries or how much they had worked and things like
that. I m told they referred to him as El Papileto.
Becker: You mean workers?
Morris: Right.
Becker: Right. Well, the other use of the state, which I guess this
relates to heavily, is the payment of wages due. In this connec
tion, the labor commissioner s office was generally a very helpful
agency, because the labor commissioner s office then and still is
an administrative approach to settling claims without getting too
involved in the formal court procedures.
On a number of occasions, all of us would take workers who said
the contractor had cheated them to a labor commissioner, and they
would make some kind of ruling, often on the basis of very scant
evidence because so much of the problem in agriculture is that
there are no records. There are no paper records. The contractor
has a little book he keeps in his hip pocket, and that s the only
record. The worker has no record.
12
Morris:
Becker;
Morris:
Becker :
He just got cash in an envelope, with no actual accounting.
Right. He s told, "This is your payment for having picked twenty-
five lugs of grapes." And he says, "What do you mean? I picked
forty-five, What do you mean, twenty-five?" So, there s the issue,
and the labor commissioners tended to be very good in handling those
cases.
These were local commissioners?
That s right. There was one in Bakersfield.
Fresno. They did a good job.
There was one in
Union and Other Support
Morris: To what extent were there other organizations helping in this
effort, either other unions or organizations like the Community
Service Organization and the American Friends?
Becker: The American Friends weren t involved in that period, and the
Community Service Organization had not yet been organized by Fred
Ross. There wasn t a great deal of non-labor organized support.
There was some liberal concern, out there, and when we would do
things there would be some indication of the fact that there were
people out there who were concerned. But we didn t create a real
base of support that could act.
At one point I forget when we set up a kind of a support
committee. I forget now who was on that committee. It was kind
of a letterhead thing, which Earl Raab in San Francisco kind of
did the work on.
Morris: This kind of general liberal concern was coming from the cities?
Becker: And also there were people in Bakersfield, you know, who would
attend hearings that took place and would urge us on and cheer us
on, but it wasn t like there was an organized thing. This is in
contrast to what I think Chavez has done so well, you know
Morris: That s why I m so interested in this period.
Becker: which is to organize the outside world to be supportive.
Morris: As an issue of general social concern?
13
Becker: That s right. We did not do that.
Morris: Was that yet the style?
Becker: No. It didn t even occur, you know, except for this little kind of
letterhead committee that we did put together at one point.
The labor movement, the AFL, was very supportive in the Di
Giorgio strike. I think that as the years went on, both because
we didn t win that and we didn t build a union, and the Imperial
Valley strike created some problems for the labor movement, which
we ll talk about later I think the amount of support we got kind
of lessened, but there was a tremendous amount of initial support
and interest by the labor movement in general in the state. And
even later on, after some of the unions did feel they had been
burned by involvement with us in one thing or another, they still
were really cooperative.
The Teamsters recognized the picket line we I remember one year
at the beginning of the cotton season, the workers at a cotton gin
came in. They wanted to organize, and we signed them up and tried
to bargain. The company wouldn t bargain, so we went out on strike,
and the Teamsters respected the line immediately.
By the way, another thing about agriculture is that everything
has a limited amount of time. You have to win it in a particular
amount of time; otherwise the season is over, and the jobs aren t
there anymore then. And even in a cotton gin, the cotton is going
to get ginned there or they re going to have to gin it someplace
else, but it s not going to be sitting around waiting for six
months. So the response of the other unions was always of some
importance, and it was generally there.
Other Tactics; Workers Concerns
Becker: I was beginning to tell you before about the fact that we had tried
different tactics. The one-ranch-at-a-time we did with Di Giorgio.
And then later I guess about the last action we had we had a
strike at the Schenley ranch in Delano, which was a one-ranch thing.
And then we had these cropwide deals like the cotton.
In the Imperial Valley, we took on one crop, the melons, but it
was also in a limited area; it wasn t like the whole San Joaquin
Valley. It was a limited area, and we had intended to make it the
14
Becker: melon picking and the melon transportation. We had an agreement
worked out with the Teamsters in that, and the Teamsters had been
the people who had made the strike-sanction motion in the Central
Labor Council.
And there were a couple of times, but the most important time
we tried to organize the contractors. The best effort we made was
in the potato picking in one year.
Morris: This was the labor contractors that you wanted to ?
Becker: Yes. Not to organize them, but to get them on a contract as the
employers, so that we would be able to process the have a different
system of payment for picking potatoes, and have a steward in each
crew, and things like that. And we did sign up I guess I know of
forty-five or so contractors on a contract. The unfortunate thing
about it was that the essential thrust that we tied the contractors
into wasn t something that the union members were interested in
enough to really implement in the field.
The people were traditionally paid by the stub, which is a half
of a bag of potatoes; presumably it has fifty pounds of potatoes in
it, and they got six cents a stub, or something like that. But the
contractors uniformly demanded that they put more than fifty pounds
in. The contractors got paid at the loading, at the warehouse or
what have you, the packing shed, by weight. So, if they got people
to put in sixty-five pounds instead of fifty, they got fifteen
pounds for free.
So what we proposed was that the total amount picked by the crew
be divided up among the crew and that they be paid on the basis of
the total crew s weight. The union members we talked to about this
thought this was a good idea. But the mass of potato pickers, who
weren t at the union meetings, didn t think this was a good idea.
They wanted to get paid for what they picked, you see. They could
count those stubs, even though they got chiseled on them.
Morris: Short-weighted, yes.
Becker: Right. So, in a sense we did get contracts signed, but they
weren t really effective contracts because the people didn t want
to really enforce the terms of the contract. They wanted to make
their money if they possibly could. But nobody wanted to take time
off from picking to be a steward in the field either, you know.
Morris: This was what your education efforts were devoted to, trying to get
some of these ideas across to people?
15
Becker: Yes. But, as I said, I think we were essentially dumb in trying
to propose something as a lab or -management relationship pattern
which people didn t really want. You know, essentially, if some
thing is going to be an issue that people are really going to
fight for, it has to be their issue, and this wasn t the issue of
enough of the people involved.
Morris: Were you getting advice on strategy and organization from H.L.
Mitchell, for instance, or from the AFL regionally or nationally?
Becker: No. H.L. Mitchell s experience with the Southern Tenant Farmers
Union wasn t too applicable to the agribusiness situation in
California, and the AFL had relatively little experience in this
field.
Morris: So you were really breaking new ground in terms of union techniques,
Becker: Yes, I guess so.
End of the Organizing Effort
Morris: How was the decision arrived at to de-emphasize the organizing in
the fields and go after Public Law 78, the bracero legislation?
Becker: I m not sure
Morris: Dr. Galarza s book makes quite a point that as the union organizing
phased out, about 52, there was a decision made that it was more
important to stop the flow of contract labor coming in from Mexico.*
Becker: Well, I really think the decision was made just out of the fact
that we weren t succeeding. Hank had gone to Louisiana because it
looked like there was something that could be done there. We
didn t have the resources, especially resources of money, to
sustain a strike and to keep enough people in the field to do what
was necessary to build a membership.
Even though we had intended to have union meetings once a week,
or at the most once every two weeks, and I went to a different local
every night almost, nevertheless that s not organizing. That s just
sort of maintaining contact, but it isn t
*Farmworkers and Agribusiness in California, 1947-1960. Ernesto
Galarza, University of Notre Dame Press, 1977.
16
Morris: Going out and signing up more people.
Becker: Right. It isn t making the issues, reaching out to new people
sufficiently. And I think, having learned in the Imperial Valley
that the government wouldn t take the braceros out, that Ernesto
is referring to the fact that we felt we couldn t take on a major
issue where the braceros could be used, could be kept in to pick
the crop. But if we had tied down a few contracts someplace that
were of some significance, I think it would have been a different
decision.
Morris: You would have stayed in the direct
Becker: Yes, probably. Right. The basic fact is that we had not worked
out a successful strategy in any of the different things that we
tried. For some reason or other, they didn t make it, the things
it takes to build a union. I don t mean that we didn t drive
wages up; we did.
Morris: Yes. But that s different from an ongoing organization?
Becker: Yes, it s different from making a union, right.
Morris: Was a major effort put then into trying to get Public Law 78
repealed? That would be a whole other strategy.
Becker: That s right. Not by me. I was not involved in that.
Morris: I see.
17
III CALIFORNIA COMMITTEE FOR FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES, 1953-1959
Morris:
Becker:
Jewish Labor Committee, Labor Federation, NAACP, Other Participants
Morris: So, did you stay with the agricultural union after 52?
Becker: Well, I don t remember exactly what the dates are, but I remember
I left the union. I taught school in Porterville for, I guess, a
semester, and then I went to work for the Jewish Labor Committee,
which must have been at the beginning of 1953, based in San
Francisco .
And that committee worked on a broader, more of a civil rights
approach?
Yes. The Jewish Labor Committee is an organization which felt
that its responsibility was to attempt to help the labor movement
deal with problems and relationships in the area of civil rights.
It had developed into this out of the fact that it had been
successful in involving the labor movement during the Hitler
period in being supportive of its efforts to help labor leaders,
Jewish and non- Jewish, and Jews who needed to get out of Germany.
Morris: Was this bringing people over from Germany?
Becker: Getting them out of Germany was their biggest thrust.
Morris: San Francisco was quite a center for
Becker: For relocation.
Morris: For relocation of Jews.
Becker: That s right.
Morris: And this included the labor movement too?
18
Becker: Yes. The labor movement was very supportive of this. So out of
that experience, they had developed also a sense that the labor
movement needed help and wanted help in the general civil rights
area, and that was its thrust when I came to work for the Jewish
Labor Committee.
Morris: Was part of this to get the Jewish Labor Committee concerned about
the problems of Asian- and Mexican-Americans in California?
Becker: They were concerned. Part of it was getting the labor movement
involved in the problems and needs of the black community and the
Mexican- American community, etc. This was, you know, before the
labor movement s record was established on that front.
Morris: On that front, yes. Would you have been involved then in some of
the legislative efforts? Our information is that there was fair
employment legislation introduced as early as 46. Would that be
something that labor committee was working on?
Becker: No. The 46 and 48 efforts were not very broadly based. In
1951, there was an effort to get an FEPC law enacted in which
- there was a small committee put together and in which we in the
farm labor front participated mildly, because we were always
involved in some strike activity and just never really paid any
attention to
Morris: Efforts to pass legislation?
Becker: You know, [we] didn t have time to put in. But in 1953, the
Jewish agencies and the NAACP got together, and I guess the
American Friends Service Committee was involved I m talking
about initially, you know, now and the CSO maybe, and said,
"You know, if we re going to get in on an FEPC law, we need to
form a broader-based coalition that s going to be there and stay
together until we get one." I became the secretary and the
lobbyist for that.
Voter Registration: 1958 Effort to Elect Pro-FEP Senators
Morris: This is the California Committee for Fair Employment Practices?
Becker: The California Committee for Fair Employment Practices. And then
we changed the name later to Fair Practices after we got the FEPC
law, because we then went on to fair housing. It took us from
53 to 59 to get the FEPC law, four legislative sessions. Each
19
Becker: session we would get it a little bit further. But in 1958 we
realized we had lost the bill in the [state] senate twice*
that we were going to have to get in the political arena more
directly. So we went out, and I raised money to register voters
in some senate districts where the incumbent had been a strong
opponent of FEPC, and we won in each of those districts.
Morris: Did you have help from the CSO on that in those areas? Weren t
they strong on voter registration?
Becker: This was before their real drive on voter registration. The
CSO s big drive on voter registration was in 1960.
Morris: That late?
Becker: Yes, their big drive. And I got the State Federation of Labor
then to put, I think it was, $45,000 in to a CSO registration
effort, which was very successful, probably the most successful
ever conducted. Cesar Chavez was the director of organization
in the CSO, and we registered 127,000 Mexican-Americans in the
state that year.
Morris: Wow! That s an incredible number.
Becker: Right. In many areas, it was quite easy because so few people
were registered that almost three out of four people you talked
to were not registered. So it was easy to get to the people, but
it took a great effort, nevertheless.
But in 1958, I was able to raise us some money to get a person
out in the field in well, two people we hired, and we concentrated
in San Diego in order to defeat a man named [Fred H.] Kraft, and
in Sonoma County to defeat [F. Presley] Abshire, and then Tehama
and Sutter counties. I forget who the incumbent was. In each of
those places, we had to work with different groups. In Tehama
and Sutter counties, it was religious supporters, Methodist
ministers and people like that, who were helpful.
Morris: Was this the National Council of Churches? Didn t they have a
kind of an activist ?
*See record of state senate and assembly votes in 1957 on FEPC
legislation, in supporting documents for this volume in The
Bancroft Library.
20
Becker: Not to my knowledge.
Morris: That was later?
Becker: Yes, that s right. I don t think they did have at that point.
But, as I said, we registered enough people to make a difference
in these districts. And we involved, obviously, the pro-FEPC
people in the campaigns around the fact that the people had voted
against FEPC on the floor of the senate.
Morris: Did you and your people have any interest in the local people
who were selected to run against the people you defeated? Was it
enough just to defeat them?
Becker: I told the very fine person, [Joseph] Rattigan, who defeated
Abshire in Sonoma I told him a couple of years later I said,
"You know, Joe, we would have supported anybody." [laughter]
Morris: It was really a vote against these incumbents, and you figured
anybody would be better.
Becker: Against, yes.
Morris: And presumably it would be a Democrat; therefore, it would be more
likely to be
Becker: Well, we did in each case, however people did meet with them and
get a commitment on support of FEPC.
Morris: In other words, you had contacts with local people who knew them?
Becker: That s right, yes.
Morris: Did they have trouble convincing these candidates to take a
position in the campaign?
Becker: No. In none of these cases, no.
Morris: Earl Warren had made a couple of speeches, or a couple of his
governor s messages had mentioned that it was time that California
had a fair employment bill. Did you feel that he was serious about
this?
Becker: Yes, I felt he was serious. But the problem was in the senate, in
the old-line entrenched club in the senate Hugh Burns and [Luther]
Gibson and people like that. They really were very, very hostile
to the idea.
21
Becker: You see, in addition to the fact that the senate had been changing
since "55 in by-elections, etc., and a lot of very good people had
been elected [Stephen] Teale and Fred Farr and people like that
but in 58, we had to make the issue a political issue, you know,
in the sense that if people voted against FEPC, it could be costly.
And we had to do it not only in order to get a bill, but in order
to get a good bill, at least what seemed at that point to be a good
bill. Remember, this was all helped by the fact that Pat Brown
made FEPC a major campaign thrust. The issue, when the legislature
met in 59, was not whether we were going to get a bill, but
whether we were going to get a good bill.
Morris: What was going to go in it?
Becker: Because in the last committee in the senate through which the bill
had to pass, Hugh Burns had initiated a substantial number of
amendments which would have substantially weakened the bill, and
our thing had to be to beat those amendments, which we did.
Morris: How were Gus Hawkins and Byron Rumford on this?
Becker: Well, they carried the bill on alternate years. They had an
agreement. This was Rumford s year, the year we got it.
Morris: Right. Did they work closely with your people?
Becker: Oh, we worked closely, yes. I mean, they carried the bill for
this committee.
Lobbying for a Good Fair Employment Bill
Morris: Yes, but who did the actual writing and deciding of what you wanted
to go into it?
Becker: We would have each year and it s very important to understand
this. We would have meetings before the legislature in which we
would lay out what we wanted not only this bill, but there were
other bills. We got a lot of legislation enacted during that
period, not just the FEPC bill the Unruh Civil Rights Act, the
repeal of the Alien Exclusion Act, the Hawkins Act, and finally
the Rumford Fair Housing Act in 1963.
I*
Becker: The major factor in determining the priorities and the content of
the bill, etc., was the NAACP, represented by Frankly n Williams.
22
Morris:
Becker:
Morris :
Becker :
Morris:
Becker:
Morris:
Becker:
Is he still around?
He s in New York. He s the executive of a foundation. I forget
the name of it. Phillips-Stokes Foundation, I think it is called.
And Franklyn [is] a very able person and a person who not only
could speak for his organization, but who could relate to the
other groups .
The AFL was the single most powerful group in it in the early
part of the time, the AFL and the CIO were both represented, and
then when they merged in 55 labor was represented through the
AFL-CIO. The AFL took the position Neil Haggerty, the secretary-
treasurer that whatever the California Committee for Fair
Practices said was it, in terms of priorities, would be the AFL s
priorities. That was a very important kind of commitment, and
involved in this also was the fact that the AFL s position of
support was made clear in the legislature.
So that you had the AFL speaking for your position.
That s right. Totally involved. It s very important to understand
this . A number of these things could not have been done without
the AFL and the CIO, the AFL-CIO s involvement, because there were
legislators in whose districts none of the rest of our coalition
had any particular base except the labor movement.
Was it important to Haggerty and the AFL leadership that there be
somebody like yourself with a labor background as secretary?
I guess the reason why we were able to put it together was that I
came out of the farm labor background and, you know, they felt it
was easier to have someone like that out of a labor background in
the executive secretary spot.
Were there other union people actively involved in the committee
then?
Well, Haggerty or someone from his office took part in all of the
meetings, and there were other union people who were directly
involved also. We had a letterhead in which almost the whole of
the back page was union officials. Do you have that?
Morris: Yes. C.L. Dellums has given us a copy.
*See appendix to C.L. Dellums, International President of the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Civil Rights Leader,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley, 1973.
23
Becker: Okay. C.L. was there as regional president of the NAACP. I mean,
he was chairman of the committee, but he was also a union official.
But the back page we had most of the ranking union officials in
the state committed to FEPC by the time this thing got
Morris: Got going.
Becker: Yes. And so it was obviously easy for the State Federation of
Labor to be supportive because we had so many of the people who
were their affiliates committed.
Morris: Okay. How did somebody like Josephine Duveneck she was your
treasurer.
Becker: She came through the Friends Committee on Legislation.
Morris: Right. And how did she and the union people get along?
Becker: This was no problem. You remember, we had a very specific goal.
We weren t getting into side issues. We maintained a very
disciplined approach for the program of this committee. And the
NAACP people this was their priority, and they didn t want it
hurt by being drawn into other things. The labor people were
confident that we d stay with the agreement. By the way, it s
important to note that most of the money to fund the committee
over these years came from labor.
Morris: For the legislative efforts?
Becker: That s right. The salaries for myself and Max Mont, who was the
southern coordinator for this, were, of course, paid by the Jewish
Labor Committee. And then, of course, this was not a full-time
job; we did other things. But when we had the registration drive,
the expenses for the mailings, the continuing expenses for the
clerical persons who put out the mailings, were paid by the money
we raised. I forget how much we would spend in the course of a
year, maybe [pauses to think] between $10,000 and $20,000. But
that money came mostly from labor. The biggest year, we probably
spent more than that. And then not just the traditionally liberal
unions, you know, like the Garment Workers and the Auto Workers,
but I remember one year the Carpenters Union locals were the
biggest single contributor.
Morris: What had brought about this unanimity in the labor movement? From
outside the labor movement, there s sometimes the perception that
some unions really feel that minorities are a threat to their jobs,
24
Becker: Well, that liberal middle-class perception is basically not an
accurate one. But I think we just came into the situation at the
right time, when the labor-union leadership saw a legitimate need.
You remember, the labor movement nationally had always been for
FEPC legislation and legislation that would cover unions as well
as employers. This had been a principled position which they had
taken. And so it just happened that, I guess, the combination of
people came together at the right time for this. The labor move
ment also supported our efforts to get the fair housing act passed
in 63.
1958 Right-to-Work Initiative; 1954 Election
Morris: There was also in 58 the right- to-work act.
Becker: It was on the ballot, right.
Morris: It was on the ballot, and I wondered if your committee was involved
with that.
Becker: We were not involved with it, no. But we did get other parts of the
civil rights coalition to support labor against the right-to-work
law. The right-to-work initiative, of course, was defeated over
whelmingly, but it was defeated very heavily in the minority voting
precincts. And although its support of FEPC had started years
before that, I think the labor movement was impressed by the fact
that the minority communities the black, the Chicano, and the
Jewish precincts were so strongly pro-labor. [This] was something
which solidified their concept of a kind of natural coalition.
Morris: Would that then have had an effect on the decision to get heavily
involved in a voter registration drive in these communities in
1960?
Becker: I think so, yes.
Morris: Was there a growing sense that these minorities were all potential
voters as well as potential union members?
Becker: Yes, I think so, and that as voters they tended to be with the
labor movement. And this is, of course, still true.
Morris: Did you have a liaison with Pat Brown or any direct contact with
Pat Brown while he was getting ready to run for governor?
25
Becker: No. Just in the sense that he had picked up on the issue of
needing an FEPC law. That was strong in itself and important,
but it was independent. We were glad that that was accomplished,
but our efforts in 58 were directed towards defeating
Morris: To the right-to-work?
Becker: No. To defeating the senators
Morris: Knowland?
Becker: The state senators who had voted against FEPC.
Morris: I see. I was thinking of the 58 governor s election.
Becker: That s the same year.
Morris: Yes. And that was the weird year that Senator Knowland was running
for governor, and Governor Knight was running for the U.S. Senate.
Becker: Yes.
Morris: Did labor care particularly about that election?
Becker: Oh, sure. Labor was heavily for the governor, for Brown. And
although they had supported Knight for governor in 1954, I think
who ran against him then? I forget.
Morris: Richard Graves.
Becker: Yes, that was when he ran for governor. But I forget who ran
against Knight for senator.
Morris: I think it was Clair Engle.
Becker: Right.
Morris: And he was not considered sympathetic to labor, though a Democrat?
Becker: He was, yes.
Morris: But labor was supporting ?
Becker: Many were for Engle in 1958. But I think labor s big emphasis in
that year was in the defeat of Knowland and in the defeat of right-
to-work. They had had a lot of relationship with Knight, and I
would guess that some of the labor movement was for Knight.
26
Morris: Going back to 54, Edward Roybal was the Democratic candidate for
lieutenant governor, and I wonder if that was anything that you
and your people were aware of. He later turns up on your Committee
for Fair Employment Practices.
Becker: Yes. Roybal was a leading figure in the Mexican-American community
and was, I guess, a titular head of CSO at some period. But his
election to lieutenant governor was not an important one for the
Committee for Fair Practices because it had nothing much to do
with getting the bill passed.
Morris: And in 54 there wasn t any particular emphasis by either of the
governor or lieutenant governor campaigns on FEPC?
Becker: No. Right.
Morris: It hadn t yet become a civil
Becker: It hadn t become that kind of an issue, right.
Morris: That s interesting. But in four years, it became one.
Becker: It became one> right.
Morris: Your committee must really have done a lot of work in those four
years .
Becker: Yes. I m surprised at how big an issue we were able to make it
with so little money and so little ability to get into the mass
media. But apparently just the continuing emphasis of the organi
zations that we did have involved, with their members, built it up
into an issue.
Morris: Plus the effort to elect non- incumbent candidates in specific
districts.
Becker : Yes .
Morris: It was done on that basis, rather than a general effort directed
at the media and the general public?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: That s interesting. Well, I ve kept you a long time this morning.
Thank you. Why don t we stop here?
Becker: All right.
27
IV WORKING WITH UNIONS AND THE LEGISLATURE
[Interview 2: August 8, 1979] //#
Farmworkers: Ethnic Groups, Needs
Morris: I wonder if you could say a little more about the ethnic inter
action when you were starting the farm labor organizing down in
the Valley. You said that it was sometimes a bit of a surprise
for Caucasian union people when they sat down and broke bread
with non-Caucasian members of the locals. I assume that would be
Mexican- Americans and
Becker: Blacks.
Morris: And blacks, yes. Did the ethnic differences cause any misunder
standings or problems?
Becker: The ethnic differences may have impeded our ability to organize a
permanent membership structure. I don t know this to be a fact,
but we ve been told this. On the other hand, the fact is that
whenever there was a strike and there were, you know, many every
year whoever was involved in that crop activity had to join
together. Usually, in most crops, most of the ethnic groups
participated. The Anglos, the Mexican- Americans, and the blacks
picked cotton, chopped cotton. The one ethnic group that was more
specifically specialized in its own activity were the Filipinos in
the Delano area, who were concentrated in grapes and specifically
in the field pack of the grapes, which was considered a somewhat
specialized skill, and they did get a little bit more money. But
in the down seasons when we had strike activity down seasons for
the Filipinos they also participated in the strike activity in
crops where they weren t particularly active, like in cotton-
chopping.
28
Becker: I remember one occasion we had a strike up near Tipton and the
grower threatened to shoot the caravan. It was a very mixed
caravan and it did weld all of the ethnic groups together because
obviously the grower was not differentiating in terms of whom he
was aiming at, you know, by ethnicity.
In the cotton-picking situation, the substantial militancy of
the black men and women made a big impression on all of the groups
that were involved. They were primarily based in Bake rsf ield, at
least in terms of the strike activity, and I know the Anglos and
the Mexicans were very much impressed by the fact that these people
were so committed to winning the strike and were so militant in
their activity.
Morris: Were these blacks who had experience working cotton in the southern
states?
Becker: Yes, they all came from the South.
Morris: Had they come out here to do farm work, or had they come out during
the war period?
Becker: They d come out to do farm work, but during the war mostly, and
then some were more recent than that. But they were almost all
from the South.
Morris: Were there special efforts made by the growers to recruit black
workers from the South?
Becker: During the war there were, I m told, but not during the period
when we were organizing, to my knowledge, although I don t know
that.
Morris: Did the different ethnic groups have different expectations of
what a union might do for them or of what they wanted the union
to do for them?
Becker: I think so, in the sense that they had some different concepts of
what crops were important. But they were all still basically
interested, number one, in the rate of pay that was, you know,
the big issue and, number two, in more work. The down time, the
unemployment, was a problem that affected all of them, especially
if they wanted to settle down in one place and not be transient
in following the crop activity. And I think that cut across all
the groups. Their perception of a union perhaps was different in
terms of how they related to each other within the groups. But
I think by and large the dominant issues were so similar that it
didn t make any difference.
29
Morris: Ernesto Galarza speaks of being interested in helping people with
their general problems of living, as opposed to more specific union
goals of wages and
Becker: You mean that he was interested?
Morris: Yes.
Becker : Yes .
Morris: And I wondered if that caused any problems in trying to organize
in the union sense.
Becker: Well, I think it meant that Ernesto extended himself more. He
became, I think, more involved in the internal family problems
that large numbers of people had. And we didn t really have
resources, you know, for dealing with those problems. - I m not
sure that, given the low state of the farmworker in terms of the
availability of social services you remember, at this point there
was no Social Security; there was no Unemployment Insurance. The
only thing available was welfare and that was in terms of general
assistance, which is at the discretion of the counties. The
important categorical welfare programs weren t available to farm
workers, so that there were very few government resources there
and people had so many more needs than we could fill. On occasion
I guess all of us, but especially Ernesto, were buying groceries
for somebody or other, but that was always such a temporary thing.
I remember one year there was a surplus of potatoes in the eyes
of the government, and these potatoes were then sprayed with a
purple dye so they couldn t be sold and were, I guess, used for
cattle feed or something. That was a particularly painful thing,
to see these piles of purple potatoes when there were so many
people who couldn t afford to buy them, you know, who just weren t
able to get enough to eat.
Morris: Were there any efforts by the union organization to try and get
some of the potatoes declared surplus? Doesn t the Department of
Agriculture run a surplus food program?
Becker: I don t remember exactly what kind of program there was then. I
remember there were no food stamps.
Morris : Right .
Becker: I m not sure whether the surplus food program was in operation, or
whether we got some kind of an emergency thing going at some point.
But we were not successful in getting the potatoes released I mean,
in a local sense. That decision was a decision made in Washington
basically.
30
Developing Liberal Support for Farmwo r ker s
Morris: You also mentioned that at one point Earl Raab started some kind
of a support committee.
Becker: Yes.
Morris: And wasn t he then head of the ACLU? Was this an ACLU ?
Becker: No. He was the assistant director for the Jewish Community Rela
tions Council of San Francisco.
Morris: Could you say a little bit more about who was involved in that
support committee and what you hoped they might accomplish?
Becker: To tell you the truth, I forget totally who the people were. Earl
might remember. We had hoped and we put out a little newsletter,
probably three or four issues, but only just to get it out to
hopefully interested people, interested circles, to tell them
about the union and about the things that were going on. This was
a kind of modest, straightforward thing to get the union s point
of view across. I m not sure where we I guess our problem was
with raising some money to do it.
Morris: Raising some money for -the support committee?
Becker: For the printing and postage. That was, I guess, our problem. I
forget how we did that. But we got small amounts of contribution
from a number of unions in the state, like ten dollars a month,
twenty dollars a month, and that kind of thing, for a few years,
and it probably came out of that.
Morris: So, it sounds as if your people in the union were looking for
somebody to put out the newsletter.
Becker: Yes. We needed somebody who was interested and was able to write
and who had a sense of the liberal community outside of you know,
because we were so totally involved in the organizing and the day-
to-day problems .
Morris: You don t by any chance still have copies of those newsletters, do
you?
Becker: I have no files left. I don t remember what I did with them.
Morris: Okay. They may be in Ernesto s files, which are down at Stanford.
Becker: They could be. That would make sense, yes.
31
Morris: I know he seemed to collect a lot of [materials].
Becker: At one point, Dr. Taylor
Morris: Paul Taylor?
Becker: Paul Taylor wanted the files. He had refused to be a member of the
committee, so I wouldn t send my files to him.
Morris: I see. Why did he refuse to be a member of the committee?
Becker: I don t know. I mean, he took on controversial issues, but maybe
he saw this as being a little bit too far at that point.
Some Friction between Unions
Morris: You said that some other unions felt that they got burned in
relation to some of the strikes in the Imperial Valley, and I
wondered what caused them to have that feeling.
Becker: No, I don t think anybody felt they got burned in Imperial Valley;
they burned us.
Morris: Other unions burned the agricultural ?
Becker: Yes. But in the Di Giorgio situation and possibly in some others-
well, in the Di Giorgio situation, the Hollywood Film Council did
a film I forget the name of it now, but that s a well-documented
thing which became the matter of a suit, and they sued the Holly
wood Film Council and the California Labor Federation and some of
the individuals involved and our union. The suit was eventually
settled in court with a one-dollar fine to us. It was a charge of
libel, that we libeled Di Giorgio. And the copies of the film
[were] to be destroyed.
But this kind of frightened people that it could be a costly
thing, getting involved against big agriculture. It didn t make
any difference to our union because we had nothing to be assessed.
None of us had anything that anybody could collect from.
But, in addition, other unions who were involved in that strike
with us found themselves locked into something that went on for
years, where if we hadn t been involved in the strike their
contracts might have gone on peacefully. It was an issue which
32
Becker :
Morris :
Becker:
Morris :
Becker :
Morris:
Becker :
sort of, in these rural communities, put the labor movement against
a majority section, a powerful section, of the community, certainly,
And I think that some people felt that it s all right to do this if
you win, but not
That s always tricky.
Yes, that s right.
Because of the suit, which went on for years, there was some fall
out that caused problems in other union/management contracts or
relationships?
No, not because of the suit, but because of the strike. I think
it made life more difficult for the Winery Workers, for example,
who did have contracts. It created some problems, I think, for
the Teamsters. The Teamsters were generally, in the Valley,
extremely supportive and cooperative. I m saying this in order to
clarify the record, because in the Imperial Valley in 1951 they
did us in.
I d like to go on with that, but I need to stick to my agenda.
Would you say that there were some things learned in the work
that you did in organizing farmworkers that were later helpful to
Cesar Chavez, or did he consult with you people at all when farm
worker organizing later became much more visible?
You know, I m not sure, because I ve never talked with Cesar about
this, but I suspect that one thing that came through to him as he
looked back on the history of farm labor organizing was that you
couldn t win just with the picket line, that you had to have some
external force on your side, whether it was the power of public
opinion; or the boycott, which he developed very well; or the
active involvement of religious groups, which he developed very
well; or government involvement in a supportive way.
In the case of the Imperial Valley melon strike, for example,
where we should have won and we should have been able to establish
collective bargaining in a major crop activity, we had organized
the local people and we kept the wetbacks out and rounded up those
who were there. But the federal government under Truman refused
to take out the contract nationals. His secretary of labor,
[James] Tobin, kept surveying the situation, but meanwhile the
contract nationals were picking the melons. They didn t pick them
all, and the growers didn t make so much money that year, but the
fact is that they picked enough to prevent the strike from really
resulting in collective bargaining.
33
Morris:
Becker:
Morris :
Becker:
Morris:
Becker:
Morris:
Becker:
Were there any efforts to get access to either Governor Warren or
Governor Knight? Was that something that was thought of or tried?
The union itself was not in a position to do this. The California
Labor Federation was in a position to do this and, I m sure, did it
in some situations but, I think, also found that this was always
just one item on a larger labor agenda, and it was sometimes the
item at the bottom of the agenda, if only by reason of the fact
that we had so few members in contrast to other unions who had real
problems.
For instance, when the Teamsters, in connection with the melon
strike in 51, published in the Southern California Teamster the
headline, "Wildcat Strike in Imperial Valley," they gave the
federal government the excuse in part, an excuse not to take out
the contract nationals. The fact is that the Teamster representa
tive in the Imperial Valley Labor Council is the one who had made
the motion for strike sanction. It was a sanctioned strike of the
labor movement in Imperial Valley.
But the Teamsters did that and with the involvement of the
California Labor Federation, Neil Haggerty because there was a
hot cargo bill up in the state senate, and they had some votes
they thought they and, I guess, they did get, through this.
They did, yes.
cargo, yes.
Yes.
Warren did support Haggerty s position on the hot
So, there isn t just one thing involved in any of these
organizing ?
No. Labor s solidarity, of course, is an important ideal, but
very often union officials opt for doing what their members need.
You know what I mean? They represent their particular group of
workers. And painful though that has been for me, nevertheless
that s an understandable position.
It s the reality you have to deal with.
Yes, that s right. Democratic trade unionism requires that union
officials be responsive to the people who elect them. And if
those people who elect them have narrower concerns than inter
national labor solidarity-- that s, I guess, the way we as human
beings and as Americans are.
34
Dealing with Senate Resistance to Fair Employment Legislation
Morris: Let s go on, then, to the Fair Employment Committee. How did the
bill for fair employment practices change over the years? You
said it took about four legislative sessions to actually get the
bill passed once the committee got organized.
Becker: It kept becoming more specific, more detailed, and stronger in
terms of enforcement as we went along, as we learned more, and as
we felt we were picking up some strength. The first year, I guessj
it didn t get out of the assembly.
Morris: Yes.
Becker: The second year it did, and it got stopped in the Senate Labor
Committee. The third session it got stopped in the Senate Labor
Committee, but we, at the end of the session, amended some FEP
provisions into some other bill and forced a vote on the senate
floor on the issue. We lost the vote, but we created a record
that senators who were up for election had to run on, and it was
that record that made it possible for us to galvanize some
registration drives in some key districts around the issue of
FEPC. In the fourth year, in 58, the fourth session, when we
got the bill, the issue was how strong a bill, and we were able
Co defeat Senator Hugh Burns efforts to weaken the bill.
Morris: Burns was from a rural area at that point.
Becker: Fresno.
Morris: Your feeling was that he was responding to growers rather than
to?
Becker: He was responding to his own prejudices.
Morris: In what sense?
Becker: I think he carried racial prejudice.
Morris: Were there other people in the senate who supported his view?
Becker: He got some votes, yes, but he didn t get many votes.
Morris: And because he was the pro tern, you felt that he was able to
control how the senate dealt with the bill?
Becker: He didn t on this issue. Well, he was a very effective leader of
the as one senator said to me a number of years later, "You know,
Hugh is so sharp. He watches these new guys when they come in.
35
Becker: They get elected, and he plays them like a skilled musician
playing an organ. He knows which buttons to push and pull in
order to get as much as possible from them on the issues in which
he s interested." And he was extremely effective in that regard.
His control over the Rules Committee decided who was going to be
on the key committees, essentially two key committees the Finance
Committee and the Committee on Governmental Efficiency. Almost
everything that was controversial went to Governmental Efficiency.
Morris: I ve heard that before. I don t understand how Governmental
Efficiency relates to what s a controversial issue.
Becker: Well, they just decided arbitrarily what was under that heading.
Hugh was able to assign the bills; the Rules Committee did that.
He was able to control and make sure that those bills in this
area of anti-discrimination went to that committee by and large.
Luther Gibson was part of Hugh s team and he was chairman of that
committee for a long time.
Rumford Fair Housing Act Passage
Becker: I guess the only time that I saw that committee break ranks was
when we finally got the Rumford Fair Housing Act passed in 1963,
when we got (with great struggle) a couple members of the committee
to force a vote on the bill, which Gibson had been sitting on for
weeks and weeks .
fi
Morris: Did you have any meetings with Senator Gibson himself on the bills?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: How did he respond in a face-to-face situation?
Becker: Very negatively, not very friendly. He had a very effective
staff person, Doug Gillies, who is currently the lobbyist for the
California Real Estate Association. Gillies was the technician
who knew what was in the legislation.
But Gibson was not a good representative of a district that
included Vallejo, with all the minority people there. He had no
real rapport with that community and no sense of what the problems
were.
Morris: Did you feel that he was relying on Gillies information and staff
work to make his decisions as to how the bills would be handled?
36
Becker: Well, no. Basically the political line, the policy line, was laid
out by Burns in the internal group. But Gillies had the responsi
bility for following that out in detail and for building support
for that position in terms of the language of the bill and the
arguments, etc.
Morris: Who were the members of the Governmental Efficiency Committee that
you did feel were responsive?
Becker: Well, Senator [Eugene] McAteer of San Francisco eventually became
responsive. He was for the idea of the bill, but was a member of
"the club." He stayed with "the club" for weeks, but eventually
agreed that now was the time to act. And Senator Regan of
Morris: Bruce Regan?
Becker: No, Edwin. He s now an appellate court judge, from up north some
place, outside of Sacramento. He became the person who (when, with
McAteer s help, a vote was held; the vote was forced) carried
amendments on the Rumford Act through that committee and then
through the Finance Committee and then to the floor. Of course,
once we got the bill on the floor, I knew we had twenty-one votes.
Morris: Had you lobbied the whole senate?
Becker: Oh, yes, yes.
Morris : Every single person? You had somebody
Becker: Well, I or someone else. Actually, a few senators did the most
crucial vote counting, but they knew and we knew that we had
twenty-one votes if we got the bill to the floor.
Morris: Who of the senators did the ?
Becker: Senator Rattigan from Sonoma County. [Senator] Cobey.
Morris: How had you found them? Just by the process ?
Becker: Oh, over the years of work on the bills.
Morris: How much of your time as executive of the committee was spent in
Sacramento talking to legislators and lobbying the bills?
Becker: A considerable amount. But just as important was the business of
keeping our people in the field informed and our various organiza
tions. We had to let them know what was going on and urge them
to continue their communication with their legislators, because
37
Becker: it would be a misreading of the process to think that a lobbyist,
even if he has a good cause and good arguments, can push through
a controversial measure in the absence of interest in the grass
roots, in the districts. That may be possible with something
which is a narrow issue, if it s not a controversial issue. But
if it s a controversial issue like fair housing, the legislators
have to be convinced of the fact that there s some interest out
there, that there s some pressure for it. We had, for weeks on
end, every day, one delegation from some place in the state of
people who visited in the halls of the legislature.
Morris: Really?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: That s an incredible organizing job itself! [laughter]
Becker: Yes. It would be a mixed delegation. It was usually some
religious figures and the NAACP and the Jewish community and
labor.
Morris: Each group would be mixed over the course of the weeks?
Becker: Right, right.
Morris: Who organized that and kept in touch with all those people?
Becker: Well, we had, I guess, three major centers of organization. One
was the NAACP headquarters in San Francisco, which was Franklyn
Williams; and then there was, also in San Francisco, Earl Raab in
the Jewish Community Relations Council; and, in Los Angeles, Max
Mont in the Jewish Labor Committee office. Between them and what
I was able to do on the phone, we kind of kept this going.
Morris: Were the legislators willing to see these groups, or were there
any who weren t?
Becker: Some were and some weren t. We asked everybody to see, in addition
to their own legislators, Hugh Burns and Jesse Unruh. I think
that s what we asked. They didn t usually get to see Burns or
Unruh, but they left word who they were and why they were there.
Morris: Did you have any contacts at all with Unruh while this was going
on?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: Did he take some convincing that this was something [for which]
the time had come?
38
Becker: Well, initially he was not actively in support of the legislation
and, I think, was aware of the fact that the opposition, if we
were successful, would mount a referendum campaign against the
bill, which they did. In some respects, he was one of the few
people who looked at that problem seriously. But in the initial
thrusts for the bill, he was not actively in support.
Morris: Any special reason why not?
Becker: I think out of his sense of the political fallout that there was
in the issue.
However, then in the last day when we finally got the bill
unglued from the Governmental Efficiency Committee and Senator
Regan had it on the floor, we found that Hugh Burns had made a
decision that it should not come up for a vote on the floor.
The clock was running, and he almost succeeded. At that point,
Unruh said that the assembly would not take up any senate bills
(these were bills that had cleared all the process and just
needed to be voted on by the assembly) would not take up any
senate bills until the senate voted on our AB 1240. That forced
the senate to take up the bill because there were so many senators
who had their legislative product for the whole session hanging
over there in the assembly just waiting for a vote. Once it got
on the floor, you see, we got the twenty-one votes. Then when it
went back to the assembly, you had the amazing thing of something
like sixty-three to seven or some
Morris : Overwhelming
Becker: Overwhelming support, right.
Morris: At that point, were you working with Unruh to push this through?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: What do you think made him decide that it was more important to
have the bill than to avoid a referendum?
Becker: [pauses] I don t know. I don t know.
Morris: The strength of the kind of constituent support you were building
in his home territory of Los Angeles, perhaps?
Becker: Maybe. I really don t know. Maybe he was [pauses] I really
don t know. I shouldn t speculate.
39
Morris: Well, I hope we ll have a chance to ask Mr. Unruh that himself.
It s interesting to see what indications there were around.
How active was Pat Brown in the process of getting the Rumford
bill through the legislature?
Becker: His office was very active. One of his legislative representatives
was actively involved in getting Senator Regan to take the leader
ship in getting the bill onto the senate floor. It was a very
supportive thing from Pat Brown s office in general.
Morris: Who in his office would have been the person working on these civil
rights things?
Becker: He didn t have a specific civil rights person and so it was whoever
were the people who were working on legislation who did this.
Frank Chambers was the one who became involved in the bill in the
final days. I don t know whether Frank I don t remember who was
legislative secretary at that time.
Morris: And by that time there were already assistants to whoever was
legislative secretary?
Becker: There were assistants?
Morris: Yes.
Becker: I don t know. I really don t know.
Morris: Frank Chambers is a new name to me, so that s useful.
By 63, Fred Button was no longer in the governor s office.
Becker: Correct.
Morris: Had he been active in trying to get some of these things done
earlier?
Becker ;
Not that I remember.
40
V GOVERNOR PAT BROWN S ASSISTANT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, 1963-1966
First Fair Employment Practices Commission: From Individual
Complaints to Affirmative Action
Morris: When did you yourself come in contact with Pat Brown?
Becker: Well, briefly in the 1958 campaign because he espoused FEPC as
one of his major issues. And then I guess I met with him a few
times in terms of the organization of the Fair Employment Practices
Commission after the bill was passed, and then more in terms of the
Rumford Act activity, the fair housing activity.
Morris: Did he want some suggestions from the committee as to who ought to
be appointed to the first ?
Becker: Yes, I think he got suggestions.
Morris: Was the committee pleased with the people he appointed? Were those
your nominees, your suggestions?
Becker: A number of them were, yes. C.L. Dellums, who had been chairman
of the California Committee for Fair Practices, became a commis
sioner, and that was a kind of a major piece of input.
Morris: Was that considered a major victory by the black community to have
Dellums on that commission?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: What were the things that you wanted to see go into the operation
of that commission?
Becker: Well, we wanted to see adequate staff, but we weren t experienced
enough or wise enough to realize how much more adequate it should
have been than it was.
41
Morris: Does that mean that Brown put in for the size of staff and
organization that you thought was needed in the beginning?
Becker: I think so. As I said, it was not very much. And I must say that
Pat Brown s director of the Department of Finance, Hale Champion,
was resistive to staff increases in FEPC and that this hurt the
agency, kept it in too small a position during the eight years of
the Pat Brown administration. Later [Governor Ronald] Reagan was
not supportive, and I think there was only one minor increase in
staff in his eight years. I think that the only time when the
agency has really gotten staff help has been since Jerry Brown has
been governor and there have been substantial increases in staff.
Morris: Were Champion s objections because at that point there was a fiscal
crunch on state government, or was it that he had philosophical
differences?
Becker: Oh, I don t think he had philosophical differences on the issue of
civil rights. I think he just didn t have any sense of what it
took to implement an ideological commitment to civil rights and to
implement it in a professional way. Of course, you know, also the
area s become more complicated. Initially, in 1953, we were talking
only about protecting an individual who filed a claim of discrim
ination; it was an anti-discrimination approach. And nowadays we
talk about affirmative action and class action and things that deal
with the system which has discriminated against minority people,
etc., so that the demands for staff have increased, the kind of
things which
Morris: The whole scope of affirmative action?
Becker: That s right.
Morris: Is that because the staff of fair employment commissions and
departments have looked for ways to expand implementation, or is
that because there s been pressure from various groups in the
public?
Becker: I think some of the staffs have, not generally however. Generally,
most of these anti-discrimination commissions have been case-
oriented and have wanted to be case-oriented, individual complaint-
oriented, and have wanted more power to deal with individual
complaints, to better make the individuals whole. But there
developed, I guess, largely out of some of the lawsuits that were
brought, a concept of class action, and this developed I m not
exactly sure from what you know, the very important concept of
affirmative action. And this is not primarily out of the working
staff in these agencies. I m not sure where some of these ideas
have come from.
42
Morris: Did you stay in touch with some of the legislative support that
you had developed? Was there any effort to try and get them to
increase the budget even though the Department of Finance was
unhappy?
Becker: I did not. I didn t have enough sense of the importance of this,
you know, in the earlier period. I think Rumford was always
supportive of whatever seemed to be needed. But the idea of how
to set up a structure, and the number of people, and what should
a caseload be, etc., was something that [we] just didn t have
enough expertise in and it had to evolve.
Morris: Were any people brought into the staff who had New York had had
a fair employment organization, hadn t they, for a time?
Becker: Yes, they had had, right.
Morris: And was any effort made to recruit them to come here?
Becker: No. It was a very strongly local California people.
Racial Awareness; Government Employment and Contracting
Morris: How did you happen to come and join Pat Brown s staff? Was this a
new thing that he had set up?
Becker: Well, after we got that Fair Housing Act passed, and he had been
supportive of it, it turned out that it was one of the few things
in that session that the administration had won; he asked to meet
with me. He said he d like for me to come to work in the govern
ment somehow, and as we talked we evolved the idea of his having
an assistant for human rights.
Morris: What kinds of things did he have in mind, and what kinds of things
did you have in mind?
Becker: Well, I think he had in mind the fact that this was an area in
which government was just beginning and that he ought to have some
body in the office who was going to look out for problems in this
area, who was going to relate his administration better to the
more actively organizing minority communities, etc.
I had in mind, partly, a concern for trying to have some impact
on how state government operated as an employer. This was a real
serious problem because State Employment was not as well integrated
43
Becker: as it should be and this is, you know, so heavily a reflection of
the way the civil service process works. The other thing that I
was interested in was the whole problem of government contracting,
to see if that could be and the Governor did issue an executive
order requiring a fair practices addendum to all government
contracts.
Morris: Yes. By a governor s order, or did that have to go through the
legislature?
Becker: Well, this was just a governor s executive order. But in the
absence of enforcement, which presumably required legislation,
this didn t really make too much difference, and I never was able
to get a handle on how to really make that work, how to make it
make a difference.
Morris: The FEPC bill was passed in 59.
Becker: Right.
Morris: I thought it was 1963 when you actually joined the governor s
office.
Becker: That, of course, was right after the Rumford the Fair Housing Act
was passed.
Morris: Oh. So that it was while the fair housing bill was being passed
that Pat Brown decided he needed somebody in his office
Becker: After. [It was] right after it that we talked.
Morris: Right after, yes. So that you were working on the Rumford bill
still for the committee.
Becker: Yes, from 59 to 63. It took us four years.
Morris: Pat Brown was doing a lot of departmental reorganization and
setting up his
Becker: Agencies.
Morris: agencies at that point. Was that something that you were
participating in, trying to feed in some affirmative action
thinking in that?
Becker: No. What we did do it had nothing to do with the reorganization.
We had sessions after sessions, educational sessions, you know,
with every state department, on the issue of affirmative action
44
Becker: and what they had to do, etc. We took the first count, ethnic
census, of state employees, which was the starting-off point, and
so we knew where things were. Some departments were very respon
sive and some weren t so responsive.
Morris: Did you have a staff and a budget that you could then ?
Becker: No. I was one person on the governor s staff of I forget how
many.
Morris: And could you call on other people on his staff to help with some
of this?
Becker: Yes. It was a very supportive staff.
Morris: Did you have any further conversations with Hale Champion about
how much or what this was all going to cost in terms of the state
government?
Becker: No, I didn t. I really didn t get into the budgeting of FEPC in
any heavy way in that period.
Morris: Did you call on the FEPC staff to help you with some of the
training sessions or other things?
Becker: Oh, yes.
Morris: That must have been fascinating. Which departments and which
department heads were helpful and which not?
Becker: We went through every department with something. Some departments
were much more responsive than others. I remember one Department
of Water Resources, I think it was that issued a policy that if
any of their hiring people, where there is a rule of three, passed
over a minority person who was eligible, they had to let the
director of the department know. This is a good kind of solid
thing to remind the people down the line that this kind of thing
is we do that in this department now.
The sessions that we had and the Governor participated in
some were, I guess, the first time in state government that the
governor was saying, "We have to integrate our work force. We
have to draw from the people who make up California." And in
this, I guess, we ve made the most rapid improvement in state
government in terms of the number of blacks who are hired in the
positions that they re in.
45
Becker: The most persistent problem seems to be getting enough people from
the Spanish-origin community, which is a fast-growing minority
group in the state and which is still not showing up as state
employees in sufficient numbers.
Morris : Then and now?
Becker: Then and now. It continues to be a problem now.
Morris: How about the governor s office itself? How were they on integra
tion? Cecil Poole had been there for a while as clemency secretary,
Becker: Right. Sherrill Luke was there when I was there. Art Alarcon was
the executive secretary when I began there.
Morris: He s from a Spanish background?
Becker: Yes. Cruz Reynoso came onto the staff at some point. There was
some continuing awareness of this.
Proposition 14: Fair Housing Referendum, 1964
Morris: Would you have had some special responsibilities in regard to the
Proposition 14 campaign when the referendum ?
Becker: I was, I guess, the major spokesman on our side of the campaign
and did a great deal of public speaking and radio and TV stuff
and set up the initial Blue Ribbon Committee that we had, which
was a very impressive committee of business and religious and
civic and labor leaders. Unfortunately, they weren t able to
[chuckles] influence (very strongly, at any rate) the membership
of the
Morris: Their constituencies.
Becker: Their constituents, right.
II
Morris: Would you still have copies of those newsletters?
Becker: No. If there are any, they d be with the committee files in the
office of the law practice that Max Mont has in Los Angeles.
Morris: Thank you. That s very useful to know. We like to make a record
of that, so that when people come to us to use our materials we
can tell them where the others are. Are they still in the Jewish
Labor Committee office?
46
Becker: I think so. You d have to ask Max.
Morris: I wondered if there were any plans to send them to UCLA or some
thing like that.
Becker: I have no idea.
Morris: Was there some kind of coordination of all the bodies working to
defeat Prop 14?
Becker: Yes. We had a fairly good (as these things go) structure. We had
a kind of major campaign headquarters in Los Angeles, and one of
the Governor s staff people took over as sort of campaign director
and fund raiser.
Morris: Who was that?
Becker: [pauses to think] I think his name was Dick Kline. His name just
escapes me now. Lu [Lucien] Haas left the governor s office to do
the PR, and we had a staffed committee up here.
Morris: In San Francisco?
Becker: In San Francisco. We had, you know, committees in county after
county. We really had people involved.
Morris: Did you have any professional PR organization either polling or
putting material together?
Becker: No, no. I think we hired them for some media stuff.
Morris : Right .
Becker: But not for polling.
Morris: How about the pro-14 people? We re also interested in the develop
ment of public relations techniques, and by 64 there are some
Becker: Right. Some political people had polls taken, I m sure, during
the periods that probably the Democratic [State] Central
Committee, you know.
Morris: Yes. Were you working with the Democratic State Central Committee
at all?
Becker: No, not particularly. We were trying to be, obviously, non-
partisan on the issue. There was a lot of Republican support for
no on 14 too, you know.
47
Morris: Yes. Well, that same election what do we have? We have Max
Rafferty running for superintendent of public instruction, and
there was a funny Senate election that year too George Murphy
and Pierre Salinger.
Becker: Yes.
Morris: And Rafferty was there were still some anti-Communist noises
going on.
Becker: Yes.
Morris: I wondered if that had any impact on the Prop 14 campaign.
Becker: I don t think so. I think our problem was that the opposition was
able to formulate the issue in terms of "Every man s home is his
castle" and "What the hell is government doing in telling me I
can t sell my home to whomever I want, I can t rent my apartments
to whomever I want?" All of our arguments on this didn t pierce
that with a large number of people.
I know, in some places where I spoke, in debates, I could see
in the final analysis that people would be looking at me with some
sense of understanding, but that when the realtor or whoever would
begin to say something like, "You mean that you re going to let
the government say that here you are living in this house, and
you ve paid for it, and it s your house that you can t rent it
to anybody who comes up there can say, I want to rent that, and
you have to rent it to them?", you could just see the faces take
on a different look.
This is maybe partly because our American background is so much
based on the ownership of a piece of land, a piece of property,
and that that has something to do with being a free yeoman in the
Jeffersonian sense. Maybe that s what it is. I don t know. Maybe
it s more really rooted in prejudice. Certainly there was a heavy
element of bigotry in this, in our opposition.
But we conducted as propositions go, there was a lot of work.
There were more people involved in it than in almost any other
issue that I have watched.
Morris: More people in terms of public awareness?
Becker: Right. And people campaigning in local communities, and writing
letters to the newspaper, and putting out literature, and getting
on radio and TV, and carrying ads it was just an awful lot of
activity. And we didn t win.
48
Morris: Because the votes weren t there.
Becker: That s right. We lost two-to-one.
Morris: How about the money end of it?
Becker: We raised a goodly amount of money. I don t remember how much the
opposition raised, but we raised a lot of money, most of it in
small amounts. We had one Hollywood- star, $100-a-seat, I guess,
thing in Los Angeles.
Morris: Did you have any sense of a turning point? Did you have any sense
before the election that your campaign was going to be defeated?
Becker: No. But, I guess, the first public opinion polls that were
published made fairly clear what the problem was. I don t think
we felt before the campaign that we had that difficult a problem,
that we were going to lose or lose that badly. But the first
public opinion polls I forget which ones they were made it
clear that we were in trouble and we weren t able to make much of
a dent.
Morris: Those figures stayed about the same?
Becker: Yes, as I remember it.
Morris: Looking back on it, do you have any sense of what might have been
done differently or what kind of an appeal might have worked?
Becker: No, no. [pauses] I don t know what other kind of appeals could
have been made, because different people tried different ones,
and it wasn t as though there was just one thing.
I guess this sort of legitimizes one of the basic thrusts of
the civil rights movement over the years in its thinking, and that
is that we re not really trying to change how people feel, how
they think; we re trying to change how they act. That s the
purpose of these laws. People aren t going to always love each
other, but they re going to have to treat each other right. And
this was an indication of the fact that we couldn t change how
people thought about this issue of fair housing. But the law
does have some impact on how property is sold and rented.
Morris: Prop 14 was then challenged in the courts, wasn t it?
Becker: Right. And the court said that the people can t take away basic
rights by a vote.
Morris:
49
Does that mean that the Rumford Fair Housing Act is now the law of
the state again?
Becker: Yes, it s law. That s right.
Urban Unrest, 1965: Realities of Decentralized Social Service
Centers
Morris: Did that election have any effect on your work as Pat Brown s
special assistant or the efforts of the FEPC? Was there any
thought that you should pull back your activities or change
them?
Becker: Well, FEPC, of course, had to do whatever the law said, and when
the courts ruled that the Rumford Act was the law, the FEPC had
to enforce it. I didn t have much time to rethink the situation
in terms of the governor s office, because we not too long after
that entered a period of urban unrest which became an obvious
major focus of my concerns.
Morris: Yes. That would have major political implications for the
governor, wouldn t it?
Becker: Right, yes.
Morris: What was your first indication of and. Pat Brown s first response to
the fact that things were getting difficult in the cities?
Becker: [pauses to think] I don t think the government anticipated riots
in the cities; I don t think anybody did. I think that each one
of the outbreaks was triggered by a very specific event, almost
always some badly handled police confrontation. That doesn t mean
that that s the basic cause, but that was the triggering issue.
You know, such police practices weren t limited to those that
triggered the riots; they were more common than that.
But the Watts outbreak, of course, was a major thing nationally
and it created a real problem for Pat Brown, both in a political
sense, in that here is this governor who s all out for equal
opportunity, and then in terms of the opposition [mimicking
attitude of opposition] "See, what does it get you?" That s what
they were saying, you know, covertly and especially in terms of
some of the more hard-line opposition to civil rights in the
legislature.
50
Becker: Also, it did create a problem of what do you do? What kind of
programs work? What s the matter with our apparatus? It isn t
as though we re not trying to do something. And it caused a look
at some government programs that was very important. For instance,
the Department of Employment had centralized its operations, which
made them less accessible to people in Watts. But they centralized
them for a very good reason; that is, so employers couldn t
determine the ethnicity of the people who got referred by going
and calling
Morris: An office that served mostly white job-seekers.
Becker: Right. To avoid black referrals by not calling an office that
served the black community.
Well, we obviously had to change that. We had to somehow get
a different approach to that, because if the Department of Employ
ment is not accessible to the people in the community, you know,
they re not going to be registered there anyway. So, we set up a
service center down in the Watts community, and that became the
first of a pattern of service centers around the state, which were
meant to be expanded based on an office of the Department of
Employment, perhaps, but to be expanded with other government
services there.
Morris: Social services and health and that sort of thing?
Becker: And Vocational Rehab [ ilitation] . Everything that we had that
could legitimately be offered.
They were substantially cut back, those centers, in the Reagan
administration; I guess, in part, because offering this full range
of services can be a very expensive thing.
Morris: Why is it more expensive than the same services provided separately
in the Departments of Social Welfare and Public Health and Rehab?
Becker: I think you just get more clients. [chuckles] This is a frequent
charge of people in the Department of Finance even today, that if
you have an outreach you are creating demand for your services,
and therefore you have more of a workload, and therefore you need
more staff, you see. This is one of the sad things about our
system of government in this state and, I guess, federally too
with the Office of Budget and Management, in the sense that there
is not enough concern for the basic mission of the legislation and
the mission of the program, and [there is instead] an emphasis on
just what is the cheapest way of doing it. We can have many fewer
wage claims, for example, if we don t have any staff out there in
the sweatshops, in the industrial areas.
51
Morris: Feeling they don t have any place to go?
Becker: Because those people don t come in to file wage claims. But once
you go out and you find the violations, of course, you ve built up
much more of a caseload. This is a continuing problem. I suspect
that what they found is that when you have people out there with
vocational rehabilitation programs and some money to spend, they
go through a lot of money because people and the program will come
right together. Then if you have the welfare offices out there,
you make it easier for people to apply and to do something about
their needs. I think this is what undercut the support for the
service centers.
Morris: Did the service centers operate long enough in the Watts area to
get a sense that it made any shift, say, in the number of people
without jobs or the number of people who had serious medical
problems because they didn t get more minor attention?
Becker: I don t know. I really don t know.
Morris: That s kind of the end point of these programs, isn t it, that you
help people so that they can then get on their feet and function
more adequately on their own?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: Which, in the long run, in terms of the state, should mean more
revenues because people are making more money.
Becker: Right. That part of the arithmetic seldom gets added into the
actual cost accounting of a program, you know.
McCone Commission Investigation of Watts Riots; Later Federal
Program Directions
Morris: The Governor appointed another Blue Ribbon Commission, didn t he,
to take a look at the Watts situation?*
*The supporting documents for this volume in The Bancroft Library
contain a copy of the December, 1965, report from the Fair
Employment Practice Commission to the McCone Commission, with
recommendations .
52
Becker: Yes. That was pretty much of a disaster, I think, headed by a man
named [John] McCone, who had been head of the CIA at one point;
this was in order to have a responsible Republican kind of look at
it. We weren t going to whitewash it, but it was not a and he
[McCone] dominated the committee, including the minority people who
were on it, apparently, and it was not a good it was a political
response, I think, to a problem that
Morris: How had Brown settled on McCone as the person to chair the
committee?
Becker: Because he wanted a committee that was put together that whatever
it said that this was a responsible, not a soft, response to the
riot, and they were going to look at it with a full understanding
of what law and order was all about. Here was this Republican
conservative, a former head of the CIA.
Morris: Did you have some other recommendations for who might have chaired
that committee?
Becker: No. I felt that this was going in such an unfortunate direction,
I gave up on it.
Morris: Did you work with the commission at all, or did you avoid it?
Bec"ker: I avoided it.
Morris: Did you have a sense that the Watts riot and whatever other urban
things were going on frightened Pat Brown?
Becker: No. I think he reaponded very realistically. He tried very hard
to orient government actions, you know, in a healthier direction.
Morris: In the positive sense, did the legislature respond with more money
for social services?
Becker : Yes , for a number of things .
Morris: The Fair Employment Commission too?
Becker: Yes. I think there s been a whole movement, beginning at about
that point, towards dispersing government into the communities,
with special emphasis on the minority communities, but not just
the minority communities, which became at one point I don t know
how much it got developed in Los Angeles, in terms of having
neighborhood city halls. At one point this was being discussed
in San Francisco here, about ten years ago, I know.
53
Becker: I think that what s happened to a lot of that stuff is that it s
run into the fact that it costs money, and there s all this
pressure about reducing budgets or holding budgets in check, etc.
So, some of this stuff may not have just gotten a fair test.
Morris: A fair try, yes.
Becker: A fair try.
Morris: To what extent was it being pushed by the federal government?
Wasn t there at one point a federal interest in decentralizing
and being more accessible?
Becker: There were two different thrusts. One was, of course, the thrust
of the Nixon government, which was the "new federalism," you know,
and not having Washington do everything, but having local commun
ities . It was more of a block grant thing.
The other thing was before Nixon. Out of the anti-poverty
movement, there was the idea of really going out into the community,
involving the community, a big emphasis on community involvement.
They were two different things, but they became a little bit
merged in the later administration of manpower training funds, and
there were HUD, Model Cities Programs, and things like that. I
sense a kind of pulling away from that at this point. [tape turned
off during telephone interruption]
Involving the Mexican-American Community/^/
Morris: What were your responsibilities for Pat Brown? Did they involve
at all tying into some of the federal government programs or
finding out what from the federal government might be available,
either in the way of grants or services or political support for
some of the things you were trying to do?
Becker: My role was not that of developing the grant applications, but of
trying to get the state departments who had a line responsibility
to do that with more cooperation with the community. The community
which most needed to become integrated into this grant process was
the Mexican- American community. On this I worked very intensively
with the then-Department of Employment and with the support of
labor, but with some resistance in the Department of Labor in
funding the first group.
Morris: The federal Department of Labor?
54
Becker: Yes. I think it was kind of the first major grant that that
community got in the state; it was a statewide apparatus that
was set up, and it became a very important thing because it
payrolled enough of their people. I m not talking about the
importance necessarily from the point of view of accomplishing
the job placement and stuff like that, but of giving their leader
ship people mobility so they could get around and meet and program
and organize, etc.
Morris: Yes. And get more people in the Mexican-American community
Becker: Involved in the process. That s right.
Morris: Who were the people that you worked with as leaders in that
Mex ican- Amer ican ?
Becker: There was a man named Quevedo, who has since died, in Los Angeles.
And a guy named Bert Corona.
Morris: Where is he now? His name keeps turning up.
Becker: I think he s in Los Angeles. And Jimmy Delgadillo, in Oakland.
And Lou Flores, in Napa.
Morris: They were already visible as leaders in their own ?
Becker: That s right. They were visible, but they had no particular
structure, you know.
Morris: Is there some sense of conflict within the Mex ican- Amer ican
community as to whether these leaders do represent their people?
Becker: I think there s great conflict in the Mexican-American community
about any leader.
Morris: Why is that?
Becker: Well, maybe it s true of all communities, but it s particularly
pronounced in this group. There s a great deal of internal
competition, I guess. The person who has risen most clearly and
obviously is Chavez, as a spokesman, and yet there are other
large numbers of people in the Mexican- Amer ican community who
privately want to make clear that
Morris: Chavez doesn t speak for them.
Becker: Doesn t speak for them, right.
55
Morris: Is the sense of competition more visible to an Anglo than it is
to a Chicano?
Becker: I think no, I ve had many people that I know talk about the
problem, about how difficult it is to stay in a position of visible
leadership without something developing in the community that
Morris: To challenge the existing leader?
Becker: To challenge, right.
Morris: Does that make it more difficult to try and involve more Mexican-
Americans in whatever you re doing?
Becker: Yes, I think so.
Morris: How about the relations between the Chicano community and the
black community in trying to develop some of these community-based
efforts?
Becker: In the early period of the civil rights activity, the relations
were very good, very basically good, so everybody participated.
The Chinese community did not actively participate in the FEPC
drive.
Morris: Why not? Do you know?
Becker: [pauses to think] No, I don t know. It s partly maybe a reflec
tion of the fact that they were so internally oriented in terms of
solving their problems, not attempting to really deal with the
outside power structure. The Japanese community participated very
actively.
Morris: And the Filipino connections had stayed on through from being
involved in ?
Becker: No, they were not much involved. But the Filipino community was
not very large at that point in the cities. It was primarily
rural .
But I think what happened is that once the anti-poverty and
other monies became available, and with the neighborhood participa
tion involvement emphasis, the Mexican-American and the black
communities especially began to compete, to sense that they were
in competition for the money and that whoever were the funding
agencies could go in one direction or another. I think the
Mexican- American community felt that nationally this thrust was
aimed so much more to help blacks than them, that they had to be
more vociferous to get their share.
56
Becker: In this city [San Francisco], it became, obviously, a lot of
struggle in that regard. But the Asian community wanted its
part too. So, it was always hard to get people in Washington to
understand that this was a really multi-ethnic place, and if you
were going to do anything
Morris: Even when they looked at the numbers?
Becker: Yes, even when they looked at numbers, right, because they had
patterns; they had models that they worked from, and this didn t
fit the model.
Morris: Why don t we wind this up. You said that there were other areas
besides Watts where there were urban problems. Did Pat Brown send
you to take a look at any of these?
Becker: I obviously came to San Francisco, and I went to Bakersfield.
[pauses to think] There was one other.
Morris: Fresno? Oakland?
Becker: Oakland, yes. But in most of those situations, by the time I got
there, the conflict was over. The problem was, again, what could
be done about it?
Morris: Did you find that the people in those minority communities were
looking for somebody to talk to?
Becker: Always, always, yes. They were always looking for somebody to
talk to, right.
Morris: Were their concerns specific "I need a job," or, "We d like the
governor to do something," on a more generalized basis?
Becker: It varied. But a couple of things there would always be a problem
of police relations, there was a problem of unemployment, and there
was a problem of being left out in a kind of general sense. Part
of what we tried to do was to make sure that government was there,
that we were listening, that we were trying to develop a better
ability to respond to problems. I guess we did that better than
getting people working, because unemployment is still so heavily
concentrated in the minority communities.
57
1966 Campaign for Governor; Voting Patterns
Morris: Did any of these human relations issues feed into the 1966 campaign,
Pat Brown s third campaign for governor, and did you get involved
in that at all?
Becker: Yes. I tried to be helpful in the sense of those areas where I was
primarily involved, which were the Mexican-American community and
the black communities in the state. [They] were the major sources
of the Governor s strength. But it s also true, I think, that some
of the opposition that developed to him in the white community in
general was based on his support of the Fair Housing Act. Some of
it was a reaction, identifying him with the black community, and
the black community had rioted, and so forth. Welfare was another
kind of conservative issue that was used against him with some
effectiveness .
It s hard to know why people vote as they vote. His opponent,
Reagan, was a person with no political record, and that probably
was an advantage; he hadn t had to say yes or no on a lot of
things. And [he had] a tremendously able ability to use the TV.
Morris: Were there efforts made to continue the kind of voting registration
in the minority communities that the Fair Employment Committee had
done a couple years before? And did those -people you d registered
earlier keep voting and vote Democratic?
Becker: Some of them kept voting. Most of them kept voting Democratic when
they voted. But there tended to be in the working-class communities
in general a much greater falloff, a greater number of people who d
become ineligible to vote because they didn t vote in the general
election than is true in upper-class communities.
Morris: In other words, if they don t keep voting
Becker: If you don t vote in the general election, you re purged from the
rolls.
Morris: Right.
Becker: So you have to re-register. And, you know, in the lower down, it
just it has something to do with economics, but
Morris: In other words, people will register to vote because there s an
issue they really care about, and then they quit voting
Becker: They may not vote the next time, yes.
58
Morris: until another issue that really galvanizes them.
Becker: And we don t have 100% participation in our elections by far.
Morris: Right.
Becker: You have a large number of people in this state who aren t eligible
to vote because they re not citizens, a large number of people who
are not eligible to vote because they don t register, and a large
number of people who are registered but don t turn out at the polls,
so that the falloff is considerable.
Morris: Yes. On that election too, what was your sense of what Brown s
chances were, from the people that you were dealing with?
Becker: Well, at the beginning of the election, I felt reasonably confident.
I didn t feel, somehow or other, that the people would buy Reagan.
But, again, as the polls came through and the effectiveness of
Reagan as a campaigner came through it s true, you know, that in
the primary situation we felt that George Christopher would be a
more difficult opponent to beat than Reagan.
Morris: Really?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: Why is that?
Becker: Because he had a broader base politically and was a moderate, not
a conservative. He would attract more Democratic votes, we thought.
Obviously, Reagan was more to be feared, but we didn t have that
sense of his effectiveness at that point.
Morris: After the election, was there any conversation with Reagan or
Reagan s people about his interest in continuing an Office of
Human Relations?
V
Becker: Not that I m aware of. He did continue it in a somewhat different
role.
Morris: Would you have been willing to continue in that job under him?
Becker: No, that would not have been appropriate.
Morris: What shift did he make? You said it was in a different role.
59
Becker: They didn t see the spot as being so much of a pressure on the
government apparatus and how it hired or on agency programs.
They became more of a liaison and troubleshooter with the
minority communities.
Morris: And presumably had different contacts?
Becker: Yes, I assume so.
60
VI IN CONCLUSION
Morris: I think that s all my questions. Are there any things that we
haven t touched on that you feel were important in working with
Pat Brown?
Becker: I m sure that there are some things. I just don t think of them
right now.
Morris: When we send you the transcript, if things occur to you then that
you d like to add, do so.
Becker : Okay .
Morris: We touched on Goodwin Knight briefly. I wonder if there are any
things about Knight as governor in terms of civil rights or the
problems of labor that you ?
Becker: I m not aware that he was supportive of any of the civil rights
issues. The majority group in organized labor did support Knight
for governor against Graves, and I guess some of his activities
were helpful to those unions. I don t have a very good fix on him
at all during that period.
Morris: That s a recurring comment in this project, and it s unclear whether
it s because Knight himself is dead or whether he really didn t make
that much impact on state government as governor.
Becker: I see.
Morris: Which is something, I guess, for future researchers to get a fix
on.
Becker: Right.
Morris: So, thank you very much for your time. Did you stay in state
government?
61
Becker: Then I went to the Human Rights Commission in San Francisco.
Morris: In San Francisco?
Becker: Yes.
Morris: You certainly have a fascinating perspective, from field organizing
to deputy director of the Department of Industrial Relations.
Transcriber/Final Typist: Marilyn White
62
TAPE GUIDE William Becker
Interview 1: July 19, 1979 1
tape 1, side A 1
tape 1, side B 11
tape 2, side A [side B not recorded] 22
Interview 2: August 8, 1979 27
tape 3, side A 27
tape 3, side B 35
tape 4, side A 45
tape 4, side B 53
APPENDIX 63
\VINFIELD CO. INC.
.II-.-. MONTOOSU.R.Y >TRt. 1 !
5 AN FRANCISCO
\\ n,,.-*. ! - l-.l
March 2, 1964
Mr. William L. Becker
Assistant to the Governor
for Human Rights
Sacramento, California
Dear Bill:
J am sorry to be so long in responding to your note of February 3. I
had hoped to see you at the CDC Conventi6n~butT"ambng st the travtt-U
I did not have time to look you up, and so I am just now getting around
to setting down the ideas which you and I discussed in Los Angeles.
Administering a campaign to oppose the anti-Rumford Fair Housing
Act initiative will be more difficult than running a normal campaign
for or against any initiative. I am particularly concerned about the
volunteer action, since the raising of money and spending of money
for media, while difficult, can at least be administered. The mixture
of church groups, civil rights groups, and random collections of citi
zens with good intentions will be almost impossible to organize into any
kind of unified activity. I spent four years as president of the Fair
Play Council of Southern Alameda County, and when I look back on the
difficulties I had trying to keep volunteer people active in a meaningful
way on that scale, I shudder to contemplate the problem on a statev. id<-
basis. The interested people enjoy talking to themselves more than
tackling jobs which can have any real effect on an election. In trying
to figure out how you can provide meaningful jobs for such diverse
groups, it seems to me that a pledge card is probably the best unify
ing element. By this I mean a card which says something like, "I
favor Fair Housing in California and will vote against initiative No.
I believe that a volunteer effort on a statewide basis could result in as
many as one million of these cards being signed. If each volunteer
worker, regardless of his organization, were given as many blank
cards as he felt he could get signed, he would be well occupied until a
few days be/ore election time. Anyone speaking to a group would pass
out these cards and ask for those persons willing to sign to do so and
turn them in.
64
I found that when a person argues in favor of Fair Housing because it
is a Christian idea, and another person argues because he is a mem
ber of a minority group, and a third person argues just because he
thinks it is fair, and a fourth argues because he feels the international
image of the United States is at stake -- you develop interminable argu
ments and the arguers pass many pleasant hours among themselves.
Also, one person would be quite effective with one group and another
quite effective with another group, but if you traded the two you might
not have the same effectiveness. A single thesis for your argument is
far stronger than presenting all of the points of view in a cumulative
argument. For example, a member of the Methodist church can do a
better job talking to a Lutheran group about the Christian concept than
a Cal professor might do by talking about foreign relations, or I might
do talking about all the reasons. It s important that all proponents be
encouraged to work where they are most comfortable because this is
likely to be where they are most effective. In order to tie these efforts
together, I see the pledge card as a single entity which permits the
freedom of movement of the volunteers and still creates some total
control of the effort.
Assume that we can get one million cards signed. (I recognize that
that s quite an assumption). A postcard or a letter, mailed to arrive
the day before the election, reminding the signer of his pledge and tell
ing him that the success of the election depends wholly on his voting and
his getting his family, friends, and neighbors to vote, would be at least
as important as any use of surface media. This kind of job could be
done by what I call the "contained unit" approach. Printing costs of
$10,000 to $20,000 would have to be financed separate from this spe
cific program. Everything else would be accomplished on a local ba
sis. For example, in ABC County the Council of Churches, the YMCA,
the Democratic groups, and any other willing groups would be told:
"Take as many pledge cards as you can get signed. You will be respon
sible for addressing and mailing a letter or a postcard to each person
whose signature you get. We will audit your cards and then give you
the envelopes and letters, or the postcards, to address, stamp and mail.
You will buy your own stamps as your financial contribution to this
campaign. "
Any volunteer group can be given a clearly-defined task and they can
pick their own quantity of work. Overall coordination would be under
the supervision of one key person in each comity. He would need as
sistants depending on the size of the county.
65
If you see any merit in this proposal, I would be glad to discuss thi* de
tails of administering the task and could even propose people who might
become involved in it. If it sounds too large to undertake, or if it
sounds as if other activities are likely to produce greater benefits, then
simply dismiss the notion and let me know. I am anxious to help in any
way, and have no reservations whether my efforts be put on this parti
cular plan or on a better plan.
Sincerely,
t
f
Robert L. Coate
RLC:H
cc: Van Dempsey
Rodney Larson
66
INDEX William Becker
Abshire, F. Presley, 19
affirmative action, 41-43, 59
agriculture, 13
growers, 6, 7, 9-11, 28, 31-32
labor contractors, 11-12, 14
strikes, 6, 7, 9-10, 13-14, 27-28, 32
See also farmworkers
American Federation of Labor (AFL) , and farmworkers, 4-5, 13, 22. See also
National Farm Labor Union
Asian- Americans, and federal programs, 55-56
blacks. See Negroes
Brown, Edmund G., Sr. (Pat)
and civil rights, 39-40, 42-44
and election campaigns, 46, 57-58
and urban unrest, 49, 52
Burns, Hugh, 20, 21, 34-38
California assembly, 38
California Committee for Fair Employment Practices, 18-23, 26, 36
California Federation of Labor, 19, 22, 33
California senate, 34-36, 38
staff, 35
California State
and affirmative action, 42-44, 50, 59
Conciliation Service, 9, 11
Employment, Department of, 42-43, 50
Fair Employment Practices Commission, 40-42, 44, 49, 53
Finance, Department of, 41, 50
Labor Commissioner, 11-12
Vocational Rehabilitation, Department of, 50
Water Resources, Department of, 44
Chambers, Frank, 39
Champion, Hale, 41
Chavez, Cesar, 6, 19, 32, 54
Christopher, George, 58
civil rights, 15-24, 34-37, 40-44, 49, 57, 59
communism, influence of, 1-3, 47
Community Services Organization, 19
Corona, Bert, 54
67
Delgadillo, Jimmy, 54
Dellums, C.L., 40
DiGiorgio Corporation, 7, 13, 31-32
Button, Fred, 39
election campaigns, state
1958, 19-25, 34
1964, Proposition 14, 45-49
1966, 57
voting patterns, 57-58
fair employment
commission, 40-42, 44, 49
legislation, 18-24, 34
fair housing, legislation, 35-37, 42, 57
1964 referendum, 45-49
farmworkers, 18, 27
contract nationals, 6, 15-16, 32
unions, 4-16, 28-33
federal government
community involvement programs, 50-55
See also United States
Flores, Lou, 54
Galarza, Ernesto, 4, 7, 16, 29
Gibson, Luther, 20, 35
Gillies, Doug, 35-36
Haas, Lucien, 46
Haggerty, Cornelius, 22, 33
Hasiwar, Hank, 4, 7, 15
Imperial Valley
1951 melon strike, 13-14, 31-33
Jewish Community Relations Council, San Francisco, 30, 37
Jewish Labor Committee, 17-18, 23, 37, 45
Kline, Richard, 46
Knight, Goodwin, 25
Knowland, William, 25
Kraft, Fred H., 19
68
labor unions
agricultural organizing, 4-16, 22, 27-33
and civil rights, 17-24
communist influence, 1-3
lobbying
civil rights, 18, 20-24, 36-37
McAteer, Eugene, 36
McCone Commission, 52. See also urban unrest
McCone, John, 52
Mexican-Americans, 6-7, 19, 53-55
and affirmative action, 45
and politics, 24, 26, 57
Mont, Max, 23, 37
NAACP, 21, 23, 37
National Farm Labor Union, 4-16
Negroes
and affirmative action, 41-44
in agriculture, 27-28
and politics, 21, 23-24, 37, 55, 57
Raab, Earl, 12, 30, 37
racial minorities, 55-56, 59
and affirmative action, 41-45
and labor unions. 27-28
and politics, 24, 37, 52. See also Mexican-Americans, Negroes
racial prejudice, 34, 47-48, 50
Rattigan, Joe, 20
Reagan, Ronald, 41, 50, 57-59
Regan, Edwin, 36, 38, 39
right-to-work, 1958 ballot measure, 24-25
Roybal, Edward, 26
Rumford, Byron, 42
Rumford Fair Housing Act, 21, 35-39, 42-43
referendum, 45-49
Southern Tenant Farmers Union, 15
Taylor, Paul, 31
Teamsters Union, 13-14, 32-33
69
United States
food programs, 29
Immigration and Naturalization Service,
Labor, Department of, 32
Office of Management and Budget, 50
PL 78, braceros, 15-16
Unruh, Jesse, 37-38
urban unrest, 49-53, 56
Watts riots, 49-52
welfare, 50-51, 57
Williams, Franklyn, 21-22, 37
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight /Edmund Brown, Sr. Era
Warren Christopher
SPECIAL COUNSEL TO THE GOVERNOR:
RECALLING THE PAT BROWN YEARS
An Interview Conducted by
Amelia R. Fry
in 1978
Copyright Cc\ 1981 by the Regents of the University of California
TABLE OF CONTENTS Warren Christopher
INTERVIEW HISTORY i
I ENACTING THE GOVERNOR S INAUGURAL GOALS 1
Designing the Twelve-Point Inaugural Speech 1
Preparing a New Tax Program 4
Proposing Measures on Air Pollution 5
Implementing the Governor s Water Program
II THE 1962 CAMPAIGN AND THE WATTS RIOTS 11
The Brown-Nixon Debate 11
The McCone Commission 13
TAPE GUIDE 15
APPENDIX - Remarks by Governor Edmund G. Brown of the State of
California before the Gridiron Club, Washington, D.C.,
March 14, 1959 16
INDEX 22
INTERVIEW HISTORY
Warren Minor Christopher is one of those valuable persons who is quietly
effective in whatever assignment he takes on. Although he participated only
from time to time in Pat Brown s election campaigns and administration, infor
mation that his advice and the tasks he performed for the governor were highly
regarded has come from several other gubernatorial staff members.
As a bright young attorney in a prestigious Los Angeles law firm, he was
recruited as a volunteer by Frederick Dutton, whom Christopher had known at
Stanford Law School, to write occasional speeches for Brown s 1958 campaign for
governor. He then served briefly as special counsel in the governor s office,
as one available for specific assignments. In April of 1959 he returned to his
law firm but "stayed at the other end of the telephone." He served on the state
board of education for two years, and briefly on the state college board. He
was president for a two-year term in the early days of the Co-ordinating Council
for Higher Education, and was about to serve another term when he left for
Washington, B.C.
His specific projects under Governor Brown included the first inaugural
address, "a theme piece" for the administration in 1959; the January 20 water
message followed, and the governor s message on state finance, which was
delivered February 4. Christopher worked, too, on developing a smog program,
providing consultation with people who would be charged with carrying it out.
He was in on the conceptual discussions of Brown s reorganization plan, but felt
that Hale Champion and Fred Dutton could address that topic more effectively
than he - . After he left the governor s office, he continued with periodic advice
on appointments and such, but gradually as he became more disengaged from
developing issues he withdrew from policy advice.
In June of 1962, Governor Brown, then running for re-election, issued a
challenge to Richard Nixon for a debate, then called Warren Christopher to
represent him in the negotiations. After the disastrous Watts Riots, Christopher
functioned on the McCone Commission as interrogator and vice chairman, 1965 to
1967. But the assignment that still brings a twinkle to his eyes was his part
in preparing the talk with which Pat Brown wowed them at the National Press Club.
In 1977, on May 24, Pat Brown wrote to his good friend then Undersecretary
of State in the Carter administration to help arrange an appointment for this
interviewer for a pre-interview discussion of topics. In spite of his crushing
schedule, we met in mid- June and set the focus and outline for the taping session,
which was held the following year on October 24. In between he received a
chronology and copies of the major speeches he had worked on for the governor.
Both sessions were held on the seventh floor of the State Department, which
must contain the most beautiful and authentic displays of antique furniture and
paintings anywhere in Washington. The Assistant and Undersecretary s wing is
11
approached from a string of four enormous reception halls gleaming with historic
furniture. The rooms were empty, except for the receptionist, but it was easy
to imagine them filled with diplomatic and world leaders during affairs of state.
Warren Christopher was a little late writing a speech of his own and there
were a few minutes to bask in his outer offices and enjoy the rubbed maple walls,
the marble panelling at one end where a four-foot gold seal eagle surveyed all
visitors, and again the elegance of furniture from the best collections in
America between 1740 and 1830.
In his own office, equally handsome in its furniture and paintings, the
Undersecretary asked that his special assistant be allowed to sit in on the
interview. Christopher s tall, spare frame fits the conventional image of a
high diplomat that one harbors but does not expect in reality. Although an
attempt was made to shield us from telephone calls, there were interruptions
throughout the interview, and an impromptu meeting called at the White House
finally ended the recorded session. Nonetheless, he managed to convey with
few words a clear sense of issues at the key points when he was in the Brown
administration sitting in on the 1959 budget process to translate the governor s
campaign promises into a concrete fiscal program, negotiation with Robert Finch
about the 1962 Nixon debate, and on down the outline. He spoke quietly and
unassumingly, eager to cooperate, and when competition from the White House
ended the session, his special assistant suggested that I call him to try again
later; both men felt that more should be on the tape. In spite of his interest
in more fully documenting his unique role in California s history, Christopher s
role in international events became increasingly more complex as Russia invaded
Afghanistan, negotiations proceeded for the American hostages in Iran, and a new
Secretary took office, leaving Christopher to provide continuity. Requesting an
another date for taping was out of the question.
The transcript was lightly edited and sent to him for his review in the
summer of 1980. In spite of his heavy load, he returned the manuscript promptly
with minor emendations and a request for a copy of that Gridiron Speech at the
National Press Club. We include the speech as an appendix.
When Mr. Christopher is interviewed for his part in the Carter adminis
tration, we hope that the interviewer will provide an opportunity for finishing
the California story, too.
Amelia R. Fry
Interviewer /Editor
30 January 1981
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
iii
February 28, 1977
No. 85
WARREN CHRISTOPHER
SWORN- IN AS
DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE
Warren Christopher of Los Angeles, California was sworn in
on February 26 as Deputy Secretary of State. Born in
Scranton, North Dakota, on October 27, 1925, Mr. Christopher
received an undergraduate degree magna cum laude from the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles in February
1945. From July 1943 to September 1946 he served on active
duty with the Naval Reserve. He attended Stanford University
Law School from 1946 to 1949, where he was President of the
Law Review and graduated with Order of Coif.
From October 1949 to September 1950, Mr. Christopher
served as law clerk to Mr. Justice William O. Douglas of the
United States Supreme Court. He then practiced law with the
firm of O Melveny & Meyers from October 1950 to June 1967.
Mr. Christopher served as Deputy Attorney General of the
United States from June 1967 until January 20, 1969, after
which he rejoined O Melveny & Meyers.
Mr. Christopher s professional activities have included
service as President of the Los Angeles County Bar Association,
1974-75; Chairman of the Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary
of the American Bar Association, 1975-76; member of the House
of Delegates of the American Bar Association; Chairman of
Standing Committee on Aeronautical Law of the American Bar
Association, 1966-67; member of the Board of Governors of the
State Bar of California, 1975-76; Special Counsel to former
California Governor Edmund G. Brown, from January 1959 to April
1959; and President of the Stanford Law Review, 1948-49.
His civic activities included member of the Board of
Trustees of Stanford University; member of the Board of Trustees
of Occidental College in Los Angeles; member of the Board of
Trustees of Harvard School, Los Angeles; director, Southern
California Edison Company; director, Pacific Mutual Life
Insurance Company; Vice Chairman of Governors s Commission on
the Los Angeles Riots, 1965-66; Special Consultant to Under
secretary George W. Ball on Foreign Economic Problems, 1961-65;
Special Representative of Secretary of State, Wool Textile
Meeting, Tokyo, London and Rome, 1964-65; President, Coordina
ting Council for Higher Education in the State of California,
1963-65; and Chairman, U.S. Delegation, U.S. -Japan Cotton Textile
Negotiations and Geneva Congress on Cotton Textiles, 1961.
Mr. Christopher is married to the former Marie Josephine
Wyllis and they have four children Lynn, born May 30, 1952,
Scott, born December 27, 1957, Thomas, born July 24, 1959, and
Kristen, born March 26, 1963.
*********
I ENACTING THE GOVERNOR S INAUGURAL GOALS
[Date of Interview: 24 October 1978]##
Designing the Twelve-Point Inaugural Speech
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
When we talked before, you said that you came into the Pat Brown
administration rather early and stayed until April of 1959.
That s right.
So we could start right there, with how Pat called you to join
his staff. You were at the law firm of Melvany and Myers
then.
Yes. [slight pause] During Governor Brown s campaign in 1958,
I had been a volunteer worker; had helped him with several of
his speeches and had generally been involved in a group of
younger lawyers which had been pulled together by Fred Button
and advised the governor on campaign strategy. But my particular
role during that period was the drafting of an occasional speech.
After Governor Brown was successful in the gubernatorial
campaign, he and Fred Dutton talked about the organization of
the administration. Dutton had been his campaign manager, and
the net result of the conversation was a request that I join
the administration.
////This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 15.
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
I told them I couldn t do it for any substantial period of time,
but that I d be willing to come up [to Sacramento] for a few
months. After some discussion, it was decided that I would join
the administration with the rather loose and vague title of
Special Counsel to the Governor.
Special Counsel to the Governor?
Right. I commenced this on about the first of December of 1958,
with the governor to take office in the beginning of 1959.
So I began my duties informally about the first of December of
1958. The first task assigned to me was to draft the inaugural
speech.
If you will look at the speech structure, you ll see that
essentially it has two parts: the first part is a thematic
description of what the overall philosophical approach of the
administration would be, and the second part is a list of
specific items which the governor hoped to lay before the
legislature and accomplish early in his term.
In order to get on with the drafting of that, I met with
the various agencies of government, asking them what their
legislative priorities were and what they thought the Governor
ought to try to accomplish during his first year.
In addition to that, I went back over the Governor s
campaign speeches and his public statements to see what programs
he was committed to.
The month of December, then, on my part was spent talking
with the various agencies of the government, talking with the
Governor and his staff about what he had hoped to accomplish,
and generally marking out what themes he wanted to stress and
what particular goals he wanted to achieve.
The first part of the inaugural reflects the general
approach of what we came to call responsible liberalism and
the second part, as I said, sets forth twelve specific goals
that he wanted to achieve early in his administration.
That may be incorporated in these review materials right here,
in the chronology I sent you.
[leafing through pages] Actually, the numbers of specific
goals sort of went up and down during the campaign. [laughs]
But what I m interested in is how you arrived at the statement
of the thematic philosophy. With whom did you arrive at this?
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
I had a number of discussions with the Governor on drafts that
I had prepared. I also had extensive conversations with Button
and Hale Champion, who at that point was coming into the
governor s office, and Bill Coblentz, and others who had been
part of the Governor s advisory group during the campaign.
It was essentially formulated out of my concept of what
Governor Brown s philosophy was and what he had expressed in
the campaign.
Did you work very much with him in the campaign on this?
I saw him occasionally during the campaign. I had known him
since several years before, especially when he was attorney
general and I was helping him on a supreme court argument that
he had to make.
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
So that you were kind of acquainted with his outlook?
you have to kind of dig around for that? [laughs]
Or did
I think I was acquainted with his outlook. If you re even a
volunteer speech writer, you tend to get to know what the
candidate s general views are and try to write in accordance
with those. As your speeches get either accepted or rejected,
you begin to know what the candidate thinks and what he wants
to project and what he doesn t want to project.
So far, what you say sounds a little bit less important than
other people have told me in that, in secondary material, you re
frequently referred to as the brain trust, you and Coblentz
and maybe Button which means that you did have a great deal
of input into some of the programs and aspirations that
Pat Brown saw and felt for his coming administration.
I suppose the relationship between a candidate or a governor
and a speech writer is sort of like the relationship between
father and son or husband and wife. It s very hard to describe.
There is a sort of a feeling of empathy and an almost invisible
or silent communication. Pat Brown had liked the inaugural
very well, particularly the first half of it, and has spoken
about it a number of times since then.
I suppose one way to put it would be to try to describe it
as something that I had written or created, but I really think
that s inaccurate. I was trying to describe what I thought his
basic approach to government was. Now, there s obviously a
little bit of "should be" in that as well as "was."
But Pat Brown was very successful in getting his specific points
put through the legislature. I don t think there s been any
record quite to match it.
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher :
The batting average on the number of those twelve items that
were ultimately achieved was very high. Of course, you had the
advantage of a new governor coining into office with a strong
majority and one who had good people in the legislature, and
also a man who knew about government, having been attorney
general for eight years.
Did you work at all with the legislature in trying to get his
points launched after the inauguration speech?
I did some of that, but I think Bill Coblentz and Dutton deserve
a great deal more credit on that score than I did. I tended
to concentrate on the construction of speeches and the construc
tion of the overall program.
I knew I would only have a limited period of time, that I
would be going back to Los Angeles before the legislature
really concluded its work on these things, so I concentrated
on the overall architecture of the administration rather than
on the implementation of it.
Preparing a New Tax Program
Fry:
Christopher
Maybe what you could do, then, is to tell me how much you had
to keep an eye on the problem of the deficit and revisions
that were going to be proposed in revenue the tax structure
and so forth that was revised. Did that come after you or ?
No. One of the things that we did during December was to meet
with the Governor and with Bert Levit , who was his chief
financial adviser, and to plan a fiscal program.
The responsibility for preparing the inaugural was both a
great burden and a great opportunity, if I may backtrack. It
gave me an opportunity to sit in on any meeting that I wanted
or to participate in any of the planning that was appealing
to me, because it all had to be capsulized, at least, in the
inaugural. So I did go through the budgetary meetings between
the Governor and Bert Levit and Fred Dutton, and was involved
in the preparation of the budget and the preparation of the
new tax program.
The introduction of the budget, and the budget itself, was
something on which I did a good deal of the writing and work
although I would say the principal credit there goes, along
with Bert Levit, to Hale Champion, who I think, in that partic
ular exercise demonstrated his great value to the Governor.
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Champion was working with Levit at that time?
Champion was press secretary at that time, but in making the
budget presentation, Champion showed a facility with both
words and numbers that commended himself to the Governor and
I think was one of the bases for the Governor s great confidence
in him over the next several years. It was the foundation for
it, I guess I should say.
And then he did become the
He did become the executive director after Button left a couple
of years later.
How did Levit and Pat Brown get along at this point?
Levit was Republican and Pat Brown was a Democrat.
Because
They got along very well. They were old friends and had worked
together for years. And the construction of the state budget
is essentially a there are a great many nonpartisan aspects to
it. Levit had a very clear head and a good understanding of
numbers, and he was able to analyze the questions that lay
before the Governor and then present to the Governor and his
staff decisions that the Governor would then make.
One of the great qualities that Pat Brown had was to be
able to sit patiently through very long meetings. He was a
very good student, and at the end of the meetings he would
simply know what he wanted to do and then make the decisions.
He participated very deeply in the budget process.
Was he a good listener?
Pat was an excellent listener. He had more patience for long
bureaucratic meetings than I think he had a very great amount
of patience.
Proposing Measures on Air Pollution
Fry:
Christopher:
The other thing that I m wondering about is which one of these
items in the inaugural was the most difficult to work out and
make a reality?
The one that got the most attention was the first item: to
prevent discrimination by employer or union on the basis of
race, creed, national origin, or age. That had been a major
issue in the campaign, and Brown was fully committed to it.
Christppher ;
Fry:
Christopher;
Fry:
Christopher:
A second one, that was a major political change in California,
was the abolition of cross-filing. It s hard to remember back
to the days when candidates could file in both primaries and,
frequently, the election was over in June.
Governor Warren showed that a popular moderate candidate
could sometimes win in both parties.
The smog legislation was an area that I was heavily involved
in, and it s obvious that it remains an unsolved problem. The
legislation that we proposed, though, during the first three
or four months, was the kind of legislation that was ultimately
adopted in California and which achieved what progress there
has been in that field or at least avoided deterioration in
atmospheric conditions.
That was something I wanted to ask you more about. I got the
impression that you had to do some sort of backup research on
smog to find out what the standards were for clean air and
start from scratch on what do we mean by smog and what do we
mean by clean air.
That is a long time ago and my memory is somewhat flawed on it,
but my recollection is that I found that state government knew
relatively little about smog and its causes and possible
remedies. So I commenced a series of personal studies, aided
by the Department of Public Health, and then traveled around
the state to the areas of greatest smog concentration.
Some of the cities already had set up anti-smog agencies,
and I met with them as I recall, San Francisco and Los Angeles,
and perhaps other places to try to get the best thinking that
they had.
I also met with scientists at the University of California
at Los Angeles to try to understand the origin of smog and what
possible legislative remedies there could be for it.
Just before this happened, or maybe a year or two
Dr. A.J. Hagan-Smith had discovered that smog was the photo
chemistry of auto exhaust, among other things. I wonder if
you remember whether or not you were dissastisf ied with the
smog legislation that happened? What it did was set up the
Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board so that it gave the state
some power for the first time, but it did not include industrial
smog. It was just after that auto pollution probably because
of Hagan-Smith s research
My best recollection of that situation is that we thought that
staionary sources were much more subject to control by the
counties or local control, and that the mobile sources the
Christopher:
Fry:
vehicular sources were the ones that needed to be controlled
on a statewide basis. So our initial entry into that field
was in the motor vehicle field.
Some of Hagan-Smith s research had indicated that a very
high percentage some estimated up to 80 or 90 percent of the
smog problems in some of the Los Angeles Basin was due to the
automobile. Those figures have always been much in dispute
but what was clear every place was that even after the
stationary sources had been brought under fairly good control,
there was still a serious smog problem resulting from the
automobile.
One of the major issues which is not really fully resolved
yet is whether smog legislation of that kind could be effect
ively imposed on used cars or whether it should focus on trying
to improve the pollution aspects of new automobiles.
It always seemed easier to try to force the manufacturers
to improve the quality of new automobiles rather than trying to
produce some fix on used automobiles, because of the cost of
doing so and because of the ineffectiveness of doing so. And
I think that remains true to today.
Yes. That was what this did to start out right with the new
automobiles. And later on they did put smog devices on the
used cars.
t
Implementing the Governor s Water Program
Fry:
Christopher:
I m anxious to know what you can say about developing the
water program because that was such a big issue and such a
big change and had been wanted by southern California for so
long. No one had been really able to put it through.
I would say that that was one of Pat Brown s two or three
highest priorities. There had been a great deal of tension
in the state with the people in southern California wanting
water legislation very urgently, and the people in the North
thinking it was much less urgent, or perhaps even worse, being
opposed to it.
There had been a stalemate in the legislature for years,
with California unable to enact a water plan. One of the things
that Pat first did was to, through very long and difficult
negotiations, work out a water plan that got the support of
enough people in both houses so that it could become law.
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
This, of course, took the plentiful supplies of water from the
North, through very expensive canals and other facilities,
into the parched South. I think that this has been one of the
principal reasons for the continued growth and success of
California. It was really a monumental undertaking that
worked.
What did you know at the time about negotiations with some of
the people that were doubtful about it? The amazing thing is
that Pat Brown got Senator Burns on his side and I don t
know how it happened.
That was just an exercise in general legislative negotiation.
He was willing to make that his highest priority to use the
power that a new governor has in order to achieve this
because he thought it was so essential for the state. It
was an achievement that could probably be done in the first
month of a new governor, and not later, when people wanted to
have his good will for a number of reasons.
What did he have to give in to, in negotiating with Burns, in
order to get his support for the water plan?
I don t remember the specific negotiations with Burns, but
generally speaking, the negotiations related to the amount of
water that would be guaranteed to each of the areas that might
be receiving it at the end of the canals and the price of the
water that would be available to them at that point.
From the standpoint of northerners, they simply had to
be assured that taking the water from their area would not
deprive them of the water, would not create salinization
problems or other unexpected problems there. I frankly
almost twenty years later don t remember the details of the
negotiations except that they were prolonged and they did
require the Governor s constant personal attention.
What sort of water plan decisions were you in on? Was it the
basic decision of how much water legislation to go for in your
first year and how much to leave for other years?
I would say that that was a decision like that was an
instinctive one. The Governor knew from the beginning that
getting a water program through was of tremendous importance
to him. That was taken as a given, and we just went forward
and tried to do it as well as we could. It was built into a
number of his campaign speeches and, as you know, there was a
separate water message to the legislature on which, again, I
worked quite extensively.
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
That was another one of those speeches that you wrote?
Yes, at least I worked extensively on it.
That whole problem of the salinization fear in the Delta
which is with us today I think required a lot of work with
some of the people in that area, like Senator George Miller, Jr.
Yes, George Miller was a very powerful senator and he represented
the Delta point of view very strongly. The task of that message
was to try to simplify for public consumption something that
was highly complicated and really quite abstruse.
It must have gotten over because Pat Brown s legislation later
was passed in a state referendum.
As time went on, the constitutional revision idea came
up. It seemed to have its roots back at this time. Were you
involved in that?
Christopher: Only as a concept that we knew we had to do something about.
When Fred Dutton and I were in law school together, in
Stanford Law Review, we inspired I m not sure whether Fred
wrote, but at least we were both interested in an article
called "California s Constitutional Amendomania" which was a
way of saying that the constitution had gotten terribly over
laden with hundreds of minor provisions and we knew there had
to be a revision to make the constitution understandable to
the people and not inconsistent.
So the seeds of that were laid early in the administration,
but I had either little or nothing to do with the launching
of that project.
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
I m going to turn into a pumpkin in about nine minutes.
Nine minutes? All right, let me see what would be the most
important point here. What about state government reorgani
zation? Did you have a lot to do with that? In the concept
ualization of it?
During January and February of 1959 we had a good deal of talk
about reorganization as part of what we wanted to what the
Governor wanted to achieve in his administration but I would
say that was not a particular project of mine and most of it
was carried on or carried out after I left.
Who was the main person involved in that project?
10
Christopher: I think you would have to say that Fred Button would be the
particular one to talk to about that. There were some
technicians who worked on the reorganization, but Fred would
be the best one to talk to.
11
II THE 1962 CAMPAIGN AND THE WATTS RIOTS
The Brown-Nixon Debate
Fry: I m torn here between going on and getting some good evaluative
statements from you on how Pat functioned within his office and
how he handled his power of delegation among the different
people that were with him or going on to such interesting
things as your negotiations with Bob Finch and the debate
between Pat and Nixon in 62. Maybe if you talk fast, you
can get them both in. [laughs]
Christopher: Pat was a very easy boss for me to work for. I had that small
office right off the governor s office and, because I was going
to be there for a short time, I tended to get specific
assignments and would take care of them and talk with Fred and
the others about them, and present them to the Governor.
So I do not know so much about the rest of his operation.
He tended, during the time that I was there, to deal with his
staff through Fred Out ton, who was his executive secretary and
his chief of staff. It was a chief of staff kind of operation
during that period although all had access to Brown who was
very approachable.
It was one of those wonderful times [William] Coblentz
was there and he was working very effectively, both on sub
stance and with the legislature. Cecil Poole now a federal
judge in San Francisco was working on crime problems as the
extradition secretary. I had a very comfortable relationship
with Cecil.
Jerry Maher and Hale Champion were the press secretaries.
We all had an easy relationship. A state court judge,
Julian Beck, was the legislative secretary.
12
Christopher :
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
But it was a group that operated at least during the period
I was there without tensions. It was an exciting and
productive period.
Then later on, when you helped him out in 62. Pat made a
formal invitation to Nixon to debate, but I think the general
consensus was that Nixon was not going to jump at the chance.
If you remember anything about it, it would be extremely
helpful. There s a lot in Pat s papers, with letters that
went back and forth [laughs] between you and Robert Finch, which
are kind of funny, because it looked like nobody really wanted
it, but you had to negotiate
I might say one more thing that s interesting: Pat was invited
to make the Gridiron speech in the spring of 1959, a supposedly
humorous highlight of the dinner of the Washington press corps.
I did the first draft of the Gridiron speech, which was one of
the harder things that I d ever written.*
I remember one afternoon I went over to San Francisco and
met with the syndicated humorist who writes for the Chronicle
Oh, Art Hoppe?
Yes, Art Hoppe. I had a wonderful afternoon with Art Hoppe.
After we d had a martini or two, we wrote some very, very
funny lines. Then Pat brought the draft of his speech back
here [Wasington, B.C.], along with Fred Button, and they met
with Clark Clifford. Clark Clifford very wisely toned down
some of the [laughter] best things in that speech and helped
with some of the other but it turned out to be, I think, a
fairly funny speech.
I ve not seen it for a long tine, but it was a lot of fun
to write it.
It was a smashing speech, though! It s one that everybody
remembered. Historically, it was a turning point of Pat s
coming of age in Washington and in the eastern establishment.
I don t think of myself as being a very funny person people
certainly don t usually think of me as being a funny person
but I had a lot of fun writing that speech.
On the negotiations for the debate, I remember I got the
book Face _tp_ Face, which had just come out, which was a book
on the negotiations for the Kennedy-Nixon debate. I found
*See appendix, p. 16.
Christopher:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher :
Fry:
13
that very instructive. I had some negotiations with Finch
which then were broken off, I think as a political ploy on
Nixon s side.
Then they were put back together and eventually the debate
took place and I would say the fact that Brown was able to hold
his own, I wouldn t say that he won, but the fact that he was
able to hold his own in the debate was an important factor in
his favor.
II
These campaign negotiations have happened in so many subsequent
campaigns that they re looked at now as being kind of almost
ritualistic.
But they really weren t at that time.
It was one of the first times that, at least on a statewide
campaign, there d been any extensive negotiations. Maybe
I m afraid I really did you have one other thing you wanted
to ask me about?
Yes. How about working out the criteria with California
congressmen for appointments that needed the California
delegation approval? For appointments to office in California.
I had nothing to do with that.
The man who headed the California office here in Washington
thought that you helped very much in working out the criteria
for appointments which the delegation more or less agreed to
work with them.
Christopher: If I did, I don t remember it.
The McCone Commission
Fry:
Christopher:
Well, what about the McCone Commission on the Watts riots?
What s your evaluation of that? You were vice-chairman of
the commission
I had been on vacation at the time of the Watts riots. I
came back from vacation because of my concern about the riots.
The Governor came to Los Angeles and I worked with him at the
time. I was involved in a discussion in which he decided to
set up the commission.
14
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
Christopher:
Fry:
He asked me if I would serve on it John McCone had been
asked to be chairman. I was startled to find that when he
announced the commission, that I d been announced as vice-
chairman. The Governor was very supportive of the commission,
but he essentially let the comission hold its own hearings
and do its own work, and come up with its recommendations.
I think the commission s identification of the problem was,
in the main, analytically sound. I think the implementation
of the recommendations would have to be put down as only partial,
but that has been the result of almost every commission on that
subject.
The basic problem in the black community remains. Perhaps
it has been ameliorated in some respects. For example, one of
our recommendations was in the health care field, and there has
been a major hospital built in the Watts area of Los Angeles as
a result of the commission s recommendations.
Our recommendations in the education field were the best
thinking that was available at that time, but I think is still
subject to considerable controversy. So I would have to say
that it was certainly a dedicated, sincere, determined effort
of which probably the greatest effect was in improvement of
police practices that followed after it.
Did Pat Brown s office have much to do with the implementation
of the report, or were out of the governor s office by that
time?
I know the Governor tried very hard to implement it, although
many of the things had to be implemented at the local level
rather than the state one.
Yes, it s that business of how far should the state go in local
police policy.
This brings back a flood of other memories, which I just don t
have time for. You might go back and look at the report of the
McCone Commission, especially the introduction to it.
We have that. Okay. Thank you very much.
Sorry I have to be so much on the run.
Well, I can t compete with the President. [laughs]
Transcriber: Marie Herold
Final Typist: Matthew Schneider
15
TAPE GUIDE Warren Christopher
Date of Interview: 24 October 1978
tape 1, side 1 1
tape 2, side 2 13
APPENDIX
16
Remarks by
GOVERNOR EDMUND 0. BROWN
of the
STATE OP CALIFORNIA
BEFORE THE GRIDIRON CLUB
WASHINGTON, D. C.
March 14, 1959
These remarks are not for
publication, quotation or other
reproduction in whole cr in
part. They are reproduced
here only for private distribu
tion.
.
17
Mr. Wooton, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Chief Justice,
distinguished guests, and gentlemen:
I am appearing here tonight, as Governor of California
through the courtesy, and with the assistance --of Messrs.
Nixon, Knowland and Knight.
They were imprudent -- but I needed them.
Out in our State, the Republicans are still not sure
whether Knowland and Knight leaped into oblivion or the
Vice President pushed them.
You will be glad to hear Senator Knowland is thriving
again. Like some of the distinguished guests here this
evening, he is now answerable only to himself, to his Ood
and the Newspaper Guild.
Developments in Washington, when viewed from as far
away as California, often seem, mysterious. As an example, we
are told out there that the leading Democratic contenders for
I960 are such men a-s Kennedy, Johnson, Humphrey and Symington.
Yet when I arrive here, I find that each of these men
disclaims any such ambition. I have been following this
situation closely only because of my interest in politics
generally.
In view of the attitude of these other gentlemen, and in
order that there be no question as to my availability, I
should like to declare, courageously and unequivocally, that
I am not a candidate for President in 1960.
in The
Copied ^-originals in - CQ
Bancroft Library or r
"
or
-
18
- 2 -
If this doesn t put me in the thick of the race, I don t
know what will.
We are happy that the Democratic Convention is coming to
Los Angeles next year. There is a certain amount of interest
out our way in this particular convention - and I would like
to report to you regarding the local sentiment on the various
non-candidates .
Let us begin with Adlai Stevenson. We have begun with him
twice before. It is really too bad that the Third Term
Amendment keeps him from trying for the nomination again.
Turning from youth to experience, we have Jack Kennedy.
If Mrs. Roosevelt would Just stop endorsing Jack s father, I
think a lot of people would forget about whether Jack is old
enough. In any event, many people think Jack has done a fine
Job as Counsel for Senator McClellan s Committee.
That brings us to the taciturn Hubert Humphrey. Hubert got
a big lift when Khrushchev denounced him and ignored the
rest of the presidential hopefuls. When Comrade Mikoyan was in
San Francisco, I spent several hours trying to get him to. say
something nasty about me. He flatly refused. This shows how
hard it is to do business with the Russians.
Senator Lyndon Johnson, I understand, will soon make a
public denial that he believes in the divine right of kings.
This should drive back to the hills that well known rebel -
Fidel Proxmire.
Copied froT originals in The
3r.: ?.: * ~l ..-" >r rv f r reference
c:-~ / : :~ T:.. .- , v -, .l^pc sited
ij -> l:.-2-fj : - - :tif;tioa3
19
- 3 -
Whatever you may think of Senator Proxmire s criticisms
of Lyndon Johnson - you have to admit that, like Notre Dame -
Proxmire plays a tough schedule.
I was going to say something about Senator Symington, but
I had lunch with Clark Clifford today and he assured me that
the Senator was not in the race.
Out West, we are almost equally concerned with the
Republican candidates. As the President has said, there are
many outstanding Republicans who are well qualified to be
President. At the present time, out West, the three leading
Republican candidates are Harold Stassen, Ezra Taft Benson
and Alf Landon.
I find, however, upon coming East that there is a good
deal of talk about Vice President Nixon and Governor
Rockefeller.
It would be a tough decision for me if I had to choose
between the two. The Vice President was a tower of strength
for me in 1958. If the opportunity should arise in the future,
Mr. Vice President, be assured that I shall be prepared to do
for you all that you so kindly attempted to do tx? me.
Americans have traditionally admired the self-made man
which brings us to Nelson Rockefeller. Here is a man who has
risen to immense wealth in just three generations.
Cor,l9d fro-? oriel I
^ t tib-"v f ?he
*
- on p
-2 : 3 : t 5 . p
20
- 4 -
Everyone recognizes that it took a lot of courage for Mr.
Rockefeller to go ahead with his unpopular tax program. I know
I speak for all the other Governors when I say we are deeply
grateful - that he didn t take the easy way out and write a
check.
That brings us to that brilliant young radical, Mr. Charles
Halle^k, who is seated here at the head table with us. He is
the kind of rebel who can succeed in the Republican Party. You
certainly can t underestimate a man who is clever enough, and
persistent enough, to win the minority leadership despite
White House support.
Since the election last November, I think that the
Republican Party is unified as never before. Every prominent
Republican candidate agrees that the party must be rebuilt.
Each one says firmly that he is the man to rebuild it. Beyond
that, there is a wide area of agreement on a positive program
of negative thinking.
And now, let me be serious for a moment.
As a nation, we confront a panorama of problems, ranging
from space to segregation, from Berlin to Bolivia. I have not
come here tonight with confident platitudes or easy panaceas
for the harsh dilemmas of our times. From the new governor of
a far western state, that would be as unwelcome as it would be
unfruitful. (Danied from originals in The
.E2nc.--:ft Libvsry for reference
r<r. r c pi 3f. any not be deposited
ia *:: libraries or institutions
witV.r o-vvcss rsrrr.ission. Please
rev.rr ;? . *? ;? * "> The Bancroft
brs:- . : : -r. r 1: -.; on cf "i"-
21
5, 5 -
But perhaps you will tolerate this brief observation.
You distinguished gentlemen who are here tonight politicians,
publishers, men of the press are the genuine leaders of the
world s leading democracy. You are the leaders, and the
people of our Country, if I hear them correctly, are asking
you for leadership.
America, I hear the people saying, must be on the move
again. We need new vision and new ideas, and we need the
courage and confidence to act on them.
Give us, America is saying, leadership which is fresh and
flexible, pioneering and practical. Let us stop being slaves
to outdated symbols and overworked dogmas, and let us start
being creative again.
When the people ask for leadership, they speak in a
bipartisan voice. They place their order without party label,
and they will respond without reservation, just as all of our
nation has responded to the President s firm hand in the
Berlin crisis. We will serve both our people and our parties
if we will remember that the enlightened leadership of free
men is our high privilege and our solemn duty.
I have greatly enjoyed my visit here this evening. It has
been a delightful experience to meet and visit with the
leading Democratic candidates for I960. They are able and
outstanding men.
I believe I can say, without fear of successful
contradiction, that each and every one of them -- would make
a satisfactory running mate.
o ly. Ccpi35 ma*, rot be depcsits4
ii ct^or libraries or institutions
." i ; : -."a t express permission. Please
rvlura Ell copier, to The Bancroft
Li ;rsry ivocn completion of your
22
INDEX Warren Christopher
Beck, Julian, 11
Brown, Edmund G. (Pat), 1-3, 5, 7-9, 11-12, 14
Burns , Hugh M. , 8
California agencies and departments
reorganization, 9
California Water Plan, 7-8
Champion, Hale, 3-5, 11
Clifford, Clark, 12
Coblentz, William, 3-4, 11
constitution revision, 9
Democratic party (California), 5
Dutton, Frederick, 1, 3, 9-12
election campaign methods, 2-4, 12-13
election campaigns, state and national
1958 (gubernatorial), 1, 3
1962 (gubernatorial), 12-13
finances
tax reform, 4
governor s office (Brown), 2, 11
Hagen-Smith, A.J. , 6-7
Hoppe, Arthur, 12
Levit, Burt, 4
Maher, Jerry, 11
McCone Commission, 13
Miller, George Jr., 9
Nixon, Richard M. , 12-13
23
pollution control legislation, 6-7
Poole, Cecil, 11
race relations
Watts riots, 13-14
Republican party (California), 5
Regional Oral History Office The University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight /Edmund Brown, Sr. Era
May Layne Bonnell Davis
AN APPOINTMENT SECRETARY REMINISCES
An Interview Conducted by
Amelia R. Fry
in 1977
Copyright (c) 1981 by the Regents of the University of California
Mrs. May Layne Bonnell as member of the
California State Personnel Board, ca. 1965
TABLE OF CONTENTS May Layne Bonnell Davis
INTERVIEW HISTORY
I DESCRIBING THE DUTIES OF AN APPOINTMENTS SECRETARY 1
Assuming the Appointment Position 1
Working with the Legislature 3
Screening of Potential Appointees 5
Working with the Democratic State Central Committee and the CDC 9
A Question of Non-partisan Appointments 13
II REMINISCING A PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND 18
From Schooling to Professional Experience 18
Balancing Family and Executive Duties 19
Working with the Governor on Appointments 20
Reflections on Bernice Brown 22
III VIEWING THE GOVERNOR ON ISSUES AND EVENTS 27
Utilizing the Agency Concept 27
Reacting to the Free Speech Movement 30
The Caryl Chessman Episode 38
The Watts Riots 43
TAPE GUIDE 46
INDEX 47
INTERVIEW HISTORY
On April 22 and 24, 1977, May Layne Bonnell Davis sat down in her
comfortable living room in the Santa Cruz Mountains at the southern tip of
San Francisco Bay and talked carefully and informatively with the Government
History Documentation Project about key staff people in Pat Brown s office as
governor and the intricate process of researching and selecting candidates for
appointment by the governor.
Slim, tanned, and attractive, with a ribbon setting off her wealth of gray
hair, she greeted the interviewer with an easy smile and an air of competence.
She made it clear that she had had no political experience to bring to her job
as appointments secretary. Although Mrs. Davis later served on the state
Personnel Board as the first woman appointee, she limited her discussion to the
governor s office, noting that other aspects of state government were not
closely related to her responsibilities in the governor s office.
In analyzing the always-significant appointments procedure, she emphasizes
the importance which the governor placed on prior clearance of appointments
with local legislators. A challenging part of her job was to keep supplicants
and their supporters happy when they were not appointed. "The appointment
field," she comments, "only makes enemies; it does not make friends."
Her sister is Bernice Layne Brown, wife of the governor, a fact Mrs. Davis
minimizes, mentioning that contacts outside the office were few although family
relationships are obviously warm. She does include brief glimpses of Governor
Brown as family man, such as the weekends he would have with his children at
the pool behind the governor s mansion while working on a pile of papers from
the office.
A year after the present interviews, Mrs. Davis made her home available for
one of the taping sessions with the governor for his biographical memoir for
this project. Her own edited interview transcript was sent to Mrs. Davis for
review in late 1979. Making only minor revisions, she dispatched the task
promptly because, she said, it was a rainy weekend. She expressed some concern
about the appearance of grammatical laxness of spoken English but added, "I
restrained myself from trying to rewrite it."
Amelia R. Fry
Interviewer /Editor
31 January 1981
Regional Oral History Office
The Bancroft Library
University of California, Berkeley
I DESCRIBING THE DUTIES OF AN APPOINTMENTS SECRETARY
[Interview 1: April 22, 1977 ]##
Assuming the Appointment Position
Davis: I was not intimately involved with either the district attorney or
attorney general offices of Pat Brown, other than I see him and
Bernice at Christmas maybe. Maybe not even then because we lived
in many different places during those years. As I said, I was not
a political creature at all. I had not been involved in politics.
So I would say that I can t really give you any information prior to
the years in the governor s office. Now being involved and being
in the governor s 9ffice, of course, is an entirely different* atmo
sphere than being involved any place else. And if you aren t there
you don t really know what s going on, and if you are there you really
know an awful lot that s going on, but my involvement is limited to
that. And I was only with him for six years.
Fry: What years were those?
Davis: It would be 1959-1965. And at that time, then, in June 1965, I went
on the state personnel board, and so I was still involved for another
ten years in state government. But its a different "state government."
The state personnel board is a little isolated world of its own, and
it s not really involved with the legislature or the governor s
office or any of that body. The state government has many facets,
so while I continued to be involved in state government and be aware
of what was going on, there again that is a different view of it.
##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun
or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 46.
Davis: I just wanted to tell you that so that you would understand that this
hasn t been an intimate, close relationship over all of the years
because I haven t been in California, or when I was was in California,
I lived in southern California. So it was a very unpolitical
relationship, let s put it that way. What else did you want to know?
Fry: When you were in his governor s office, what were your positions
there, your function?
Davis: I was the secretary for appointments. In those days, I guess what
you d call executive appointments to distinguish them from calendar
appointments. [laughs]
Fry: Right. That s ambiguous always. We are talking about choosing
persons to fill an office. So you had the job right from the first,
when he first became governor?
Davis: I would have to clarify that. The very first months in office,
Fred Dutton as the executive secretary really handled all the
appointments. By that I mean he was in charge of it, and
Meredith Burch and I shared the mechanics of the appointment field:
clearing, getting names, things that make up for getting lists to
submit, although for the early appointments Fred Dutton and the
governor pretty, well knew who they had and what they were going to
do, in the very early months. And then, of course, I had to learn
the name of the game in these first few months. I had some pretty
good political teachers among them was Susie Clifton, who is from
the south. She s off with the Peace Corps now again in some place.
But she s an old political warhorse, I guess, back to Governor Olson s
time, and so she really force-fed me, lived up there in Sacramento
with me for three or four weeks to get me geared into the situation.
Fry: On appointments and who was who, that sort of thing, right?
Davis: Yes, it really worked in that fashion. I can t remember when
Fred Dutton actually left, but when John Kennedy was elected President,
Dutton left the office, and from that time on I was full-time. It
was my assignment in toto. Somewhere along the line Meredith Burch
had stopped working on it, so it had really become my job with
Fred Dutton being the titular head, I guess, and then through him
to Pat. And when he left, it was all mine; that was about a year
and a half we d been working on it together. [tape interruption
while reading outline] "What my job was." As I said it isn t an
isolated position, but a very specific one. I had dealings with
the legislature only insofar as appointments were concerned, and the
other legislative relationship you d have to find out through his
legislative staff.
Working with the Legislature
Fry: Those that required legislative approval, you mean?
Davis: Well, some of the positions require advice and consent of the
senate, but the working day practicality is that you want to keep
your Democratic legislators who vote for your projects and
appointments happy. And it s a delicate balance because you want to
appoint people you want, not the people they want, and you don t
want them to get angry. Yet they have to think they re the big
shots in their neighborhood.
Fry: That s a political reality.
Davis: It is a political reality, and it depends on the governor what the
balance is and what they get. And Pat felt very strongly that the
appointments were his appointments. And I felt very strongly that
they were too; so it was my job to make the legislators think the
selections were theirs, if they hadn t thought of them originally,
or to placate them in some way; or maybe they had ones that they had
recommended which were good and we wanted to go along with the
appointment. It was just trying to make legislators think it was
their very own idea, and their very own appointment, and have it all
worked out so that it was all Pat s appointment. So that s my only
relationship with the legislators.
I certainly got to know all of the Democratic legislators, and
worked with them very well. And I also had about five or six
Republican legislators that I was on very good terms with who felt
free to come in the office and give their opinions. In other words
they were people we could work with. Anyone we could work with,
why, of course it was fine.
I point out five or six Republican legislators but we probably
could have worked with all but two or three three names pop into my
mind (because they were the three who voted against my appointment
to the personnel board) who just wouldn t vote for anything. But
most of them understand the game. In other words, they didn t come
into the legislature expecting us to appoint people who were Repub
licans. When it s the first Democratic governor for twenty years,
the Democrats are going to get something. And I can think of quite
a few districts where they were all Republican that we just worked
with very well Senator Verne [L. ] Sturgeon of San Luis Obispo always
came to the office to see Pat. He was on good terras. I think of
him because he s on the State Public Utilities Commission now.
Without a roster I can t remember all the names. But there were five
or six Republicans who we all worked with very well.
Fry: If you can remember any others let me know. Also, the Democratic
leaders. We re trying to find who would be the ones that Pat s
office did work most closely with in the legislature.
Davis: This gets me to what I was trying to say. I think that for working
with the legislators you should contact the legislative secretary.
My field was only appointments. If you talk with some of Pat s
legislative secretaries I think you d get just a much better clear
picture. There was Frank Mesple, he s still in Sacramento he s
a lobbyist now. There was Alex Pope. Whatever happened to
Alexander Pope he s down south some place. Lots of people would
know where he is. Those are your sources for going to the legisla
tors.
And, of course, the most important people, I think, that could
give you more information, more policy, more everything, are the
first two executive secretaries. They were by far the most important
people in the administration. The first one was Fred Dutton and the
second was Hale Champion. Hale Champion, as you know, went on to
handle money matters for Harvard.
Fry: Yes, we hope that we ll be able to interview him later.
Davis: [looking at Fry s list] Jack Tomlinson and Frank Chambers were they
down under appointments? I don t know when they would have handled
appointments ever. I don t know what Jack did. Jack came in later.
He may have helped somebody with the legislature. Paul Ward would
be a good one. He handled it towards the end. These are legislative
liaison people. Frank Chambers and Tomlinson were with Pat at the
very end, maybe the last two or three years of Pat s administration.
I m not belittling them in any way; I m just saying I don t think
you ll get as much information from them was you do out of the first
ones. As you know, the first years of any administration are the
most potent years, and you accomplish things in those years.
Senators Virgil Sullivan and Joe Rattigan we certainly worked with
a lot.
Fry: If you know where any of these people are now, we d appreciate a lead.
Davis: Carley Porter, he was influential in the water program. You don t
have Ralph Brody on this list. If you re talking about water program,
Ralph Brody was his staff secretary for the water program. He was
working on the water program first. He certainly is one of your most
knowledgeable people on water outside of Carley Porter who carried the
legislation, and he is deceased.
Fry: We d want to have a big section on water because that was probably
one of the more important things I guess. So anybody else you see
there that might be important and related to water in ways we wouldn t
know about, please tell us.
Davis: Bill Warne was director of water resources for the Brown administra
tion. Preceding him we had a holdover: the director of water
resources who stayed on from Knight s administration and he was the
director for quite a few years; but Ralph Brody would be your most
knowledgeable man. He was in the governor s office while
Harvey Banks was head of water resources.
Fry: Speaking of water, you were in a position to know if there is any
story about why or how Knight s director gave way to one of Pat Brown s
appointees.
Davis: It was a term appointment to begin with. No, no, the director wasn t.
There were a couple of term appointments, but that wasn t one of
them, so forget that. The director sat purely at Pat s pleasure.
There are so many you have to almost keep your own book in front of
you if you aren t working with it.
Fred Dutton and Hale Champion will know more about the first
years of Pat s administration than anybody else that you can talk
to from the standpoint of policy, accomplishments, and things that
were done.
Screening of Potential Appointees
Fry: I m eager to know what sort of screening you had to do on names that
were submitted to you early in Pat s administration. Did you have
a lot
Davis: Are you talking about directors of the departments?
Fry: All the appointments. We can start with the directors.
Davis: All right. I m more knowledgeable in my own field than I am in
somebody else s. And when I came aboard, Pat had picked his staff,
and his directors. My assumption is that they were picked after his
election and prior to his taking office because the first day of his
administration, after he was sworn in, they were in various
directorships and in various places of importance. Those original
people were the ones who were selected to start off his administra
tion. The name that I don t see down here, and I m going to try and
pull it out of my hat, is the person who started out as director of
employment. Irving Perluss he s now a judge in Sacramento. He
came out of the state attorney general s office and became director
of employment, and then went on to a couple of other things before
he became a judge.
Davis: This is kind of bits and pieces I would like to be more comprehen
sive. There was a black book that s been kept forever. There was
a copy in the attorney general s office, and a copy in the secretary-
of state s office, and a copy in the governor s office. They keep
a record of all appointments, and for any position you can go right
back and see who served on it and when they were appointed. It s a
binder book that s all recorded in the secretary of state *s office.
It tells you everybody who has served in any position, what the
position is, how they are to be appointed, where they re to come
from, and what their terms are. And that s accurate; anything
else that we think of is just as good as your memory is, which isn t
good when you re dealing with this many things.
To go back to your question of how were the early appointments
made, what I m saying is that the very early staff and the directors
had already been decided upon, in almost all instances, and were
sworn in on the very first day and went right into operation. From
then on, this bible book tells you what appointments the governor
had to make; we sorted it all out and had it on lists so that we
knew when they all came up, and at what time. And in that fashion
we worked on the most important as they appeared. One of my
secretaries prepared that.
The bulk of all appointments occur in January, with some in
February and March, and then they dwindle out over the rest of the
year. That is the bulk of appointments. In the very early times,
Fred Button would have been aware of most of the people and the
work that we did on background, seeing how they were thought of in
their community, how the legislators felt about them, anything we
could find out. And that was the basis of screening.
Fry: For instance, you re considering somebody from, let s say, Porterville.
Do you start with the legislator or someone who had helped in the
campaign that you feel you can trust, and you call them and ask them
about it? I m wondering how you managed this, particularly on
levels where you want confidential information; at least you don t
want it noised around the newspapers, I guess, when you re first
screening. How do you do it?
Davis: With the first years of his administration you have to remember this:
Pat had been in public office a long time, and he d been eight years
as attorney general, and he d been active in politics as a district
attorney in San Francisco, so that he came in with a vast fund of
knowledge about people over the years. And the Democrats had not
been in office for twenty years, so they didn t hold any posts,
and there was a tremendous number of people. Pat himself knew who
he wanted to use and where he wanted to use them. So that we weren t
really scrounging [laughs] for applicants, we were inundated with
Davis: applicants people who had been waiting all these years to make a
change from the Republican to the Democratic philosophy. And had
been waiting twenty years, if you want to put it that way. And
so everybody had floods of candidates for all positions, so that
we were never without applicants. We weren t scrounging. We were
weeding out and we were thinking I have to say that Pat throughout
all the time I was there, although he didn t do any of the leg work
or the background work or those kinds of incidentals on the
appointments he just really knew who he was interested in or what
kind of person he wanted, and he had a lot of names he thought of
for the important positions. For the lesser ones county fair
boards and all the various boards and commissions that used to be
in the old department of professional and vocational standards (you
had hundreds of them) why, I would say I probably did all the work
on those and then presented him with choices and names. But he knew
who he wanted and in most instances he knew the people I was
referring to when I brought the names in, unless it got down to
strictly local things like fair boards.
And then, of course, the other big thing that he appointed were
judges. He had a tremendous number of judges in the first years of
the administration, by virtue of the fact there was a big increase
in the number of judgeships at that point. Population was growing
and judgeships are made on the basis of local population. So there
was that big increase. And then the legislature passed the bill
which was an effort to get the old judges to retire judgeships had
sort of been the happy hunting ground of people who had spent their
years as attorneys and then wanted to die as judges let s put it
that way. The bench was an old bench when Pat took over, and to get
these people off, the legislature passed this bill. I don t know
just what you d call it, but it accomplished getting them to retire
by making the widows benefits greater if the judge died in retire
ment than if he died on the bench. In other words they let Momma
influence what Papa did. That was part of the way. So a lot of
judges who were in their seventies retired who might otherwise
have stayed on the bench forever. So that gave us a lot more
positions and add to that the natural increase of the population
which opened up more new judgeships. Pat, being an attorney,
certainly knew who he wanted on the bench. And by that I mean he
knew who would make a good judge.
Fry: You mean he had specific criteria in mind?
Davis: Yes.
Fry: What sort of criteria?
Davis: Well, certainly number one would be competency legal competency.
8
Davis: And then he felt very strongly that a judge should be hardworking
and humble. I can remember he used to always urge his judges, as
he appointed them, to be humble. He felt that frequently judges
became arrogant once they were on the bench. And I think that he
felt that that was very bad, and I know when he would close off his
call, he would always ask them to be humble.
Fry: How about their personal life? I guess you had to do some screening
on that. What did you look for?
Davis: Scandal, I guess. There s a definition of scandal. It varies, I
guess. In making the appointments, after the decision was pretty
well made, you did everything you could to be sure that there
wouldn t be anything that would backfire that the newspapers could
use to discredit the administration.
Davis: I mean there was no reason for such a risk. There were plenty of
good people for the job. There were plenty of good Democrats for
the job. So why would you pick somebody who is going to bring
discredit to your administration and to your judgement in appointing
them?
Fry: What about divorce? Early in the administration, did that have
anything to do with it? It s interesting to see how that s become
more accepted.
Davis: No. I have no recollection anywhere along the line that that ever
was a minus against anybody.
Fry: And what about religion?
Davis: Never entered into anything. We were looking for hidden jail
sentences, maybe, or shady business practices, or something on a
criminal record that you might not know about that might show up.
The newspapers were really anti-Brown, because the newspaper
publishers are Republican. There s the Fresno Bee and the Sacramento
Bee, but otherwise you didn t have too many friendly publishers. I
would say that the working press was very friendly to Pat, but the
publishers were Republican, and they aren t going to bring anything
they re not going to give you any accolades that they don t have to.
Let s put it that way .
Fry: Right. You still had that sort of printer s ink line across every
newspaper where the people below the publishers level were Democratic
and those above it were Republican.
Davis: That s right, and there just were unfriendly newspapers. They re
basically Republican newspapers, and they support Republican
candidates, because that s their philosophy. I don t quarrel with
it; I quarrel with it only to the extent that they didn t accurately
report the good things and they overdid the bad, and when you have
a Republican administration they cease to ask questions in a great
many instances. So I don t think the press I m not saying they
were unfair, I just think that they exaggerated certain things and
didn t give full credit where it was due.
Fry: This is a valuable point because so much of historical source material
is found in newspapers. The newspapers of the late fifties and early
sixties really were run differently from the way newspapers are run
now.
Davis: I think that the Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee gave the most
! accurate reporting on the Brown administration. They are Democratic
newspapers, but they did give news accurately. They didn t pull
their punches I mean a story s a story but I can t think of any
really scandalous things we had in appointments. For maybe one or
two we d think, oh, how did that happen? And I can t even bring
any to mind, but you just try to be sure there wasn t something
that was going to end up being a minus for you.
Fry: Was Kyle Palmer still political editor for the L.A. Times then, or
had he gone?
Davis: Could have been. I don t know. I don t know.
Working with the Democratic State Central Committee and the CDC
Fry: Okay. To get back to appointments then. Could you give us some
leads on the relationship of Pat Brown s early governor s office to
the California Democratic Council [CDC]? Were a lot of the people
he brought in around him also CDC ers, or were they primarily
Democratic party workers, or were they just Pat Brown-for-Governor
people? Do you have any impressions?
Davis: Yes, I will give you impressions, and I have to stipulate this is
my opinion, because I just don t think I m in a position to make
an authoritative statement on it. My impression is that the
Pat Brown people were a group in the Democratic party, and they
basically were not necessarily CDC people, or Democratic committee
people in the hierarchy in the Democratic party. I always felt that
Pat couldn t have won without this kind of party structure as nobody
10
Davis: can; but on the other hand, he was not really that beholden to them.
He wasn t really beholden to them at all. And a large part of the
difficulty in appointments, to avoid bad feelings, was the fact that
the Democratic County Central Committees had lists of all the people
they wanted appointed, and in almost all instances they didn t get
any of them. They were not the people that Pat had in mind. So
keeping the county central committees happy was a big job. Well, not
as much happy as not so angry at not getting their appointments.
Fry: Did you accomplish that?
Davis: I tried. [laughs] I failed with some; with some I was successful.
But the local person that they think is going to be marvellous isn t
necessarily the best one for the spot when you ve got a wider range
of choices; and the ardent party worker is not necessarily the best
man for the position. And the best man for the position might not
necessarily have worked very hard or contributed very greatly to the
Democratic party. I think what you try to do is take positions, and
I mentioned the fair boards before, which are strictly local, and
those you try to give to the local party people, so that they have
something to say, like "We are heard in Sacramento, and they do
listen, we do get some recognition." The worker in the field needs
to be recognized.
Fry: That s the backbone, I guess.
Davis: I guess the biggest argument that we used with the party people was
that good government is good politics. We re here in office for the
first time and we want good government, and that will reflect in being
good politics. And quite frankly, you know, an awful lot of the
people that county committees would recommend, and I m not pulling
out any county, were just strictly the people who d worked the
hardest, and that was not a credential for being appointed. You can
work awfully hard and really not have any capabilities for holding
an office. So, I think we did bruise their feelings rather badly in
the first four years of the administration. We hurt their feelings.
They didn t get the recognition that they would have liked, and of
course they were unreasonable in their demands because it was the
first Democratic governor they d had in twenty years. They just had
a tremendous backlog of need for recognition, which they wouldn t
have had if the Democrats had been in office for sixteen years. Do
you see what I m saying? They weren t being unreasonable. It was
the situation that created this.
Fry: And the chairman of every county committee, I guess, saw the statistics
of positions available.
Davis: They would ask if they were knowledgeable, and offer a list for all
11
Davis: the appointments that were being made during the year. I avoided
giving it to them if I could possibly do it. I was pretty well
successful in most instances, and would say that I didn t I would
say most county committees didn t like me. I would say that I was
the buffer. I took all the heat, or tried to, or wanted to. Of
course, they would have a suggestion for every position why not?
I can put myself in their place. We tried to get fewer and fewer
suggestions so that we offended fewer and fewer people. When you
make one appointment, you made one person happy, and you make a
hundred people unhappy, who not only are unhappy; sometimes they
get mad. So that s the county committee structure.
You had asked me about the California Democratic Council. I
would like to tell you anything you want to know about Joe Wyatt, Jr.
He was president of the CDC at the time Pat went into office. I
happen to think most highly of Joe Wyatt. I served with him for
eight years on the personnel board. He s capable, he s competent,
and he s a very sober CDC er. Now the CDC you know, they have a
whole gamut of things. But he was president at the time in 1959
and anything you want to know about that should come from Joe Wyatt
and not from me. The CDC was never a force or a loud noise in the
appointment field. Joe Wyatt was a very nice man to deal with. They
didn t come in with a lot of demands for appointments. I don t know
what they did in the other areas.
Fry: As I gather from our reading, the CDC was primarily motivated by a
certain idealism, rather than hard-nosed
Davis: Actually their program seemed so radical then, but it s all been
accomplished over the years.
Fry: In which areas of California did the counties seem more patronage
minded?
Davis: I don t think any nothing comes to mind.
Fry: You didn t see any geographical patterns there.
Davis: No. Appointments are specified by law where somebody had to come
from the north, somebody had to come from the south. A geographical
distribution as well as qualifications. Certain people have to
represent certain things, and have certain qualifications. An awful
lot of it is spelled out in the law, to give a balanced board. In
other words, when the legislature creates a board of commissioners,
it generally says how many members are on it, how long the term of
office is, if it s staggered, or it it s overlapping. It may have
people who represent a cerain specialty, and so many from the north
and so many from the south. In fact, they get too detailed; they
12
Davis: make it difficult sometimes beyond necessity, because really if a
person s right it doesn t make any difference where he comes from.
I would like to say here that the transition from the Knight
to the Brown administration was without any hard feeling, and smooth,
and no one in the office was fired.
Fry: You mean you kept a lot of people?
Davis: I m talking about secretarial staff, now, not Pat s personal staff.
Fry: Not the political cabinet.
Davis: That s right. You have the kitchen cabinet, and you have clerical
staff, I guess you d have to call it. They all stayed.
Maryalice Lemmon had worked in her position for Warren, Knight and
Brown. Eve [M. ] Ostoja may have come out of Vincent Thomas office.
But none of the backroom people were dismissed. I say this because
the Reagan administration fired everybody, except my secretary.
Fry: Is that right? Who was that?
Davis: Phyllis [J.] Shafer. And that was simply because they needed some
body there who knew how you did have requirements that had to be
met, legal requirements, and clerical staff did know their way around
the office. This is not my biography, so it doesn t make any
difference how I think I ran the office, but it was efficient. And
we did have everything in order, and that black book was working.
The Knight administration had been a little careless in how
Fry: About the little black book?
Davis: Yes. I don t think they had an appointments secretary, per se. I
was trying to think. He served on the youth authority at one time,
and now lives in Sacramento. He did it [acted as appointments
secretary], but I think he did it in conjunction with other duties.
I don t think it had been specifically put to one person handling
it, until I did. And so then, of course, because it was my job, I
had a lot of time to go through the book and straighten it out, and
see that we met all of the fulfilled all the obligations, filled
everything. But the transition from the Knight to the Brown
administration was without any problems or incidents. We kept the
same woman on the reception desk; we kept the same people. You
always have turnover, but nobody was fired. There was no reason to.
When Pat had been attorney general, the relationships between him
and Knight were most friendly, and there wasn t a tremendous difference
in philosophy. There was a difference in brand name, Republican
versus Democrat, but there wasn t a wide difference in philosophy,
really.
13
A Question of Non-partisan Appointments
Fry:
Fry: Did you wind up making any Republican appointments?
Davis: Oh, sure. Not the first few days or the first few months, because
you have too many eager Democrats. I can t just think of any right
off hand.
The non-partisanship of the Warren years, and I suppose a certain
amount in the Knight years was a factor there, and I wondered how
much of this
Davis: The previous appointments were non-partisan. But I couldn t find
any Democratic judges when I went through the list of judges. When
I say it was non-partisan, it was non-partisan. But when I looked
at the list I shouldn t say no Democrats; of course there were a
couple. But Warren and Knight appointed Republicans. It s normal
and natural the people knew they were Republicans; they were
qualified for the job. Why would you go seek a Democrat if you had
a qualified Republican? Why, if you were a Democrat, would you go
seek a qualified Republican if you had a qualified Democrat? I could
hardly find a Democrat who held any position on any board or
commission; there were only a couple in the judgeships. I am not
critical of that, but I think it made it doubly important for us
to appoint Democrats or we were defeating the purpose of the will
of the people in electing a Democratic governor. And I must say I
thought the early reports in the papers, like "they re appointing
all Democrats" was the most unfounded accusation, as if it were not
the right and proper thing to do. We had to really work hard, and
it took four or five years, to even get a balance. In almost all
appointments, you only appoint one or two members at a time. You
don t ever change a whole board. You don t get control of a board
until the end of your four years; if you re out at the end of the
four years, then you never get control. Somebody else takes over
your control. In eight years almost all boards do change. Of course,
the big exception is the Board of Regents, they serve for sixteen
years.
Fry: What is the term of office for PUC appointees?
Davis: Six years, I think it is.
Fry: Did you do the appointments to the PUC?
Davis: Not formally; only the background to be sure an appointee was all
right, along with a report on how the local community might have
14
Davis: felt about it, or if there were any legislators who felt strongly
for or against. When you re up in that type of position, I wouldn t
want to say that I did anything except say it was "all clear," or
"it isn t clear," "did you know about this?" or "had you heard that?"
Pat knew what he wanted, and where he was going. He knows everybody.
Fry: So that would be Pat, and Hale Champion, and Fred Button making
decisions on appointments.
Davis: At that point, yes. I m trying awfully hard to be accurate in what
I m saying, and at the same time not lead you to believe that I had
any special knowledge or information that anybody else wouldn t have
had that was in the office.
Fry: You mentioned that the horseracing board was something that you tried
to, as I understand it, give local people
Davis: No, not the horseracing board, and I have to make a specific exception
of that
Fry: Oh, the fair boards.
Davis: Yes, and I must make a specific exception of the horseracing board
because, for some reason, everybody in California who s important
or wealthy, wanted to be on the horseracing board. That just
happened to be a board that people thought that would be the grandest
thing. And the athletic commission, which has a different name now.
Those were just very sought-after positions.
Fry: Was social status connected to it? What do you suppose made it
important?
Davis: Yes, or maybe interest in the field or interest in horseracing
On the fair board: the local district agricultural board began
with nine members, then ten members, and then they were increased
to twelve, with two public members. There s one to each county it s
not the county fair, it s the "district agricultural" fair, but one
to a county. And these were local things: the local people knew
who they wanted on their fair boards, and we really did give these
appointments to the local people; that is, either the central
committee or the legislators. But the legislators were not always
in accord with their county committee: it took a lot of footwork
to keep everybody happy in that respect. Sometimes they don t get
along, and they would say, "But don t tell." [laughs] The
appointment field only makes enemies; it does not make friends.
Fry: This is why you re so important: it s to tell us what went on,
15
Fry: because later on it becomes very significant, like in Brown s
campaign against Reagan. I assume that after Brown had been in
office eight years he had a kind of a network of disappointed
people who didn t get appointments.
Davis: We certainly did. Every day we were in office we d make an enemy,
and we probably didn t make any friends that we hadn t started in
with. And the reason was simply every action that we took, there
were people who didn t want us to take that action. There may be
some who wanted you to make that appointment. But the ones who were
disappointed or were against it, remembered it. Where the ones
who were for it just figured you just acted sensibly. [laughs]
That s just the way it goes you do not make any friends in the
appointment field, you only make enemies of the people who wanted
the appointment and were disappointed.
Fry: I wonder if governors use appointment secretaries as the sort of
person who can carry the burden of some of this blame because the
governor has to be preserved for re-election, right?
Davis: That s right, yes. It s an important function. The first function
is to try and keep everybody moderately happy, or at least help
them understand. I think the important thing was to explain to them
the reasons for the appointment. In other words, if you re high
handed about things, automatically you get resentment. If you
try to be reasonable and explain what happened, people, by and large,
are reasonable. They might be disappointed, but at least they don t
hate you for it.
People want to feel that they re part of an administration, and
they don t want to think that, "Pat sits up there, and I worked hard
for these people, and suddenly I have no access." Pat was a very
accessible governor: people could get to see him. He was not
inaccessible at all, he was really too accessible to people. Too
accessible only because it made his day so long.
Fry: Did a build-up of hostility toward you personally occur with some
people?
Davis: It must have, I suppose. [laughs] I really think I had a fine
relationship with most people. There was really only a negligible
number of people who I couldn t do business with. That was not any
problem, no.
Fry: My impression of the L.A. County Democratic committee was that it was
one of the more competitive Democratic committees. Competitive
in its own environment for positions in the committee, for
16
Davis: I never worked in any of those structures so I m not qualified to
speak on them.
Fry: I just wondered, though, in terms of appointments. There seemed to
be so many sub-groups in the L.A. committee.
Davis: Remember, Los Angeles only had one senator then. This was before the
one man, one vote decision. Richard Richards was the senator for
all of Los Angeles County; it was very easy to deal with one man.
Fry: And you dealt through him?
Davis: You had more assemblymen, but you only had one senator, and he carried,
of course, a tremendous load, but he was very easy to deal with. He
was a very fine person, so I would say there was no problem. Some
senators, and even assemblymen, cared about appointments. And it was
a matter of prestige, or being the important man in their community,
to feel that they knew everything about what was going on in their
community. Others didn t care. They just said, "Do what you want."
George Miller was a fine example of that.
Fry: Tell me more about him.
Davis: I personally had an extremely high regard for George Miller. He didn t
care who you appointed as long as it wasn t his arch enemy, and you
cleared it with him. He said, "These are the governor s appointments,
they re not mine. I ll take care of mine, you take care of yours."
He was very easy to work with. I never worked with him in the
legislature. From the legislative secretary s standpoint I m not so
sure he was so easy; that you would have to get from somebody else.
But I think the biggest factor in not alienating legislators was
the fact that you cleared the appointments with them. If it was one
that you intended to appoint regardless of how their feelings were,
at least it helped if they knew about it before it was announced in
the papers, so that they could be a part of the appointment. That
satisfied most of them. Nobody wanted an appointment made in his
district announced in the newspaper, that caught him flatfooted,
especially when he had never heard anything about it. So it was a
courtesy that we extended to all legislators : they were informed
prior to announcement. If they had any objections, they could voice
them before a decision was made. Sometimes you accepted their
complaints and sometimes you didn t, but at least they were aware
of it.
Fry: How did you do this? Did you drop by and see them or drop them a
note, or
17
Davis: Lots of them came into the office, or I called them by phone. I
found all of them, with about two or three exceptions that don t
even come to mind at the moment, very easy to do business with. I
had no problems with the legislators. They were reasonable people.
My area was not an area of conflict let s put it that way.
Fry: I understand from press accounts that now there is a problem of
delegation, that it takes a long time for Jerry Brown to decide
upon an appointment. In contrast, you said Pat cane in with a lot
of knowledge in his own head of exactly who he wanted for a number
of positions.
Davis: And a very wide circle of acquaintances.
Fry: Probably more than Jerry had, because Jerry had only been
Davis: Age alone would make that difference. Just the age and the number
of years in public office.
Fry: I wondered if Pat ever had to stay up till twelve o clock at night
several nights in a row to make appointments; or was it easier?
Davis: My opinion of Pat is most high. I might add he was the hardest
working person I have ever been around. He was a working governor.
It was not a governorship by committee. Pat was the governor. He
exercized all of his prerogatives and he worked. He had three
briefcases that were always you never could close them, they were
jam full that went everywhere with him. They went in the limousine
when he was going from place to place. He worked while he was being
driven from one place to the other. He worked from early morning in
the office till late at night. He took everything home and he worked
at night at home. He worked all the day Saturday and Sunday. He
sat by the pool in the nice weather with his grandchildren around
and worked the whole time. I had a tremendous problem ever getting
to him because I was always available, and least important. I
cleared most of my appointments and did most of my discussion with
Pat at the breakfast table. I would get there at seven-thirty in
the morning, and competed with the telephone, and whoever else came
in- for his attention. I probably got eight or ten jobs that weren t
mine to do because he thought of them and I was there, and I was
told to see that they got done. Breakfast appointments were my time
with Pat. I never had any time with him in the office. He was too
busy, and I never felt that it was there were more important things
going on than appointments.
If
18
II REMINISCING A PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
From Schooling to Professional Experience
Davis: A lot of appointments are important , but they certainly are not the
most important thing that a governor does. He s got more things
to think about than that. They re important , but they should take
the least amount of his personal time.
When I left in 1965, Pat put me on the state personnel board.
I stayed through June of that year. (The appointment became avail
able on January 15.) I stayed through June to make the bulk well,
I d say ninety-five percent of all of the 1965 appointments were
made at the time I left in June. This has to do with the fact that
most of them became due in that period. And Pat wanted me to stay
and be sure they were all done in May before I left.
And then Nancy Sloss took over in my position. She was very
competent, very capable, and did a lot of work in the Democratic
party. So if you d like to get an evaluation on my accuracy, or my
point of view, you would get the other side of the coin from Nancy.
She was there for a year and a half, and she may have done things
entirely differently, I don t know. She had a very different back
ground. Hers was a party background. My background was strictly
for Pat. I mean, I didn t have any party background, and I hadn t
been in politics, so that was not my background at all. I guess
Fred Dutton considered my position sensitive, and that it would be
well served by somebody who was as close and as loyal to Pat as I
was.
Fry: Did you have any working background or profession?
Davis : Yes .
Fry: What was that?
19
Davis: I graduated from UC Berkeley in 34. And I was a political science
major, with a specialty in public administration. I had the
collegiate background, but I had never used it. I had gone back to
work in 1950 because I was alone and had two children to support,
and that was just strictly office background as working background.
Fry: What office were you in?
Davis: I lived in Newport Beach and worked down there, locally. It was just
in a high level clerical position, office manager type of thing.
Fry: I think we call that executive secretary.
Davis: I had worked in the early years for J. Walter Thompson (an advertising
firm). I worked for them until 1940, I guess, when my first child
was born. So, I had worked, but as I say, women in those days didn t
work in many high level positions. You went to college and then you
learned typing and shorthand so you could get a job.
Fry: As I understand it, 1950 was right at the height of the switch-over
from women working alongside men in wartime and going into this
feminine mystic period when a woman s place was in the home.
Davis: I was not aware of that in 1959. I was just working to earn enough
money to live. I was working at that level. I came up to governor s
office [as appointment secretary] and it was all new to me; I had
to learn. As a matter of fact, I said I learned the political end
of it from Susie Clifton who gave me a crash course. You are at the
very center of all the activity when you re in the governor s office.
And if you have any brains at all you ll learn your job. You
wouldn t be there if you didn t have some brains. And if you have
any sensitivity, it s just all there for you to pick up and learn
very quickly. And when you re not there, and you re not in it, you
don t really know what s going on. I had no idea what happened in
any governor s office prior to or after because you have to eat it,
live it, read it twenty- four hours a day, seven days a week. And
that s what I did.
And you asked did Pat stay up to midnight? I guess he stayed
up till more than midnight. I guess midnight was his earliest, and
from thereon he went over. He did a tremendous amount of work.
Balancing Family and Executive Duties
Fry: What did this mean for you, besides the seven-thirty breakfast
appointments? I guess your kids were pretty well grown by that time?
20
Davis: My youngest daughter was a junior in high school when I moved to
Sacramento. After she graduated she went on to UC [University of
California] Berkeley. And I had another daughter who was in UC
Davis. So they lived at school and it worked well. One of my
daughters was home for that first year, and I tried to get home.
But I worked Saturdays and Sundays in the governor s office.
Fry: So you tried to get home in the late day.
Davis: Yes. It was easier for me to work on weekends because the governor s
office was quiet, the telephones didn t ring, and I could collect
my thoughts, and I could plan the work for the people who worked
under me. Their time was well filled. I could plan what I wanted
to do, and I could do all my letters and dictation. Whereas the
working week, from eight to five, is filled with so many telephone
calls that it is very hard to get your work done. And yet, that s
your availability to the public.
Fry: Your position sounded especially sensitive in that regard.
Davis: And I preferred to work on weekends than to work at night. Because
I had a child at home. And later after my youngest daughter left
for UC Berkeley I worked almost all weekends.
Fry: Would you straighten me out on your name?
Davis: I was May Layne Bonnell until I got married to Roy Davis, whom I
married in 1969; it was well after I had left the office. The whole
time I was in government I was May Layne Bonnell. I am Mrs. Brown s
sister.
Working with the Governor on Appointments
Fry: What proportion of appointments did Pat leave up to your discretion?
And what sorts of appointments did you handle?
Davis: I d rather start it from the other side. I would rather say that
Pat was heavily involved in the selection of his appointments to
everything. He would make his decision on strictly his own judgement,
if he knew exactly what he wanted. If he didn t, then he would form
his opinion from information I supplied to him.
Fry: Did he have to okay everyone appointed?
Davis: Oh, yes. He did not let anybody do any of his appointments for him.
21
Davis: He made them all. Now in the lesser appointments and it s hard to
use the expression lesser appointments I probably did the phone
calling on quite a few of them. But on anything that was important
he made his own phone call to tell them that they were appointed.
And when I did make it, I would guess that people, because I was
related to him, felt that it was a very close personal decision.
I mean, I would have to say that it would be more personal than it
would be if it had come from an appointments secretary that wasn t
Fry: That s right, that made you more of a surrogate, didn t it?
Davis: I think so. I think people in talking to me felt that Pat had
given it to them more directly than if it had come from somebody
else.
Fry: As Mrs. Brown s sister
Davis: But I think what s important here is what this is an interview about
Pat, and I don t want it to get off on me.
Fry: But at the Bancroft Library we have so much interest and so much lack
of information in women who have dealt in some way with the public,
particularly in this period when women s participation was rather
unusual, I always try to gather up information when I can on that.
That s why I m interested in having something on you personally.
Davis: Well, I did as much work as I could on the people who were logical
appointments to any particular vacancy. I probably would single it
down to one, or one or two, but certainly Pat was always presented
with others who were contenders along with the pros and cons against
them or maybe why I had eliminated them. And then I would focus in
on a couple of people. From that standpoint I think you could say
that I might have influenced his decision, but I think you have to
look at it from my viewpoint. I was only trying to do the job for
Pat. I had no other outside influences. I was not political; I had
not worked in politics. I was closely related to him, and so in
presenting information to him I was always geared to his thinking.
I wasn t trying to bring in any other factors. I was trying to
give him the best possible person he could have, in every appointment.
There were some appointments I think it would be safe to say that he
delegated to me, and would say, "I ll accept your judgement on
anybody, if you re satisfied and have checked with everybody."
Fry: I imagine he trusted your judgement.
Davis: You have to remember there are just thousands of appointments. The
magnitude of them. And I m sure it is much worse now. There s just
a lot to do. But if you ve done all your work and if everything is
22
Davis: good and the appointees background checks out, it s not important
to relay all the information to Pat. The only thing that s important
is if there might be a problem. If you ve done all the background,
then you ve narrowed all that down, and he doesn t have to see that.
Reflections on Bernice Brown
Fry: Now that I know you re Mrs. Brown s sister, I would also like your
advice and counsel on what you feel is important for us to gather
from Mrs. Brown?
Davis: For your check list, you mean? What s a good check list for what to
ask her?
Fry: That s right. Were you in on the courtship?
Davis : Oh , yes .
Fry: Were you at home then?
Davis: Yes. I m younger than Mrs. Brown not by very much, but younger.
And I guess Pat had been coming to our house for Sunday dinners since
probably the time I was six years old, and my sister was maybe eleven.
I think Bernice and Pat started dating when Bernice was around thir
teen or fourteen. So, we ve certainly known him for it s been a
long time, and Pat was always part of the family circle, and Sunday
dinners and things like that. And he and my father enjoyed talking
a great deal. She s been a marvelous political asset and a
political person. But, by the same token, that freedom to really
indulge in politics, and enjoy it, came from having not been that
active in it. It came after her family was pretty well raised,
except for Kathleen Kathleen Brown Rice, who is now very politically
oriented and interested.
Kathie was so much younger than any of the other children (I am
speaking of when Pat was attorney general) ; a marvelous child who
you could take anywhere, and so they did. So Kathie Brown, really
from this big [gesturing with hands] went every place with them.
She was easy to take, and she was a marvelous little child. She
really grew up in politics.
Fry: You mean she always had this sense of propriety?
Davis: She was a most unusual, almost wonderful small child. In other words,
you could take her in a group with all adults, and she was fine. She
23
Davis: kind of grew up with travelling, and at that point, being the
youngest child, being the baby, they liked having her with them. So
when Bernice first started to travel with Pat, why Kathie was
always with them. She was born in 45, so what was she in 59?
Fry: Fourteen.
Davis: Yes, so she was, I think, in junior high when they came into the
governor s office.
Fry: So, what you re saying is that from the time that Kathie was able to
travel, Mrs. Brown accompanied Pat Brown more on his trips and his
campaigns. Is that what you mean?
Davis : Yes .
Fry: So Mrs. Brown would be able to comment then on the campaigns them
selves?
Davis: Oh, very definitely, yes.
Fry: From about 48 on.
Davis : I think she could comment on a lot before that because that was when
Pat was district attorney, and their political life was a little bit
more confined, although they had conventions and things. But, then
there s the governor years of course, when the family was pretty well
raised.
I think Kathie went two years to high school in Sacramento, and
then they were travelling so very much it was hard on Kathie. Kathie
then went to boarding school for her last two years of high school,
and then went on to Stanford; then Bernice was free. Bernice
certainly has had a lot of years in the political life, and that s
a lot of years to put in, so I m sure she has some very definite
opinions on the subject.
Fry: Did she ever have any well defined functions other than that of the
political wife? Something I don t know about?
Davis: I d say she was the political wife.
Fry: I thought maybe I had overlooked a membership in a commission, or
something like that.
Davis: The politician s wife is changing now, but I would say that she was
the political wife.
24
Fry:
Davis
Fry:
Davis :
Fry:
Davis:
Fry:
Davis :
Fry:
I must let you go, it s twelve- thirty.
That s all right. I just hope I haven t gone off on tangents.
As I say, it s important to talk of course, Hale Champion is
in Washington now. And I don t know when you can grab Fred Dutton.
He does come to Board of Regents meetings, however. You might pick
a meeting that he s coming to and see if he has the time to talk to
you about the Brown years. Warren Christopher is also another top
name to talk to. I m just suggesting people that I think are good.
You know, Bill Gianelli was a state employee of the water department
for years I can t tell you the exact years and dates, but he
certainly was there at a time when Pat would have been attorney
general. He left and went into private practice; he s a water
engineer. He would know a lot about the water project. And Reagan
brought him back as his director of water resources. Gianelli
would know about the water program; I have great respect for him
and for his opinions. The fact he was Reagan s director for water
resources wouldn t keep him from giving you a clear and objective
picture. And Gianelli happens to think very highly of Pat. In fact,
Pat thinks very highly of him he s a very fine person.
There s Tom Lynch. He and Pat have known each other for years,
and they ve been active in the Democratic party. This would be an
old friend, and old
Fellow war-horse?
Fellow war-horse, yes. That s a very good word for it, yes. I gave
you Frank [A.] Mesple s name. He could give you a lot of information
on the duties of the legislative secretary and so could Paul Ward, if
you can find him. Now Helen [E. ] Nelson was Pat s first really big
woman appointment, consumer counsel. That s a big first and a big
plus.
She s in Wisconsin now. We don t have all that much travel money.
That s too bad, I thought she might be here. You know, this was the
first consumer office.
Did you help with that appointment?
No, I didn t know Helen Nelson. I don t recall how that came about.
I really don t. It came about without my being involved in it in
any way.
Did the rise of Jesse Unruh in the assembly influence your bailiwick
any?
25
Davis: Not mine. I certainly think it did in the legislative thing. He was
a thorn in Pat s side because of Unruh s ambitions. But I had no
problems working with Jesse Unruh.
Fry: As he built up his own little empire against Pat s
Davis: There was a vying for power there.
Fry: I wondered if he made use of disappointed prospective appointees.
Davis: [laughs] I just have to say I had no problem working with Jesse Unruh.
He was a man of his word in my field. And I respected his right to
think what he wanted to think, and he respected my right to do the
same. And when I said it is the governor s appointment, he said,
"You re right."
Fry: Tell us how he got along with Senator Richard Richards.
Davis: I don t know. As I say, I was not involved in that legislative
process at all. I just worked with people in my own field. I had
no problem with either Unruh or Richards.
Fry: Were they on the same side in the later years?
Davis: I don t know. Los Angeles was a mystery to me in lots of ways, and
I think you would have had to have been in Los Angeles politics for
a long time to be able to talk about it. I can just tell you as to
what I knew in my little private world. But I know Jesse Unruh was
a thorn in lots of people s sides. I just didn t have any trouble
working with him, because in what I was doing, we understood each
other. And he was not demanding. He wasn t that interested in
appointments. Let s put it that way.
Fry: Okay, because I thought maybe there was some competition between
Unruh and Richards on potential appointees.
Davis: If there was, it was prior to my knowing of any competition. I m
not saying there might not have been in the initial appointments.
I just don t know. Richards did not involve himself in the appoint
ment of people very much. He had his own appointments in the
legislature, anyway. He had no reason to intrude on the governor s
appointments. He might have had a few people that he wanted to do
things for. And if it was agreeable with us, it didn t make that
much difference. Paul Ward would be a fine person to talk to.
I really think you should try to find Paul. He originally worked
for George Miller, and then he came down and worked for Pat in the
legislative office. And he s working for something in the county,
or the city, in the health and welfare field in and around
26
Davis: San Francisco. I ve seen him in the car in S.F. a couple of times.
Well, I could give you another name I don t know how many names you
want Pat Sikes, Patricia [G.] Sikes works for PG&E. She s Bob Gros s
research secretary. And she was a research and a political speech-
writer for Pat. She went through most campaigns. So, she s in
San Francisco. You can find her. She will know where Paul Ward is.
She also worked for the Knight administration under the controller.
A s peechwriter isn t a major person in the governor s office, but
she might give you some insight. You have your list now; I can t
think of anything else.
II
27
III VIEWING THE GOVERNOR ON ISSUES AND EVENTS
[Interview II: April 24, 1977]##
Utilizing the Agency Concept
Davis: I think I should give my impression of Pat as a governor, and how
I ve thought about it. As I may have mentioned before, he was a
very hard working governor. He worked. He worked twelve hours at
least a day, and sometimes more than that. He kept in touch with
everything that was going on. He had a staff and a cabinet, and he
certainly delegated authority to them, but when it came to the
ultimate policy determination (based on recommendations and informa
tion they would give him) he set the policy. The policy was always
Pat s. He was the governor of California: he assumed all of the
responsibilities and all the obligations. And I think I m trying
to point out that it was not a governorship by committee. So many
governorships became a committee of men who would really run the
government with a governor that s a titular head or front man. What
I m trying to say is that Pat was not that. He was a working governor.
He worked very hard on it.
He was the first to utilize that agency concept. There were
three agency heads under him by statute. And they utilized two
other people the agency was never a legal agency but they utilized
two other people for what would have been like two other agencies.
Fry: And those three agencies were
Davis: Well, ray recollection is that there was the correctional agency, a
top agency which [Richard A.] McGee held. And that brought together
corrections and the youth authority, which had been separate and
distinct before. Heman [G. ] Stark used to head the youth authority
when Dick McGee headed corrections. And then Dick McGee went up to
the agency head, and that brought the youth authority in under one
blanket. Much, I might add, to the distress of Heman Stark, who
always felt that the youth authority should never be connected with
adult correction.
28
Davis: And then Walter Dunbar became the first department director after
McGee headed the agency. And Walter Dunbar is now deceased. He
had gone to New York actually, I think he was warden at Attica
Prison. (He left when the Reagan administration came in.) Fine man,
ran a good department. So there was the corrections.
And then there was the Health and Welfare agency. And I can t
go back and tell you how many departments were under these, because
Fry: We have that.
Davis: It would be a matter of record. I have, in my recollection, that
Sam [J.] Leask, Jr. was the first agency head of health and welfare.
And then in trying to think of the other I kind of think it
was resources I think agriculture came under resources. And I can t
remember whether Bill Warne was the first agency administrator or
not. He certainly was at one time, and later Hugo Fisher took it
over. Those were the three that were created by statute. And then
they piled together the professional and vocational standards, and
some business things, and made a business administrator. And I think
our real estate administrator, Milt
Fry: Of the commissions?
Davis: Yes. But that was for a reporting function. In other words, that
was a reporting thing, and this was the agency level, and then things
sifted down from agencies to directors. But, it was the first time,
as I recall, that it had been used.
The agencies created by statute were given their authority by
law. The others such as the Revenue and Management Agency, with the
Director of Finance as the "Administrator;" the Business and
Commerce Agency, with the Commissioner of Real Estate as the
"Administrator;" and the Employment Relations Agency, with the
Director of Employment as the "Administrator;" the Public Safety
Agency, with the Commissioner of the California Highway Patrol as
the "Administrator" functioned in much the same manner as those
created by the legislature, but they had no legal authority as
agencies. The administrators of these groupings of departments were
members of the governor s cabinet and as such reported to the
governor for the departments under them. This simplified the
reporting function for the governor. The cabinet was small and easy
to work with. All the department directors were members of the
governor s council but this was a much larger group.
The agency structure was an issue in the 1966 campaign. Reagan
made many statements and stories about the wastefulness of the
Brown administration with five super agencies with superstructures,
etc., etc. It was one of the first campaign things he reversed
29
Davis: himself on, because then, while the Brown administration only had
three, he went on and I think he had seven.
But it was a campaign issue in that it was a criticism of the
Brown administration for superstructure government and wasting. It
still is a fact of life, now, you have your agencies. Well, that s
Pat Brown as a governor.
Fry: May I ask you a question about Pat? Did he have regularly scheduled
meetings with the heads of the agencies?
Davis: To the best of my recollection he met with them on a weekly basis.
Fry: With his kitchen cabinet included?
Davis: Yes. He had regular meetings.
Now, as a person I guess I think of Pat as one of the kindest,
most compassionate men that I know. There are not too many of them
around, really, and not all that many of them when they get into
politics, it would seem to me. He genuinely likes people. It s not
a put-on. He enjoys people. He likes to talk to them, he likes to
listen to them. Maybe one of the offshoots of this is that he was
too accessible to people. Maybe that made his day too long, and made
him too busy.
He has a great feeling of empathy for the public, for their
problems, and for the people who were old and poor, and mentally
sick. And this, of course, reflected itself in his administration.
The state mental health program made tremendous strides during the
Brown administration. It really came out of the snake pit category
into one of the finest mental health programs and state hospitals
anywhere in the United States. I bring this out because under Reagan
it had sunk to almost one of the very lowest because the mental
hospitals started to get closed. But, it was in the Brown years that
the mental health program took on the importance that it did.
Dr. Daniel Blaine was , I think, our first director of mental
hygiene. I think a tremendous amount of these advancements were his
ideas. They were innovative. He left us somewhere along the line,
and we had other men who came in of lesser stature. Dr. Daniel Blaine
might not have been the most communicative man in the world he was
an M.D. but he had strong feelings on what the mental health program
should be. He was responsible, I would guess, for a great deal of
the progress plus the fact he had a willing and friendly ear to the
problem.
I bring up the mental health program, I guess, because I feel
it has degenerated so after having been such a marvelous program. I was
30
Davis: conscious of it during ray Personnel Board years because they were
closing down hospitals and getting rid of psych tech personnel. But
the mental health program had come out of the snake pit and into one
of the best regulated systems, under the Brown administration. And I
think that deserves as big an accolade as the water program, in
trying to remember what we should give Pat Brown credit for.
Fry: What about the personnel in the mental hospitals under the Brown
administration? Was there any effort to get more psychiatric
personnel for patients?
Davis: I don t think I am qualified
Fry: That was before you were on the personnel board, so
Davis: That would have been when I was in the governor s office, but I don t
think I m qualified to speak on the mental health program. Paul Ward
probably would, if you wanted to get that particular information.
Paul Ward could give you a lot on that. I m trying to think who
might have before him. But I think of Paul he came a little later
but he still would have known a lot about it. And he would have
maybe been well aware of it because Paul was an aide to
Senator George Miller, Jr. He has a long background in the legisla
ture, Paul Ward does.
But, I bring this up because I think Pat s feeling, and his
compassion for people, set a tone with an administration. It was
a nice, open administration. It was friendly. There was no fear
involved in it. There were no bulletproof glass windows. There was
a minimum amount of security; security just had to do with keeping
burglars out of the mansion and having a highway patrolman drive
his car. And that s all the security that they had. There was no
personal security. There were no bodyguards, no locked offices
no screening, none of that kind of thing.
Reacting to the Free Speech Movement
Davis: Of course, we do have to remember that this was maybe a fairly
peaceful era. That just towards the end, actually while he s running
for re-election, that you have the Watts riots. And you have the
rebellion in the University of California Mario Savio with his Free
Speech Movement. And Pat talked with Mario Savio on the phone, many
times. He enjoyed talking to him.
Fry: Afterwards, or before the seizure of Sproul Hall on the Berkeley campus?
31
Davis :
Fry:
Davis :
Fry:
Davis :
No, during. He d call him and talk to him, to get Savio s opinion.
He always asked everybody s opinion. He wants to have something to
say, "I m willing to listen." Which is a fine thing.
Why then did he call in the troops during the Free Speech Movement?
I can t answer that question. I don t know that he did. Maybe it
was on the recommendation of somebody else to call them in.
That s a question we have to ask of everybody.
It was probably for security reasons.
I m not qualified to speak on that.
I really can t tell you why.
Fry:
Well, I think we ve covered that, I think we ve covered his
openness and no fear of people no phobias or anything like that.
He relaxed, really, very little. Part of his relaxation was swimming
in his pool. He swam in it every day. On weekends his family and
his grandchildren were always in Sacramento. While they were there
he worked. He had that inevitable briefcase, that inevitable table.
Adrienne Sausset would be over taking dictation and anybody that
came in got several tasks that they were assigned to do. And a stream
of people would come in to see him on weekends. But, he would be
relaxing, and with his children and grandchildren, but always working.
I mean, it was kind of a seven-day week.
The old mansion was a happy place under the Browns, it really
was. Jerry mentions, "It wasn t such a bad place." It was a happy
house. Inconvenient, maybe, but not all that bad. It had a lot of
California nostalgia about it. Pat and Bernice had a series of
parties that went on there. That might be one of the things you
might want to ask Mrs. Brown about. They had a regular program of
entertaining people in the mansion. And it was not a Democratic
political affair. It was non-partisan. In other words, when they
had the legislative parties, they had all of the legislators. In
groups, you know, like the senate was fairly small they could handle
that. But the assembly would be broken up into two or three dinners.
They brought their wives it was a homey, friendly, party, in very
limited space. [laughs] But you utilized all the rooms, and had
dinner parties. In summer they had parties out by the pool. And in
almost all instances, they were non-partisan. There were some
partisan gatherings, of course, but the governor s mansion was open
to everyone.
And he used this as another way of communication by keeping his
administration open and free?
Davis: And so it was delightful. It was a fine, old building that was a
32
Davis: very happy place for eight years with the children and the grand
children, and Christinas. And it was their home. They had no other
home. They lived in it, so it wasn t used as just some place where
they would come and go occasionally.
Fry: As an official entertainment place.
Davis: That s right. They had their daughter, Cynthia Kelly, take over
their home in San Francisco when they went on to Sacramento and it s
her home today. So, while they were in Sacramento, that was the only
home they had.
Fry: Was this entertainment ever a financial burden on them? I think
sometimes the Warren family had to kind of be careful because there
were limitations, I think
Davis: Expenses were paid for out of mansion funds, and my sister is an
incredibly good manager. I won t say it was a burden, I would say
it was limited. Maybe the legislature got a little more generous
after the Warren administration, I don t know.
Fry: You d think, too, the legislature itself would find some self-interest
involved in getting access to the mansion.
Davis: They were very accessible and generous to Mrs. Brown in any of her
requests.
During the Brown period, the legislature held a contest, and then
selected the winner, and then they had a model made but the thing fell
through. I guess every governor was trying to leave the next governor
a mansion, and I guess Reagan was the only one that managed to do it.
It was a hard thing to get legislators and governors and everybody
to do it. It s just too bad the old mansion wasn t a more suitable
location and building. It could have been kept as the governor s
residence. I don t know what they re going to do with the new one.
Fry: How would you respond to the charges that Pat Brown was vacillating
a lot, that he would always change his mind?
Davis: I will give you my personal opinion. I feel it s a very unjust
accusation. And I think it stems from this marvellous habit of his,
whereby he solicited everybody s advice. Even that is not a proper
word. I m not sure he solicited their advice, but the question
would be, "What do you think of so-and-so?" "Why do you think that?"
On practically every question. Pat Brown has done that for as long
as I ve known him. It was not something that he acquired in the
governor s office. It s part and parcel of his whole personality
and his make-up. And we ve always been sort of slightly amused,
because we always said, "Pat s taking his personal poll again."
33
Davis: In many instances, he had already made up his mind; but he was
checking to see if others agreed. He had a wonderful way of when
you gave him your opinion he had a wonderful way, without saying,
"That s what I m going to do," of leaving you with the impression
that your opinion had been the best one he d ever heard, and that was
exactly what he was going to do. And, of course, if he didn t follow
your advice, then you said, "That s what he was going to do yesterday.
Why is he doing something different today?"
Now, that s my personal opinion on the subject that he vacillated,
because he wanted to explore all possibilities, all avenues. Perhaps
this gave him the appearance on not being able to make up his mind.
I think Pat always knew what he wanted to do. And I think he always
did what he wanted to do in the end. But he always felt that someday
someone would say something that he hadn t thought of, that would be
terribly important. And, as I said, he always left you thinking
you d given him just the right answer, and that was what he was going
to use. He never said that. But the fact that you had the warmth
of his attention and you had a chance to express yourself made you
think, "Well, he s going to do just what I say." And then when he
didn t, why, then you said he vacillated. That is my impression,
because I never found him indecisive or vacillating. I always figured
he knew just exactly what he was going to do and where he was going,
and how he was going to do it.
I really think his whole life shows that s what he did. As he
started out, he went through law school, night law school because he
didn t go to college. He worked in order to be able to go to night
law school paid his own way. He went into private practice and was
successful. He ran for district attorney and made it after one defeat.
And then went on to attorney general. He ran for that once, and lost,
and ran a second time and made it. And he made governor first time.
This is anything but indecision. This is not indecision. You can t
be a person who vacillates and follow that program.
So, I ve just given you what I think. Because I ve heard it,
the "tower of jelly" bit I don t know who coined that phrase, but
it stuck. Another thing, I think, was that Pat was easy to caricature
for the comedians and caricaturists. He was an easy target for them
to caricature. I think they took a great deal of pleasure in
caricaturing him. You know, it s fun a good laugh, a good joke.
He has his own private collection of the cartoons that have character
ized him and poked fun at him, on a whole wall in their home down
south. He just thinks they re absolutely tremendous. He loves them,
he appreciates them. He gets as big a laugh as anybody out of them.
They didn t hurt his feelings. But he was an easy person to
characterize.
And then I will go back to the statement that I made before: the
publishers of the newspapers were Republicans, and this was the first
34
Davis: Democratic administration in twenty years, and they were not about
to be kind to it. The working press really liked Pat, however. I
think one of the last interviews in the mansion, on Christinas Day
evening, after there had been all the people there, the photographers
came to take the pictures of all the family, and everything, the usual
crew, a crew of two, and as they left, the reporter handed me a
package and said, "This is a Christmas present for the governor. Don t
give it to him until after we ve gone." As I went in and gave it to
Pat, I said, "Well, this will make history. For the first time a
reporter is giving a present to the person he s come to interview.
This is not likely." It was just a small gift a Christmas type gift.
Fry: Was that Dick Rodda who gave Pat the present?
Davis: No. This was just a photographer whose name I don t recall. It
was probably the television station that had come to take pictures
and do that thing. I don t remember who it was. Pat was a warm
hearted person, and the press liked him, although they poked fun at
him, too. If there was some way they could get a laugh, they would
get a laugh.
But the newspaper publishers were more serious about it. They
didn t wish to present Pat in too favorable a light because, after
all, they were Republican at heart, and they really didn t believe
in a lot of the things that the Brown administration was doing. The
S.F. Chronicle was against the water program. For them to now talk
about it is almost hypocritical they were against it then. I don t
know how the Chronicle stood on some of the mental health programs.
As I say, the best and most accurate reporting came in the Bee.
And they didn t pull their punches when they wanted to talk about it.
They just were a little more accurate.
Fry: Did you say all you wanted to say about that last press conference
story? Was it particularly touching or impressive?
Davis: It really wasn t a press conference. It was really all of the family
gathered there, and they came to take the last pictures. They used
to always come and take a picture of Pat putting the turkey in the
oven, [laughs] And there were always lots of children. Cynthia had
five children, and Barbara had two. And there were Christmas trees
in every room and the lights were all on in the mansion, and the
outdoor Christmas trees were going. It was just a very friendly
Christmas spirit. So, that s good for a news story. This just
happened to be the last Christmas in the mansion and Pat would be
leaving in a very few days. I just thought it was kind of touching
that that newsman was sorry to see him go.
Art Hoppe wrote a column when Pat was defeated, that I think
really touched on Pat s defeat. Somebody once sent me a copy of
35
Davis: Art Hoppe s article. I just thought I might have it. [looking through
scrapbook]
Fry: Anyway, Hoppe published this after Pat s setback, right?
Davis: It was when he was defeated by Reagan. Here it is. I only have the
one, and it s called "A Farewell to Governor Brown," dated 11/10/66.
It was the morning after the election.
Fry: In the San Francisco Chronicle.
Davis: Yes. He goes on to say well, let me just read the first part and
get an idea. "It s the morning after the election, a crisp fall
morning, bright with promise and I m sad. I am not sad because
Ronald Reagan won. I don t know what kind of a governor he will make.
I don t think anybody else knows either. Nor am I at all sure that
it much matters, so ponderous has our bureaucracy become. But I
doubt the ability of any one governor to alter its course drastically
either for good or evil. No, I m not sad because Ronald Reagan won.
I am sad because Governor Brown lost." And then he says "It s a
personal thing." And he goes on to tell you, and it s really a very
good article on Pat. This is the last paragraph: "What saddens me
as I watched the mindless digits rotate electronically, was the
feeling that we shall not see his likes in American politics anymore.
In these days of vast electorates, television images, and computer
ized positions, maybe there isn t time for a candidate to be
genuinely interested in people. THE PEOPLE, yes; people, no. And
maybe this is a good thing. Maybe our society has grown so complex
that leaders oriented to THE PEOPLE and to computers can better
insure our welfare, and maybe even our happiness. So I don t fear
the future, but I shall genuinely miss the past." It s a good
article. It goes on: "At one point Pat stopped to talk with a fresh
faced boy with the prize cow, firing questions and compliments.
Genuinely warm, genuinely curious. The light was bad and the angle
was wrong for the television cameras that had been following him
around. And then they tried to gently move him on, but the governor
waved them off, more interested in the boy at the moment than in the
state-wide television." Try to get this article. It s dated 11/10/66.
It was the farewell to Governor Brown, and in Arthur Hoppe s column.
This happens to be a bad copy, but it is the only one I have.
Of course Governor Brown has a book. He has it because I put
it together, three volumes, I think, of the letters that came to him
when he was defeated. There are three or four books of them and
they re this size [indicating size with hands], and they re not in
plastic covers. They are just page after page of people who wrote
him letters. They really are a good indication of what people thought
of him. There were more who didn t feel that way than did or he would
have been re-elected, but a third term is something else again. As I
said, the run down hill starts the moment that you are in office.
##
36
Davis: Maybe the judicial appointments would be the ones with the most
lasting effects, because people sit on the bench for a good long time.
The California bench went from an old bench to a young bench during
the Brown years. Now those young men appointed by Pat are getting
a little old. So the bench is getting older again, I think.
Fry: What about the appointments to the Board of Regents. What sort of
criterion do you think was used?
Davis: Oh, I don t know what sort of criterion was used, but let me say that
appointments to the Board of Regents were the pearl, the diamond,
the star of all your appointments. That was the finest appointment
a governor could give to anybody. It almost always went as a reward
to people who had been your political supporters and your financial
supporters, I guess, really when you look as to who was on it, and
what their backgrounds were. When Pat put Fred Dutton and Bill Coblentz
on the board, would have been maybe the first time that somebody
had not put someone on for financial reasons. I can t say that it
was a first time, but Dutton and Coblentz certainly didn t come in
under that criterion. Fred Dutton had been his executive secretary,
and Bill Coblentz had worked for him. Both of them were lawyers and
both of them were graduates of the University of California. And I
think Pat felt that they would be capable, and competent, and they d
do the university some good. And the regents needed somebody like
that. Not in any way to downgrade his appointment of Elinor [R. ]Heller,
who was and maybe still is, "Mrs. Democrat." The Hellers were the
benefactors of the Democratic party for years, all their lives. And
Bill Roth was another wealthy regent appointee. The Hellers were
wealthy people and Bill Roth was a wealthy man. And Roth, too, had
been a benefactor to the Democratic party. And that s generally
the caliber of Pat s appointments to the Board of Regents. Maybe
there was some slight change in things with the appointment of
Fred Dutton and Bill Coblentz.
Fry: He saw them primarily contributing to the university through their
own personal competency and their
Davis: Personal competency, I think, yes.
Fry: Their political knowledge of simply knowing how things are accomplished
in the legislature.
Davis: Yes, Pat thought they were very good regents.
Fry: And they were, too.
Davis: And they still are, I guess. Norton Simon was another important
regent appointment. I can t remember just in what sequence they
37
Davis:
Fry:
Davis :
Fry:
Davis :
Fry:
Davis :
Fry:
Davis :
were appointed, but I kind of think it was Ellie Heller, Bill Roth,
and Norton Simon. And then maybe Fred Dutton, and then Bill Coblentz.
As I say, I can t remember them all. Then there was a reappointment
of a man who had been on it before Edward [W. ] Carter.
I was also interested to pick up on something you said awhile ago on
how thick was Pat Brown s skin. He seems to be a kind of an open
vulnerable person, yet you know that politicians can t survive if
their skin isn t thick enough to be hurt by every criticism that came
their way. And I thought it would be good to know which criticism
seemed to get to Pat in ways that really did make him sad.
I would guess he didn t like being made fun of.
The "tower of jelly" sort of thing?
Yes. Actually, though, I d have to say I think it hurt my sister more
than it hurt him. I think maybe he had geared himself to Harry Truman s
statement, "If you can t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
Pat was a politician; I m not in any way trying to say he wasn t, but
he was a political creature, and I think he knew that criticism came
part and parcel with the job, and he probably shrugged a lot of it
off. I think he certainly could be hurt, but he never expressed it.
Maybe he felt a little sad. He d say, "Now, he shouldn t have said
that about me," or something.. That would be his approach to it. A
lot of the criticisms would hurt Bernice because a tremendous amount
of the criticisms leveled against Pat Brown simply were not accurate,
not true. He didn t deserve that. There was maliciousness in the
criticisms that were leveled against him. And they were Republican
criticisms. Republicans (a large group of them) think all Democrats
have half a head, six arms and five legs, and not a whit of brains or
manners or anything in them.
Are you talking about the more conservative ones?
believer partisan types?
Or the more true
I don t really know. They were more snobby maybe, whether they were
partisan or anything else. And they were unkind, and their remarks
were personal, unkind, and not deserved. As I say, maybe some of
those remarks might have hurt Mrs. Brown more than they did Pat. Or,
if they did he didn t show it. Your question is, "Did he have a
thick skin?" No, he didn t have a thick skin, but he was a realist.
Did he ever get angry?
his critics!
Harry Truman had a good way of dealing with
I guess there isn t a person alive that doesn t get angry. Yes, he d
get angry. Of course he got angry. And he was not timid about
phoning a very important person in the newspaper field, and literally
38
Davis: chewing him out. It would never make the papers, but he d do it. He
was not timid. Yes, very angry. He got angry, incensed at some of
the misrepresentation, and he would call.
Fry: Can you give an example?
Davis: No, I don t think I should, even if I could think of one.
Fry: Then I could ask Pat if he could remember. All of these things give
you a picture of the governor
Davis : He was frequently angry with the San Francisco Chronicle. I think
the Chronicle was a pain in the neck through lots of Pat s programs.
And so I think he probably frequently got mad at them. I wouldn t
say he didn t get angry, he did get angry. He is not a profane man.
"Golly gee," is about as strong a word he d come out with.
Fry: How important was his conversion, or sort of reconversion or whatever
it was, to the Catholic church in 1929?
Davis: I wouldn t have any idea.
Fry: Do you know if that was
Davis: No. As far as I m concerned he s always been a Catholic.
Fry: He has mentioned that as something
Davis: His mother was not Catholic, and his father was. And I would guess
in any situation of that sort there would be a certain ambivalence
between the children. You call it a reconversion; I don t know if
he ever left the Catholic church. Maybe he didn t go to Sunday school
too often, I don t know. But as far as I m concerned, he has always
been a Catholic and a good, mild, moderate one. A mild, moderate
Catholic, but a Catholic, a good Catholic.
The Caryl Chessman Episode
Fry: There are three major statewide apocalypses that happened during Pat s
tenure, and I wondered what difference this made in the office. One
of them is the Chessman case. Someone told me that the Chessman case
just almost took over the whole governor s office while it was going
on. It was just such a big thing.
39
Davis: Well, the public, you know, wrote and phoned like mad with letters,
and mail, and the telephone calls. All of us worked day and night
taking telephone calls. Everybody was pressed into service. And
everybody was pressed into service in the mailroom, just to get the
mail cataloged and filed. We used to feel every piece of mail had
to be accounted for.
The mail was ninety-nine one hundredths percent sheer hate mail.
Telephone calls came from all over the world. Some of them weren t
even speaking English. Some were speaking English with such an
accent that you wouldn t be able to understand them. And it was all
hate.
It was a terrifying thing for me to see. I couldn t have cared
less, personally, whether we did or didn t have capital punishment.
It had never affected me directly or any members of my family directly,
so I simply hadn t ever thought about it. But after going through
this deluge of mail and telephone calls, and being exposed to it, I
certainly was against capital punishment, only because I didn t wish
to be on the side of the people who had been writing in and calling
Pat s office. Now that s a personal reaction to it.
Fry: You didn t want to join that kind of person.
Davis: I certainly did not. It was a frightening thing. I thought the hate
and the vitriolic outbursts were a bad thing to witness. But anything
that you really want to find out about the Chessman case, you should
ask Cecil [F. ] Poole. Cecil Poole was Pat s clemency secretary at
that time, and he certainly lived and breathed the Chessman case. So,
he s your source on Chessman.
I think the Chessman case opened a tide of hate against Pat.
There are some people who seem to like to hate. It seems to be
necessary to them. Of course, we did survive that episode, and he
ran and defeated Mr. Nixon after the Chessman case. It didn t deal
him a mortal blow, although he certainly alienated a lot of people,
the people who said "I can t believe anything you do or say." And I
S guess on capital punishment people feel very strongly. You don t see
this thing firing up too many people who, like myself, didn t care
one way or the other.
Fry: What countries do you remember receiving phone calls from?
Davis: I remember some people from South American countries phoning in, that
I personally took the calls on. I can t remember where some of the
others there were European countries, too, that came in. And there
were letters from all over the world. Somewhere along the lines if
you want to know really how many pounds of letters Pat received I
think the newspapers came up and took a count.
40
Fry: What impact did the Watts riots have on your of f ice? Was there any
talk about filling appointments of black people?
Davis: Not anything that would have sprung from the Watts riot. That was
something that we d been trying to do all along. So the Watts riot
did not suddenly say, "Make black appointments." I don t think that
we gave the black people anywhere near the number of appointments they
wanted. Neither did we feel it should be on a proportional basis
or on a quota basis. Pat simply didn t make appointments that way.
As I say, he tried to tell the people, "Good government is good
politics, and if you re qualified, fine, but I won t appoint an un
qualified person as long as I have qualified people, and I won t
appoint the least qualified when I have more qualified." And so I
would say that we nowhere near met the kind of quota the black people
would have liked. And nowhere near the kind of quota that the
Mexican-Americans would have liked. Now, those are your two active
groups that seek recognition. Now, of course, we have the women
seeking recognition, so that adds a third group.
Fry: Let s see. As I remember CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] was in
those days maybe one of the most active in pressing for higher
appointments
Davis: They didn t get anywhere near what they wanted. They certainly got
some, but they certainly did not get anywhere near what they wanted.
And it was not a case of not giving to them. It was simply a case
where other people came in with more qualifications.
Fry: Was it your impression that CORE was
Davis: I really didn t work with
Fry: Equal with the NAACP and its work in that respect?
Davis: I really don t have any feeling on that. I mean, I don t have any
impression. I can t remember anything that would make me think one
more than the other.
Fry: I was kind of interested in what the view was from inside the
governor s office of which of the minority groups were the more
effective organizations?
Davis: From the standpoint of appointments?
Fry: Well, yes, or anything really. Since you were in appointments it
would have been manifested there.
Davis: You know, the pressure at that time was really not as great as the
pressure is now.
Fry: No, it wouldn t have been anywhere near that. It was just beginning.
Davis: The role of women was just starting. I was the first woman member
of the state Personnel Board. And that was a very difficult appoint
ment for Pat to make. Because not only was it the first woman
appointment made they did not want a woman on that board but I was
also a relative, so it became a it was a very hard one for him to
make.
Fry: It must have been a hard one for you to function in, in some respects,
too, after you got the appointment.
Davis: No, no. No problem. No problem at all. You just have to make the
first grade. You just have to let them realize that it doesn t have
to be a male bastion. And then, of course, Reagan appointed
Nita Ashcraft (Nita Wentner was her name at that time) after my
appointment. In other words, from having had no women on the board,
now you had two. I was Pat s last appointment and Nita was Reagan s
first appointment. And Jerry Brown has replaced both of us with
women.
Fry: Did you have any women s groups coming for your support for the
appointment?
Davis: No. I think mostly they were against me on the basis that I was a
relative, and they considered it nepotism.
Fry: If it happened today, you would have had NOW [National Organization
of Women] behind you, and a lot of these other groups.
Davis: The basis of my strength was really the legislature. They really
were the ones that went to bat for me, and made it possible for Pat
to appoint me.
Fry: Who was it in the legislature? Or just
Davis: All my friends mostly in the senate, I guess. You see, it needed
senate confirmation, and the senators came down to express themselves
that they were willing to consent to my appointment. That, of course,
helped a little bit. I think Pat wanted to give it to me, but he was
simply afraid of the nepotism charge.
Fry: Was this after the election?
Davis: No, before, two years before. It was 1965. I went on the board in
1965.
Fry: He was not lame duck yet.
42
Davis: No, I went on in 1965. I left Pat s office in June 65.
Fry: To follow this line of questioning a little bit; our office is
interviewing a series of women in politics and public office. On the
personnel board did you get a serious hearing from the members of the
board who were male?
Davis: I had no problems from the board members, the staff, or anybody else.
And I don t think it mostly is a problem as long as you re not a
financial threat to men. [laughs] I think a financial threat is
much more important to them than any other kind of a threat.
Fry: If you re about to take their jobs?
Davis: Yes. I think that s the most difficult thing for women to get.
State government has always paid wages for like work, in the state
government. The pay is set by the job, and whoever occupies a job
gets that salary, so there isn t any question. And probably in the
personnel field as much as anywhere, and then in the welfare field,
women got to the top positions because they were there, and they
were qualified, and the positions were open to them. And in the state
hospitals women qualified because they were nurses. And then there
was a smattering of them in other places.
All they had to do was pass the examination, and that had no
code on it as to what you were. And then in the oral board hearings-*-
the only place where they could possibly be marked down for being
women it was a state policy not to in any way discriminate against
women. Discrimination had set in a little bit because people were
reluctant to hire women. Certainly the percentage of qualified
women in top jobs was not as great as it probably should have been.
But now the effort is being made to hire women. But I have to say
state government never really discriminated against women except
when women really weren t trained to go into the high positions. We d
all gone to college and taken shorthand and typing, and ended up being
the best senior clerk, and the best private secretary that anybody had.
We did have women lawyers. They did work as lawyers in state govern
ment, both in the attorney general s office, and in the corporations,
and insurance. There were a lot of top flight women in those positions,
But now that women are branching out into other fields , and we
have tried to open up other things than the clerical the way to open
up state government was to give women ways to get out of the clerical
classes and to go into management. We gave ways for women that were
in clerical jobs to get out and move up. We gave some recognition to
the kind of service they performed, as administrative aides and other
things. With Nita and myself on the board, we tried very hard to open
up the field for women.
43
The Watts Riots
Fry: This is interesting. Well, we can get back to the Watts riot. In the
office, again, was that another disruptive thing, like the Chessman
case had been?
Davis: From the standpoint of mail or phone calls, no. Pat was on a trip
at that point and came back. He ended his trip to come back because
of the Watts riot. I think the Watts riots were used against him in
the Reagan campaign that was going on. It was said, "Our streets
aren t safe for our women to walk in. Our governor isn t taking care
of things. We ve got a riot in Watts." Well, that does make good
newspaper conversation, but certainly it didn t improve over the next
few years. And now we all know racial problems are still one of the
greatest problems we have. What are we going to do with it?
But the Watts riot was the first, and yes, it did hurt him. It
hurt him in his re-election I would think, to have had the Watts riot
at that point. It was used against him as though he should have been
able to correct it, or never have let it happen. Neither of which
did he have any control over. In the rush and rhetoric people don t
always realize that some things aren t controllable.
Fry: Do you remember any efforts being made to set up ad hoc commissions
and things like that for such things as the black problem and the
ghetto? Would this have come under your purview?
Davis: No, it wouldn t have. But I don t remember it anyway. I don t
recollect any. And you will remember that I was not in the office
after June of 65. I was not there in "65 or 66.
Fry: The third thing that I wanted to ask you about was the impact of the
free speech sit-in of Sproul Hall on the governor s office. Did that
also ring the alarm bell, or was that a fairly isolated incident?
Davis: I don t recollect it as being any disturbing influence in the office.
I do remember its influence. Pat would be making a lot of telephone
calls. There were a lot of telephone calls going back and forth at
this point.
Fry: Were you living in the mansion?
Davis: No. I lived in an apartment in Sacramento. I was a frequent dinner
guest there, [laughs]
Fry: The other things that I have jotted down here, was anything that you
might be able to tell us about appointment to middle-level commissions
like the fish and game commission, the state park board. They became
advisory, if they weren t already advisory.
44
Davis: The fish and game commission was like the athletic commission, it was
a sought-after one. I guess men who think they re sportsmen, who are
sportsmen, think that s a great one to be on. It was a very sought-
after commission. And so there again we always had far more applica
tions than you could even begin to answer. Other than that I don t
^~, have anything earthshaking to say about it. What did you say after
the fish and game?
Fry: The park board.
Davis: You know, this was a little before we were all environmentalists, so
I can t tell you anything spectacular during my time that we were
aware of. I mean, we tried to put people on who would do a good job.
Fry: It was not a hot seat?
Davis: It was not a hot seat at that time, no.
Fry: The Public Utilities Commission which as you know, under Pat Brown s
successor, I think, became fairly heavily weighted with people who
were big sellers of power rather than consumers of power. So, I wonder
what appointments you made to that commission.
Davis: It was an important appointment. Pat would have made that by himself.
Anything I would have done on that would have been only record keeping.
That s under the category of the appointments he made himself, like
the regents.
Fry: I have down here on my notes the constitutional revision commission.
Did you help set that up and get the appointments on that?
Davis: I m trying to remember whether that came over from the Knight
administration. I don t recall. But I remember Pat approved the
appointment of Bruce Sumner.* Joe Babich was on that, too. I think
maybe Leonard [J. ] Dieden went on it for awhile. We only had a couple
of positions to put on it, to fill vacancies. And, as I recall, Pat
knew who he wanted on it . He put lawyers on it that he felt were
competent to weed these things out of the state constitution. That
commission lasted for a long, long, time. And I think the California
Bar Association had an appointment, didn t they? Wasn t
Richard Dinkelspiel a state bar appointment? They all didn t come
from the governor s office, is what I m saying.
*See interview with Bruce Sumner, "California State Assemblyman and Chainna
of the Constitution Revision Commission, 1964-1970," Legislative Leaders,
Volume II, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University o
California, Berkeley, 1981. The interview contains further detail on
commission composition and functions.
45
Davis: The composition of that constitutional revision commission would come
from several different places, and I haven t any comment to make on
that. To me it s an odd question for you to ask, because it would
have been about the most unspectacular commission that I could think
of. It was simply a working commission of people who worked like
little beavers to accomplish a task. And it was unspectacular,
unglamorous, and un-every thing. It was simply a working commission.
Fry: But it was a very important one with a lot of ramifications for the
history of the state.
Davis: That s true, but as to the standpoint of a commission and the
appointment of it, I think the effort was to just put competent
people on it that could deal with that kind of work, and would give
the time to it. And they would spend my word they spent years and
years and years at it working!
Fry: And it wasn t an appointment where you d want a balance of political
considerations?
Davis: No. No way. I don t think Pat made more than two appointments to
that. I believe that the original commission must have functioned
and there must have just been a vacancy that occurred and we filled
that vacancy, rather than having any right to make appointments. I
do remember he put Bruce Sumner on it, which is an odd one only in
that Bruce Sumner was a Republican assemblyman. And I m not sure
how he got on that commission. I think maybe Pat appointed him as a
judge, but maybe he went on the commission as a member from the
assembly. You d have to look up how that commission got together.
I really can only remember maybe one or two appointments at the most.
Which leads me to believe that they were vacancies. Somebody went
off and then we had a vacancy to fill rather than that we originally
created the commission and made the first appointments.
Fry: That s what it sounds like, and when we get our chronology built up
on that whole constitutional thing, we ll know more about who to ask
about it.
I think that s everything I can think of to ask you. We certainly
appreciate your giving us your time and undertaking this project.
Transcriber: Jus tan O Donnell
Final Typist: Matthew Schneider
46
TAPE GUIDE May Layne Bonnell Davis
Interview 1: April 22, 1977
tape 1, side A 1
tape 1, side B 8
tape 2, side A 17
Interview 2: April 24, 1977
tape 3, side A 27
tape 3, side B 35
47
INDEX May Layne Bonnell Davis
Ash craft, Nita Wentner, 41, 42
Babich, Joe, 44
Elaine, Daniel (Dr.), 29
Brody , Ralph , 4
Brown, Bernice Layne (Mrs. Edmund G, Brown, Sr.). 22-23, 31, 37
Brown, Edmund G., Jr. (Jerry), 17, 31, 41
Brown, Edmund G. , Sr. (Pat)
accessibility of, 15, 29
agency structure under, 27-29
appointments by, 1-22 passim
to boards and commissions, 43-45
judicial, 36
legal specifications for, 11-12
minority, 40, 41-42
screening of, 6-8, 14
to U.C. Board of Regents, 36-37
Catholicism of, 38
and the Chessman case, 38-39
children, 17, 22-23, 31-34, 41
Free Speech Movement and, 30-31, 43
governor s mansion under, 31-32, 34
mental health program of, 29-30
non-partisanship of, 13, 22
personal security of, 30
policy determination by, 27
and the press, 33-35
solicitation of opinions by, 31, 32-33
work schedule of, 17, 19, 27, 29, 31
Burch, Meredith, 2
California Democratic Council (CDC), 9-1Q, 11
California legislature
and governor s appointments, 3-7, 15-17, 25, 41
California State (appointive)
fair boards, 7, 10, 14
Public Utilities Commission, 13-14, 44
California State (administrative)
Mental Hygiene, Department of, 29-30
Personnel Board, 1, 18, 41-42
capital punishment, 39
Carter, Edward W. , 37
48
Casey, Barbara Brown (Mrs. Charlie Casey, Jr.), 34
Chambers, Frank, 4
Champion, Hale, 4, 5, 14, 24
Chessman, Caryl, 38-39
Christopher, Warren, 24
Clifton, Florence "Susie" (Mrs. Robert), 2, 19
Coblentz, William (Bill), 36, 37
Democratic party, county central committees, 10, 15-16
Dieden, Leonard J., 44
Dinkelspiel, Richard, 44
Dunbar, Walter, 28
Dutton, Fred, 2, 4, 5, 6, 14, 18, 24, 36, 37
Fisher, Hugo, 28
Fresno Bee, 8, 9, 34
Gianelli, Bill, 24
governor s office
appointments, 2-20
government (state) organization
agency structure, 27-29
Knight-Brown transition, 12
Gros, Robert, 26
Heller, Elinor R. (Mrs. Edward H.), 36, 37
Hoppe, Arthur, 34-35
Kelly, Cynthia (Brown), 32, 34
Leask, Sam J. Jr., 28
Lemmon, Maryalice, 12
Los Angeles County, Democratic Central Committee, 15-16
Lynch, Tom, 24
McGee, Richard A., 27-28
Mesple, Frank A., 4, 24
Miller, George, Jr., 16, 25
Nelson, Helen E. , 24
Nixon, Richard M. , 39
non- partisans hip, 13, 32
49
Ostoja, Eve M. , 12
O Sullivan, Virgil, 4
Perluss , Irving, 5
Poole, Cecil F. , 39
Pope, Alexander, 4
Porter, Carley, 4
the press, Republican bias of, 9, 33-35
Rattigan, Joe, 4
Reagan, Ronald
1966 campaign, 43
as governor, 12, 24, 28-29, 32, 35, 41
Rice, Kathleen Brown, 22-23
Richards, Richard, 16, 25
Roth, William Matson, 36, 37
Sacramento Bee, 8, 9, 34
San Francisco Chronicle, 34-35, 38
Sausset, Adrienne, 31
Savio, Mario, 30-31
Shafer, Phyllis J., 12
Sikes, Patricia G. , 26
Simon, Norton, 36-37
Sloss, Nancy, 18
Stark, Heman G. , 27
Sturgeon, Verne L. , 3
Sumner, Bruce, 44, 45
Thomas, Vincent, 12
Tomlinson, Jack, 4
University of California
Board of Regents of, 13, 36-37
demonstrations at, 30-31
Unruh, Jesse, 24-25
Ward, Paul, 4, 25-26, 30
Warne, Bill, 5, 28
water resources, 4-5, 30
Watts riots, 30, 40, 43
women
in state employment, 42
Wyatt, Joe Jr. , 11
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight/Edmund Brown, Sr. Era
Richard Kline
GOVERNOR BROWN S FAITHFUL ADVISOR
An Interview Conducted by
Eleanor Glaser
in 1977
Copyright (T) 1981 by the Regents of the University of California
RICHARD KLINE
on oil rig, circa 1977
>*..
TABLE OF CONTENTS Richard Kline
INTERVIEW HISTORY i
I ON GOVERNOR BROWN S STAFF, 1960-1966 1
II DEMOCRATIC PARTY RELATIONSHIPS 10
III THE 1964 SENATORIAL RACE AND PROPOSITION 14 16
IV ISSUES LEADING TO BROWN S DECLINING POWER 21
V PERSONNEL IN GOVERNOR BROWN S ADMINISTRATION 31
VI THE 1962 GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN 36
TAPE GUIDE 39
INDEX 40
INTERVIEW HISTORY
Richard Kline first came to Governor Pat Brown s attention during the
1960 Democratic convention when as a young, energetic Hearst reporter he
wrote a front-page story disproving the governor s assertion that the California
delegation favored John F. Kennedy over Adlai Stevenson. He was invited to
join the governor s staff in 1960, staying on in a number of capacities until
Governor Brown left office in 1966. Perhaps the role which brought him closest
to the governor was that of travel secretary during the 1962 campaign against
Richard M. Nixon. Two other important assignments were directing Calif ornians
Against Proposition 14 (the fight to preserve fair housing) , and heading the
governor s Los Angeles office from 1964 to 1966, during which time the Watts
riot occurred.
Kline is now the executive director of the Council of Active Independent
Oil and Gas Producers. This interview took place in his sparsely-furnished
Council office in Washington, D.C., in April 1977. Although he had just
returned from a business trip, Kline graciously agreed to make time in his
busy schedule for a short interview. The taping session lasted for over two
hours as he easily recalled events of the previous decade and articulated his
political perspective.
The 1962 and 1966 campaigns were summed up succinctly: "He [Nixon] made
mistakes. The loser always makes mistakes, the winner always does things
perfectly. Now we tried some of the same things against Ronald Reagan and
it didn t work four years later it was a different situation. . . events
caught up with us."
During the interview, Kline took a number of telephone calls from a
staff member who was on the floor of the Senate. He was elated as he explained
that legislation had been passed that benefitted his organization. A newspaper
article that appeared two days later gave details of this legislation: in a
Senate tax cut bill, provision was made for a $30 million tax break for
independent oil and gas producers by exempting them from a minimum tax on
deductions taken on intangible drilling costs if they actually have oil and
gas income (as opposed to those who invest in drilling partnerships for tax
shelter purposes) .
The lightly edited manuscript was reviewed by Richard Kline and returned
with minor corrections made in the text.
Eleanor K. Glaser
Interviewer-Editor
25 June 1980
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
I ON GOVERNOR BROWN S STAFF, 1960-1966
[Interview: April 29, 1977]##
Glaser: Before we talk about other people, I d like you to tell me about
your job with Pat Brown: when you got started with him, what led
up to your working for him, what your own background was.
Kline: Okay. I was a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles for the Examiner ,
which existed at that time, but does no longer. And I got to know
him during the Democratic convention in 1960 when I covered the
California delegation for the Hearst newspapers. Right after the
convention, after Kennedy s nomination, there was a shuffle in the
staff. Fred Button, who was the executive secretary, went to
Washington with the Kennedys. Hale Champion became the executive
secretary and he hired me as his assistant. I was there from the
summer of 1960 all the way through to the end of the administration.
As far as what I did, it s in various parts. I had gpvernmental
roles and political roles. The first governmental role was as
assistant executive secretary, which was the summer of 1960 through
the end of the legislative session in 1961. It was really operating
in an assistant s role. I dealt with the legislature to some extent,
working on various projects. One of the major projects at that time
was it was during what was called the "Eisenhower recession" and a
lot of people were thrown out of work, particularly in the steel
industry I did some investigations for the governor that led to the
passage of legislation to extend unemployment benefits. That kind
of thing.
In the summer of 61, I really became political.
Glaser: Who at that time was executive secretary?
Kline: Hale Champion. He was executive secretary from that time.
Glaser: Was that considered the honeymoon period of Brown s relationship
with the legislature?
##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has
begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 39.
Kline :
Glaser:
Kline:
Glaser:
Kline:
No. Well, it was after the honeymoon period. The honeymoon period
extended from his election in 1958 through the Chessman case. The
two events which brought him down in public esteem were the Chessman
case and the Democratic convention of 1960. At the convention, as
the state s Democratic leader, he was to deliver the delegation to
Kennedy. But it turned out that most of the votes in the California
delegation went to Stevenson; a number of those were really hidden
Johnson votes.
After the convention, Brown was not in good shape, politically.
His power was not all that large when I came to work for him. It
was a very low point in his career. That s why it seemed like he
would have this uphill fight for re-election. The honeymoon period
really ended about the time I came to work for him, which was some
thing of an earthquake because the Democrats had not held office in
Sacramento for a long, long time, not since Governor Culbert Olsen.
They d had their one chance and they seemed to have blown it.
In the summer of 61, I then became the governor s travel
secretary. It was really in preparation for the campaign for re
election that I traveled with him constantly over the next eighteen
months, serving as an on-the-spot adviser, dealing with the press.
The general travel schedule was a political travel schedule.
After he won election against Nixon in 1962, I went over to the
Department of Motor Vehicles, where I was the deputy director in
charge of administration. The reason I went there, generally, out
side of being exhausted from traveling so much, was that there had
been one of the few scandals in state government, which was a civil
service scandal involving the Department of Motor Vehicles. Some of
the investigators were making deals with auto dealers. My job was to
go over and reorganize an element of the department the investigation
was carried on by the district attorneys and the attorney general.
Who was the director?
A fellow by the name of Tom Bright. He was really a civil servant
from the [Goodwin] Knight administration,
staff and he d been promoted to director,
period of time.
Was that 62 to 63?
He used to be on Goodie s
That was just a year s
Nineteen sixty-two to 63. In 64 I left the governor s staff to
head a political campaign, which was the campaign to preserve fair
housing. If you recall, the Rumford Act was passed by the legislature
[to outlaw racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals].
The real estate lobby then got on the ballot Proposition 14 [to
rescind the Rumford Act]. I was director of Calif ornians Against
Kline :
Glaser:
Kline:
Glaser:
Kline:
Glaser:
Kline:
Glaser :
Kline:
Proposition 14. We lost that campaign, which was quite a key part
of his administration the whole fight for civil rights and fair
housing.
Yes, and I d like to hear the details. Finish up your chronology
and then go back to the fair housing fight.
Okay. Then after that election I stayed in Los Angeles and I became
head of the governor s Los Angeles office. Which really, as a job
situation, was not all that critical. It was dealing with Southern
California problems, general things; he would spend half his time
in the south. But the key element there, of course, became the Watts
riot, and I was in charge of the office during the riot during and
before it. I guess that s another major element in this whole thing.
If you can fill us in on that, great.
Right, I was the only one who was in Los Angeles. Clearly the riot
was a major element in everything. I stayed there until the new
administration, when we lost [to Ronald Reagan in 1966].
I m awfully glad I got in touch with you. Let s talk about what
you did as the travel secretary, and then go into key issues.
Travel secretary was really pretty much a political job. It looked
like an enormous fight for re-election [in 1962]. Pat Brown was
about to lose just as he accomplished what were his great accomplish
ments: the master plan for higher education, water plan, et cetera.
And I think, as with any key job, I really was counselor and adviser
to him in terms of particularly when he was running against
Richard Nixon, who looked like you know, the man who had almost
become president [in I960]. Pat Brown was weak and vulnerable,
up against the man who almost became president of the United States.
My role was just counseling and trying to keep him cool, working
with Hale in relaying governmental things to Pat and dealing with
them, and also the political view. Don Bradley was in charge of
the political campaign, and Hale was still executive secretary.
I worked setting his schedule in a political sense and mostly
really acting as an adviser to the governor, and reporting to every
body on his orders, how he felt about things, getting things to him,
and so forth. I guess to describe the job, it was a political job,
when you get right down to it, much like any campaign.
How did you select the places to go to?
you have?
What kinds of criteria did
It gets into the whole campaign operation. Generally our strength
was in the north. Pat Brown was from San Francisco. California
was changing rapidly; it became very clear to us, I guess almost for
Kline: the first time, that Southern California was the battleground. So,
we moved the governor down to Los Angeles, rented a house which we d
call, I guess, the Southern Mansion, in the Hancock Park area of L.A.
Glaser: That is a mansion area.
Kline: It is a mansion area. Nice house there. He spent two-thirds of his
time there, and we just went all over. We spent probably 70 per cent
of our time in Southern California, just going all over. But that
gets into a whole political thing, how you organize a campaign, and
what you do .
Glaser: I d like to hear that.
Kline: The key element, I guess, of what we tried to do our strategy
related to the whole, as you say, Knight-Brown era (and that s a good
description of it). What you re doing is good because that was, I
guess, the high water mark, or the climax of the whole thrust of
government dating from Earl Warren which was that California was a
growing state and the whole purpose of state government was to
provide for that growth. And Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown are
a clear departure from that. We were growth-oriented. The great
concerns were providing for employment, providing enough water for
people the water fight.
As you know, Pat s base, political and philosophical, was in
the north. Not only was he from San Francisco, with that kind of
ambience and background, but he had family up in Colusa County
the Willows area and so forth. He had roots really in the north.
Then he had in that 61 session this battle over water, even though
he was weak I mean he was weak in the political sense because of
Chessman and because of the convention where his ability to use
the leverage of looking like a re-elected governor who is going to
be around some time had evaporated pretty much. But he still had
clout. In the whole water fight with the north he alienated
himself from some of his best supporters over the issue of water,
which I guess was then (I guess it is now, too, I haven t been to
California for awhile) the transcendent issue. Great supporters
like Virgil Sullivan (he was a great state senator) and some of
those rural senators really were key people on issues such as civil
rights and so on. And Pat fought them. He fought his own people on
the issue of water. So when the campaign came around
Glaser: You said civil rights. What did you mean?
Kline: I mean, on issues like civil rights we had gotten some of these rural
senators. This was the pre-reapportioned state legislature, the old
senate. The old system was a good system from the standpoint that
better legislation was accomplished, except for things like water.
We really had a fight, but we won it. Obviously, politically we
thought, let s try to take advantage of it.
Kline: The southerners were not pro-Pat Brown. The south is much more
conservative than the north, more Republican-oriented generally.
And that s where we decided our campaign essentially would be won.
We would concentrate our efforts primarily in the south, simply to
let the people know who Pat Brown was, and talk about these
accomplishments. The other element of the campaign was a major
focus which was to lead to an awful lot in this country: our decision,
when Richard Nixon decided to run, that Pat Brown was going to be
open. It was an open campaign, and the press could walk in at any
time. Obviously our goal was to contrast him with the image of
Richard Nixon, which persisted even in those days, although it
accelerated much as time went on.
As far as where we went, we just went every place, that s all.
No great calculation of where the votes are, where they aren t. The
black community was an entirely different political process than it
is today. Then you would go in and you would speak to the Baptist
Ministers Conference, and that would be a hugely important thing.
We obviously tried to maximize the black vote. But I think the
general thing was that we would go into the suburbs and try and
convince people, moderates, that Pat Brown had been a good governor,
that he had provided for the state s growth, that the state was in
pretty good financial shape. And that was our campaign. Nothing
terribly complex about it just working eighteen hours a day going
every place, making ten speeches a day, trying to train Pat to get
used to this new phenomenon of television so that he could handle
it.
Glaser: Was he good on television?
Kline: Not particularly, but his warmth came through. And that, of course,
in the final analysis was a tremendously important element in this
thing. Pat Brown is a warm human being, and that became important
when Richard Nixon came into the race. We endeavored to show that
contrast.
When you get beyond the issues themselves Nixon didn t have any
issues really. He made mistakes. The loser always makes mistakes,
the winner always does things perfectly. There were some classic
Nixon mistakes. He didn t understand the state. Now, we tried
some of the same things against Ronald Reagan and it didn t work
four years later it was a different situation. It isn t so much
that time caught up with us four years later as much as that events
caught up with us. The nation had changed, perceptions had changed.
This was the pre-Kennedy assassination era, and there was great
hope.
Kline: As far as any tactic that worked in the campaign, I think the key
element of it and the most dramatic from our internal standpoint
(outside of this general thing of positive speeches on his accomplish
ments and then trying to contrast Pat Brown with Richard Nixon as a
human being, which was the thrust of our television advertising) the
key thing would look like the darkest moment in our campaign. It was
when John Kennedy had been planning a trip out to California in
October. We were at the southern mansion one day and we got a call
from the White House saying the president couldn t make it; he was
sick. He d been in Chicago the day before, and he d gotten a cold
and couldn t come out here. He had to cancel the trip.
Glaser: That was the Cuban missile crisis!
Kline: That s right. We were heartsick because, gee whiz, we needed the
president, we really did; John Kennedy was still popular. And then,
of course, when the story unfolded as to why he couldn t come, we
decided to do Put this in sequence. You talk about strategies in
politics; we had one strategy. It was a very simple one, which was
to run like hell, to go very place, not to worry about any convoluted
analysis of the voting mood, just to work like hell, go all over,
make speeches every day, and just run all out. Very simple.
Richard Nixon decided he wanted to peak his campaign. Were you in
California then?
Glaser: No.
Kline: He wanted to peak his campaign he was the ultimate political
practitioner. He had goofed the 1960 race because he hadn t thought
out the niceties of peaking. He had peaked too soon. John Kennedy
caught him in the debates, and then it was downhill, and Kennedy
gained momentum and won. That was why Nixon felt he d lost the 1960
election. And he barely lost. So this time in California he and the
bright people around him a young guy by the name of H.R. Haldeman,
folks like that decided they were going to peak the campaign.
Nixon was going to run relatively low key all the way until the fall
of 1962. He was so well known he didn t have to go all over the
state and make all these idiotic speeches like we did.
Okay. So you come into September. Nixon decided it was public
knowledge, the press reported that he was really going to launch
his campaign in a major way on September 15 and work like hell for
the next seven weeks. What happened? The first thing that happened
is that the Dodgers and the Giants tied for the national league
pennant. And for four crucial days in late September nobody in
California cared a bit about politics. All they cared about was
this great battle between the San Francisco Giants and the Dodgers
for the national league pennant. That kept Nixon off the front
pages.
Glaser: The little things.
Kline: The little things. Then what happened? The Dodgers beat the Giants,
so you had the world series for another seven days. Again time
blocked out Richard Nixon he could not make any news. Then you had
this Cuban missile crisis situation. We decided that national
defense and everything was simply too important for politics. We
were going to stop campaigning, and we did. We moved back to
Sacramento. And for that period of the missile crisis in mid-
October, for about two weeks, we did no campaigning. Pat Brown played
governor. We organized the state civil defense operation. We flew
back to Washington to meet at the Pentagon with [Secretary of
Defense] Robert McNamara and his people. And Nelson Rockefeller came
down from New York the governors were here.
Richard Nixon couldn t very well campaign as a politician during
that period when his opponent was really dealing with important
issues. So, that just destroyed any opportunity Nixon had to really
mount a campaign, and he never did mount a campaign, really. There
was not the normal political warring going on in that election. And
we won, and we won very largely three hundred and some-odd thousand
votes.
Glaser: What did you do when Haldeman did his dirty trick, sending out
postcards from "A Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic
Party in California"?
[Telephone interruption. Machine off]
Glaser: I asked you about Haldeman s trick of the "Preservation Committee".
Kline: On that, of course, let me say this. As of April, I think, the
polls actually showed us eclipsing Nixon, so although everybody
was concerned the candidate as much as anybody we basically had a
gut feeling we were going to win that election.
We played things pretty cool. Also when they launched that
attack, which made Pat himself outraged, the juxtaposition of
pictures of Mao Tse-tung and Pat Brown and all these things Pat was
offended by it, and hurt by it. The rest of us kind of laughed at
it as it seemed so pathetic. But Roger Kent, who was the state
chairman at that time, got mad.
Kline: He was the one who filed that suit which of course we won a few years
ago.* It didn t have any effect on the campaign at all. It was so
ludicrous, it seemed to us. Nixon would say things and try things,
but the momentum was with us at that time; he just couldn t get his
campaign off the ground.
Glaser: What did you do about going into Chicano or the black areas? Was
there any special campaigning?
Kline: You make the effort in every campaign. The Mexican-American areas
are the most difficult in California politics. There is no leader
ship there, very few people vote. There s a huge percentage of
people who aren t American citizens. But you always launch that
against any political campaign. You have your Mexican-American
operation, and it s never worth all that much. This, of course,
was before Cesar Chavez got going, and that s an entirely different
kind of a thing, but even that never has much effect.
The black area was different because it s a very aware community.
We did concentrate a major effort there in getting out the vote.
It was extremely important in all those elections. Always is. The
black voter in Los Angeles, now, has as high a percentage of turnout
as the white voters; it s an alert community. So we spent a lot of
effort there and had Pat do a lot of it. But in those days it was
a matter of dealing more with organizations like the ministers.
You would have to go to the ministers. You d sit down for four
or five hours and they d give you a very intensive grilling. You
can t put anything over on them, they re sharp, they re smart. But
that was the extent of it. It was much easier than today where
the black community is fragmented and there are so many different
leadership groups. There wasn t the activist kind of a thing that
there was later on.
My view is that the Watts riot was a direct result of
Proposition 14, which we can get into later on. Politics you can
spend forty hours on it; it s not all that complicated. At least
*The law suit started as a temporary restraining order and then a
preliminary injunction against mailing postcards from the Committee
for the Preservation of the Democratic Party in California. The
suit was won by the Democratic State Central Committee in
October 1964 and was settled out of court. See Frank Mankiewicz,
Perfectly Clear-Nixon From Whittier to Watergate, (Popular Library,
New York, 1973).
Kline: you do spend an effort in the black community, which we did, and
quite a bit of money to get out the vote and making sure that there
are drivers to get people to the polls, et cetera, et cetera. It
was our vote if the people would come out it always is a Democratic
vote.
10
II DEMOCRATIC PARTY RELATIONSHIPS
Glaser: What did you see of the Clair Engle situation?
Kline: Clair was a great help for us in 62; there was one great service
he performed. All of us were young in those days, [laughs]
particularly me. I was the person closest to the governor, physically.
I was the person he had to listen to because I was sitting next to
him. I was twenty-six years old, or twenty-seven as time moved on.
And Pat is an old-timer, and would he take advice from some punk
kid? And bear in mind the sense of panic running against
Richard Nixon. It was so much tougher than in 58 with Bill Knowland.
The Republicans had messed things up so badly in 58 because of the
Knight-Knowland switch. Pat, an early riser, would call up Clair,
six o clock California time, nine o clock here, and Pat would say,
"These guys suggest this, what do you think?" And Clair would
respond. Clair was a good guy, a good, cool politician. They never
really were close, you know. In 58 they simply both were on the
ticket it happened that way. But, they became relatively close,
I think, on these phone calls.
And Clair would say, "Now Pat, don t worry about Nixon," which
was probably one of the most important things that happened. The
psychology of politics in the television age is the most important
of all. How the candidate feels is how he shows himself on the
screen more than the speeches that are written for him or things he
says. It s a question of his psychology. Our thrust was for Pat to
project himself as he is a very warm man who cares deeply about these
issues, growth issues particularly. Pat is really not all that
ideological. I mean, he and Goodie Knight got along very, very
well. He and Warren were very close friends.
There were a couple of elements, two other people who helped.
One was John Kennedy. We came back here [Washington] one day it
seemed to be the dark time when the campaign was really getting under
way and spent one evening with Kennedy in the White House. He
reassured Pat Brown that this guy Nixon can be beaten. It was that
kind of thing that was important.
11
Kline: Another key ally, supporter, we had was Earl Warren, Jr., who was an
attorney in Sacramento and the eldest son. Warren of course, the
chief justice, could not stand Richard Nixon. And Earl Warren, Jr.,
endorsed Pat Brown; he became head of Republicans for Brown. And
that was very, very important psychologically in the campaign
because Nixon would try to paint Brown as a communist, which
Pat Brown is as far removed from as anybody under the sun. We made a
great effort, as much as we could, to get Republican support, and a
number of Warren Republicans led by Earl junior supported us to
substantiate a moderate image. Earl Warren was still a popular
figure in California, basically.
Glaser: How much support did you have from Kennedy?
Kline: As I say, he never campaigned for us because of the missile crisis.
It was a personal support what other support can anybody give you?
Glaser: Well, I have read in the oral histories of Roger Kent and
Elizabeth Gatov that there was somebody back here who was under
mining Pat Brown with President Kennedy, painting him to be a
booby. This was an image that carried until he was invited to
speak before the Press Club. And for something like forty-five
minutes or an hour or more (I forget the actual figure) he stood
up, gave statistics, and showed in what complete control he was of the
situation in California.
Kline: You re exactly right. That was a key element again, I guess, in
our strategy. Now it all comes back. He was hurt so badly by
Chessman. Bear in mind in the Chessman case he lost everybody. He d
lost those people who were for capital punishment because he reprieved
Chessman, and he lost the people against capital punishment because
his reprieve could not save Chessman.
The 1960 Democratic convention was the booby thing, also. I ll
tell you my role in that. Pat Brown announced to the press, which I
was then a member of, that Kennedy was going to carry the California
delegation. I was a reporter so I decided I would interview every
member of the California delegation, which I did. I broke the story
in the Examiner, a page one story (which everybody read, obviously
everybody who was in Los Angeles) : "There are more Stevenson votes
in the California delegation than Kennedy votes." I think one
reason why they hired me was they thought I must have been fairly
astute to have figured all that out. But that made Brown look like
a booby.
Coming back here to the Press Club, I think that may be
exactly at the time we saw Kennedy and had that long evening with
him. But that was the purpose of that we courted the national
press assiduously on the whole thing of convincing them that
12
Kline: Pat Brown was not a booby. He, in fact, was a man in total command
of that state, knew everything, issues, figures, et cetera. The
national press had that horrible image about him. I don t know how
Pat feels now, but I would guess to this day he still resents
Scotty Reston because Reston came out to Santa Barbara and we sat
down with him for a full day (Reston of the New York Times) . Then
Reston wrote these columns about Richard Nixon s going to win and
Pat Brown doesn t have a grasp of the state, et cetera, et cetera.
We did convince the press; that press club speech was the
important one, and Pat did an excellent job at it. But that s all
internal gossipy politics. What did John Kennedy think of
Pat Brown? It s almost academic.
*f
Glaser: You were saying that it was academic what Kennedy thought.
Kline: I don t know what was in John Kennedy s mind or anybody else, but
I m saying that what we needed him to do, he did. He reassured and
spent time with Pat. And I m inclined to think that John Kennedy
saw Pat Brown for what he was, which was a great governor.
Glaser: Some people we have talked to feel that the Chessman incident was
overrated as far as its impact on Brown s fortunes because
it did occur before the primary and the general election and
Pat Brown won so it shouldn t be given too much weight.
Kline: You had to give it weight from the standpoint that it brought us
Pat to an extremeley low point from which he had to fight back.
Fortunately, he had enough time to do it. He would not have had to
do all the work he had to do in an eighteen month period if it
wasn t for the Chessman case and the convention.
As far as legislative successes, that first session, which
was before I got there, was monumental. Everything got passed.
Things that had been balked for years FEPC, minimum wage, and so
on. He would have been in such marvelous shape that Richard Nixon
wouldn t have run against him. It was because he was low that
Nixon did.
Glaser: What was the relationship, as you saw it, between Brown and the
CDC [California Democratic Council]?
Kline: Of course the CDC was a dominant factor in 58 in terms of who got
the nominations for all those other offices. The CDC became a
major element, in which I played some part, after 62. The CDC, I
think, like most vulnerable organizations, is vastly overrated from
13
Kline: the standpoint of convincing voters of anything. California was not
an organization state. Something about politics either national
politics or big state politics when you ve got millions of people,
there is no way you can organize them. And if human beings
contemplate the absurdity of thinking they can truly control events,
they have to reduce them in their own minds to terms that are under
standable. So, they look at the situation of, "Gee, let s have these
organizations go out and ring a lot of doorbells." They really don t
exist. Simply because there are twenty million people in California.
At that time six million voters, or something like that.
CDC in 62 was not a question of the disputes would occur later
over the Vietnam War. We had CDC support in 62, and it was easy to
get it; Brown was the incumbent governor. I don t recall any
problems that we had with them. Obviously some people were unhappy
because Pat Brown was a moderate, he was not a liberal. Pat Brown
had gone a long way toward supporting causes that he instinctively,
environmentally, did not support like civil rights. He was an Irish
San Franciscan. There was no black population per se in
San Francisco when he grew up. The black situation was not really a
factor in it. He could not really relate to black people. I think
he had a generosity of spirit inside himself. Lyndon Johnson knew
it was wrong that black people are kept down; therefore, all this
positive legislation.
Glaser: Can you talk about Brown and George Miller, Jr?
Kline: I can t say much because that was more of a legislative thing, and
I wasn t involved in that. I got much closer to Jesse Unruh and
people like that. George Miller, of course, was the power; he was
the chairman of the finance committee. Marvelous man, I guess
really a gut liberal in the sense of what that word really is.
I don t know much about their interrelationship, I really wasn t
involved in that personally. The Unruh one I was.
I worked for Jesse, by the way, in his 1970 gubernatorial
campaign for a period of time, but I guess I was the only member of
the governor s staff who had a relationship with Jesse and still
does. I got him to support Scoop Jackson [Senator Henry M. ] this
last national election and various other things. I guess that was
the real tug of war Jesse Unruh versus Pat Brown. You ve got to
bear in mind that Jesse was the politician who was the chairman of
Pat s Southern California campaign in 1958. And I guess what
evolved after that then he became chairman of the [Assembly] Ways
and Means Committee, when the Democrats gained control of the
assembly, and then eventually speaker.
14
Kline: A lot of this was conflicting ambition. A lot of it more than that
was the fact that there are differences between executive and
legislative branches. And that is something so little understood
in government. Presidents think they should run the show, that
they represent all the people, and legislators don t see it that
way. And when I look at this thing, I think of it very objectively.
In the Unruh-Brown battles, as far as 62 was concerned, our role and
Pat s role or desire was all selfish. We were his people, going to
win re-election for him. Secondarily we wanted to hold the party
together because we cared only about one thing, which was winning the
election in 1962.
Jesse, as a young man, had long-range ambitions. He was in
conflict with the CDC. He felt that they were going to do either one
of two things: either they were going to destroy the Democratic
Party because of extreme positions, or they were going to rally
behind somebody else. And he saw himself, obviously, as a future
governor. So, the relations between Jesse and Pat were never all
that cordial after elections took place. Our goal was one thing
(everybody operates on a selfish reason) ; our goal was to win re
election. Jesse s goal was to build a political base for himself
for the future. Both justified themselves they were serving the
interests of the people of the state of California. You rationalize
everything. And rationalizations are not necessarily bad.
So, Jesse was somewhat at arms length -from us during our
campaign in 62. We did give him responsibility for the black
community, which he organized extremely well he had run the Kennedy
campaign in 1960. And a lot of the jockeying was over the question
of appointments to the Kennedy administration after John Kennedy
won, in 19S1 where Jesse wanted to have some of his people appointed
and other politicians wanted to have theirs. We were above the
battle from the standpoint that we were much more selfish and
pragmatic. I m using none of these words perjoratively against Pat
or Jesse or anybody else, but just the reality of things.
bur goal was to hold things together. These other younger
politicians, their goal, naturally, was to build bases for them
selves much like Pat had done himself in the past. He had not
supported other Democrats in 1954 because it looked like a
Republican year, which it was, and he wanted to win his own election.
So while we as Brown people might have been outraged by the
political machinations of younger politicians once we d attained
the governorship, the reality is that we had acted the same way
(I say "we" in the Brown sense) before.
But, there was a coldness growing between Jesse and Pat. It was
becoming clear, as Jesse was trying to gain and grasp more power,
that the reason he supported Pat in 62 was there was no other
15
Kline: Democrat strong enough to beat Pat Brown in the primary (everybody
knew that) . Also everybody else was marking their time for what they
saw to be coming in 1966, when Pat then would step down after the
traditional two terms as California governor a tradition only
broken by Earl Warren in California history. I think that pretty
much, in terms of capsulizing, takes care of where we were after
winning the election in 62.
16
III THE 1964 SENATORIAL RACE AND PROPOSITION 14
Kline: And then I wasn t much involved at all in 63 because I was over
in the Department of Motor Vehicles, and those parochial problems
really are not a major element in the Brown-Knight years. I guess
my emergence again on the scene (if I could say that) coming out
of the cocoon, was in the primary of 1964 when the question was
who would succeed Clair Engle in the Senate. Jesse decided to
back Pierre Salinger after Stanley Mosk withdrew from the race.
Mosk was the attorney general at the time, next to Pat the most
popular politician in the state. Jesse decided to go with Pierre
because he was opposed to Alan Cranston, who was the state
controller [and candidate for the Senate] and had been the founder
of the CDC. This whole CDC conflict and Pat Brown was supported
by the CDC.
Hale Champion was involved in this when Hale was director of
finance, having battles with Jesse over who really was going to
dominate, who in the world was going to determine the state budget.
Was it going to be the governor, was it going to be the speaker of
the assembly? I guess Jesse had become speaker after being ways
and means chairman. He still had the power anyhow. The situation
there was that Ralph Brown was the speaker of the assembly, a very
nice, decent guy from Modesto who wanted to be a judge. Pat
appointed him to a judgeship; so then Jesse left ways and means
chairmanship to be speaker. But that whole Unruh Hale is rather
bitter to this day, very much anti-Jesse Unruh. I look at it
differently because I see it simply as a matter of conflicting
ambitions, depending upon how people look at their own situation.
Glaser: Then when you came into the primary it was after the very painful
need to determine whether Clair Engle was healthy enough to run
again?
Kline: That s right. And bear in mind, I wasn t involved in any of that
thing. Lu Engle s own reactions to that was Pat trying to force
Clair out. Pat felt a responsibility to maintain a Democratic seat
17
Kline: in the Senate. Whether things were handled right or wrongly, his
motives were pure ones and good ones. And he and Clair, again, I
believe, had a very good personal relationship that developed
starting in that 62 election, where Clair was just marvelous and
Pat was appreciative of it. My involvement simply was, really, I
went into Alan s office and helped organize his schedule. His
campaign was a jumble because after Stanley Mosk withdrew from the
race it looked like Alan would have a clean shot, and then Jesse
put up Pierre Salinger.
Don Bradley had been an old, old friend of Pierre s, had been
director of Pat s campaign in 62, and originally had been
Clair Engle s campaign manager in 58. Don, I guess, was as
responsible as anybody for Clair getting that original CDC
nomination in 58, which enabled him to win that Senate seat. Don
went with Pierre [in 64] so there was a break. If you had two
key people working for Pat Brown in 62, one was Hale although he
was director of finance he really was the man closest to the
governor on issues and the other was Don, who was the political
operative. Those were the two people. One of them split and
broke with Pat Don did. He went with Pierre. Hale also, I think,
had some of his own ambitions: if Alan Cranston was elected to the
Senate, that would open up the controllership and Hale could become
state controller. Bale s a very good friend of mine he may deny
all this but this is the general perspecitve of it.
At any rate, Hale lined up behind Alan and Don went with Pierre.
It was the first split, I guess, in what was a fairly unified
Democratic Party. And also Pat felt that Alan had a legitimate claim
to it. Pierre was a nobody. He had not worked in the state. Alan
had been in the vineyards starting with building the CDC. And as
state controller he had also worked somewhat for Pat in 62. So,
Brown lined up behind Alan and Alan lost the primary. And then Pat
asked Pierre, "Do you want me to appoint you to the Senate seat
of Clair Engle? It seems to be a good idea."
Pierre said, "Yes."* Probably Pierre s biggest mistake.
[It was done] only because everybody in those days thought
incumbency is worth three percentage points, or something. At any
rate, Pierre was appointed, and everybody
*Engle died July 30, 1964, between the primary and the general
elections.
18
Glaser: Excuse me. If that was a mistake, what would have been a good move?
Kline: I think the political thing of Pierre holding a press conference and
saying, "Look, I want to win this seat on my own. I don t want to be
appointed to it. Pat should appoint Lu Engle or appoint somebody
else to it."
That would have made him look like a gracious person who didn t
want to get an unfair advantage over his opponent, George Murphy.
That s all in retrospect, bear in mind. I wasn t involved in
those discussions. There may well have been some people who would
have made that point beforehand, but I think generally, universally,
everybody felt it s the smart idea: get Pierre in the Senate, it
gives him an ability to speak from a Washington platform and he s
called Senator when he campaigns. And the ballot designations in
California would say, "Pierre Salinger, U.S. Senator" not
"Pierre Salinger, former press secretary." [Laughs] There was a
miscalculation, but in hindsight. I think it seemed to everybody
then to make the most sense.
I had volunteered for Alan; I hadn t actually been on his
campaign payroll or anything. His campaign was just a jumble, I
just went in to help straighten it out at Pat s direction and Rale s
direction.
Interspersed in that was the great legislative fight of 63
and 64, which was civil rights and the Rumford Act. (Byron Rumford
was the assemblyman from Berkeley.) It passed the assembly easily
Jesse always had been strong on civil rights. But Jesse cautioned
that this thing might reverberate against us, people weren t ready
for this. Which, bear in mind, in our purist liberal views was
almost heresy. Of course, damn it, you ve got to lead. The state
senate blocked it; the bill was blocked for a long, long time. We
really fought for it. I think the thing that won it for us was what
happened in Selma, Alabama, which occurred right about the time the
bill was making its way through the legislature, and Bill Connor
sicking his dogs on people those kinds of television images
probably were really the things that broke that bill though. The
bill was passed and we had fair housing in California. And then the
real estate lobby launched their initiative and going on the ballot
in November of 64 was fair housing.
And then Pat sent me down to run the campaign to preserve fair
housing, which was a fascinating experience. With general political
connotations, I guess I can highlight them. I ll tell you one is I
made a huge strategic misjudgement which was, in my naivete, that
if you could only explain this issue to people, raise enough money,
19
Kline: have enough good media campaigns, organization and everything, if
you d explain the issue to people, people in the goodness of their
hearts would vote no on 14.
We did a good job, we raised a lot of money we spent more than
the real estate lobby did we had probably the greatest organization
ever put together for a California political campaign. That fall
of 1964 virtually every car in California had either one of two
bumper strips. One bumper strip was "no on 14" on half the cars
(or would seem to be half, say a quarter of the cars), and another
quarter of the cars) , and another quarter of the cars had
"Goldwater." But probably the two most extensive organization
campaigns people have ever run in California history, I think up
until this day, was the Goldwater campaign of 64, and the
Proposition 14 campaign of 1964 [laughs].
My greatest accomplishment, a sampling of fund-raising and
publicity, was when we filled the Hollywood Bowl one night for what
we called the "Night of Stars." We had Elizabeth Taylor and
Richard Burton, just married, as our headliners and every big name
in Hollywood. I mean, it was really a major campaign. And
billboards, we couldn t buy paper boards because Foster & Kleiser
and Pacific Outdoor simply would not sell them to us, we were too
controversial. So we bought painted boards (which are about ten
times as expensive) all over the state $180,000 worth of them.
We had people like Art Linkletter, a Republican, doing television
spots for daytime television. We had what was then the vanishing
breed of liberal Republicans, you know, [Senator] Tommy Kuchel s
backers, all joining us. People like Joe Martin, who was
Republican national committeeman from San Francisco. We had a non-
partisan campaign. Kuchel endorsed us.
Then we come to Pierre. Pierre s advisers, from a political
standpoint, said, "Don t endorse Proposition 14, it s a loser. You
get caught in the middle of this thing, and you re going to lose
the election to George Murphy."
And Pierre said, "I won the primary because of the black support,"
which he did and it was really going back to the Kennedy thing and
so on. And Pierre endorsed us. He feels, probably rightly, we
forced him. We pressured him on this. We (not Pat Brown; my
organization liberals and black leaders and so on) insisted that
he support us because of what the blacks had done for him. And he
did. He didn t equivocate at all on it, he did it. And that s one
great reason why he lost the election to George Murphy because
George Murphy side-stepped the issue. We allowed Lyndon Johnson to
side-step the issue not that we could have forced him, you know, to
do otherwise. He saw the potentialities.
20
Kline: We were naive. I say the great miscalculation was that we felt if
we could educate the people they d vote our way. Well, the point
was that we did educate them and they voted against us two to one.
They knew what the issue was. Johnson won, Salinger lost.
There may have been other factors in Pierre s loss; people could
simply have said he wasn t qualified. Calif ornians didn t like
Lyndon Johnson and California has a tradition that people assuage
their guilt. They couldn t vote for Barry Goldwater, they regarded
him as a bomb thrower, so to assuage their guilt they may have voted
for George Murphy. Who knows what motivates people? All those
elements were involved. I think we were all reeling from the
Kennedy assassination, too, and never really understood the country
or what was happening as we pursued traditional liberal goals.
Pierre s loss really astounded us. Our loss with Proposition
14 it was fairly clear we were going to lose, even though we had
this massive organization out there . When you outspend the real
estate lobby sixty to forty, and you dominate organization one
hundred to one [laughs]. And nobody likes the realtor. Anybody
who ever buys his own little house always ends up hating the
realtor, whether it s the realtor s fault or not, you know, you
just hate him. You didn t get enough money for your house, or you
paid too much for it. It was obvious we were going to lose but we
didn t expect it to be as much as we did, two to one. That s
everybody we didn t pick up one vote at all.
Glaser: Did Len Gross and Clifford Roberts work with you on that?
Kline: No. There were various people involved originally. When I came into
the campaign it was in very bad shape this is in August. I
changed everything around. Jim Keene was the person who did our
advertising. He had done Pat Brown s in 62. Jim did the campaign
and came up with pretty good stuff. There was a lot of volunteer
effort running around, by the way, too. In those days you didn t
have to have these reporting laws that just have happened. There
was other advertising, but ours was the official, central campaign.
21
IV ISSUES LEADING TO BROWN S DECLINING POWER
Kline: So anyhow, after that, how did that affect Pat? Again, it wasn t
our campaign, it wasn t presidential, he was still governor of the
state. He campaigned for Proposition 14. I was pretty much a young
idealist believing that it didn t really hurt us politically that
much. You have to be both a politician and an idealist, I guess,
to be in this business. But I didn t realize the effect that it had
and it really did. Pat clearly was hurt, legislatively, by this
because it was such a resounding defeat on the major ballot issue
he took with him. Whereas in the 1960 campaign, let s go back to
that, we had the water bonds on the ballot at the same time as
Kennedy was running. We campaigned for Kennedy but also for the
water bond and we won that one. This was the first defeat suffered
by the governor by the electorate in a referendum, in that sense.
*
I stayed in L.A. I don t really recall a hell of a lot of the
legislative session in that year. I think the battle between Pat
and Jesse was growing, the state s fiscal problems were becoming
more acute, largely because the federal government would pass new
programs which always required state sharing [laughs]. Everything
was changing. Up until those days of the Johnson 64 legislative
victories here in Washington, state governments really handled most
problems. It s hard to believe.
I guess if you look at this country you have three stages:
prior to FDR [Roosevelt], government did very little for people.
Then the federal government started to do some things between 1932
and 1964, and more and more. But the big quantum leap took place
after 1964, when you had the massive programs coming out of the
Johnson administration. I shouldn t say this because I m here in
Washington now, but I don t think state governments are as relevant
now as they were prior to 64 because we did most of the things
that were done for people prior to 64. And our whole Brown concepts
on social programs were, "We have to do it because Eisenhower isn t
going to do it," when he was president. But all of those programs
kept putting more and more of a load on the state, as well as
providing services, and the budget thing got worse and worse in a
general sense.
22
Kline: We had no great accomplishments, I don t think, after 62, in
that second term. There was progress on things I guess the
university system, the state colleges, and more and more was done
but no great big programs. Of course, an awful lot had been
accomplished in his first four years. That first session in 59
really changed California, probably to a greater extent than any
thing since 1911 when Hiram Johnston was governor of the state.
There were enormous changes.
Glaser: Were there any political appointments that hurt Pat Brown?
Kline: No, none. He never had a scandal in his administration, not a
single scandal in eight years.
Glaser: Well, aside from the scandal aspect, were there any political
appointments that weakened him? In terms of for every appointment
made, you make one or more enemies among those who wanted the
position.
Kline: Sure you had that. You had more and more of the Unruh-Brown
confrontations, where Jesse would be unhappy with our people, and
so on. But, I m talking in a broad sense now, the thing that has
to be understood (this is almost a political speech, which I make to
national politicians, but I ll make to you), which is understood
by Jimmy Carter and people who win these things, I think. You
as a person asking the question, to turn the attack on you but only
as an illustration, everybody wants to reduce these things to
understandable terms you appoint Joe Smith therefore Jesse Unruh
gets mad at you and people badmouth you, and so forth. In a state
as large as California, it s so miniscule. The things you re
really concerned about, or should be, are your broad standing with
the public.
Now when it comes to dealing with the legislature, those things
aren 1 t really that harmful because the larger issue there is are you
in the way of somebody else s ambitions? Or, may you support
somebody else for the job the other guy wants? Those are the major
things, appointments are minor. They re problems and you do make,
obviously, more people unhappy than happy, and they re awfully time
consuming. And the governor is unhappy because Pat Brown doesn t
want to make anybody unhappy every appointment made five people
unhappy, therefore Pat Brown would be unhappy over that.
But in the large, broad context, I don t think there were any
particular appointments he made which were at all decisive. I
think that there were differing philosophies. One is that Jesse
wanted to be governor, he was concerned about Pat running for
re-election when Jesse wanted to run. I guess other people may
23
Kline: have been toying with the idea, although I don t really think so
it was an Unruh-Brown thing. On a personal basis, also a somewhat
philosophic basis (which the governor and his people never really
understood) , Jesse simply felt that Pat Brown was advocating some
things that weren t going to work and couldn t be sold to the
people. It operates on two levels: high principles and self
interest. No, I m just going to say categorically, no, I can t
think of anything that really was important in terms of appointments.
Unless you can bring something to mind.
Glaser: No, I can t think of anything. This is just a general question
that we contemplated: at the tail end of Brown s administration,
when he had made a lot of appointments and had used up his political
clout, did his appointments weaken his power with the legislature
and also with the public?
Kline: Obviously, there may have been little things, but I can t remember
them. If I can t remember them, I don t think they were that
important.
Glaser: Yes, you have very good recall.
Kline: I think there were three things that happened to weaken us. Why did
we lose? Well, one thing is, of course, perhaps Pat shouldn t have
run for a third term
##
Kline : First was the race issue and then the war and then the public had
a growing dissatisfaction with the quality of life. My basic theory
of what California is, and it s post-World War II California, is that
during the war an awful lot of servicemen traveled through California
on the way to the Pacific. They were in some foxhole someplace and
they determined, "If I ever get out of this thing alive, I m not
going to go back to Iowa, I m going to go to Orange County,
California. I m going to buy myself a tract house. I m going to
have a wife, 2.2 kids, and life is going to be good. I m going
to enjoy myself." And they did that, and that was California.
The other factor in this thing is the assassination of
John Kennedy. I mean, it was kind of our loss of innocence in this
country. Along about the mid-sixties, people looked up. What were
these people? Fifty years of age? Forty-five, or whatever, these
war veterans. And they thought, life isn t all that good. I really
don t like my wife as much as I did when I married her. Who knows
all the psychological things. Taxes are high. It s great to be in
the suburbs, but I have to drive forty miles to work. Are those
black people going to come in here and destroy my property and
24
Kline: values because elitist liberals want them in Orange County but won t
let them into Beverly Hills? All those things . There was a changing
mood in the country, probably culminating in Jimmy Carter s election
this year.
Glaser: When you mention the sixties you bring another issue to mind, the
sit-ins. I d like you to go into that.
Kline: Of course. Okay, I guess you had two things the free speech
movement was the start of it at Berkeley. Let me put it in this
kind of context. We were unprepared for this. Our rationale for
administration was to deal with the growth of California; to provide
an educational system providing an opportunity for learning to every
young person. To try to redress some of the obvious social wrongs
lack of fair employment practices, things like that. Obvious
things that date back to fifty years before. These things hit us
like an earthquake. Why should students who you d given this great
opportunity expanded the university, quadrupled the size of the
university why should they be having sit-ins?
Why should Cesar Chavez be emerging in the Central Valley? Not
that we were against unionization of farmworkers; we had wanted
agriculture under the state s Labor Relations Act and failed. But
bear in mind we also knew that California s number one industry was
agriculture. Transcending aircraft and everything else was
agriculture. It s the basis of California. And we provided water
so that agriculture could flourish. These things caught us so
unaware and so unprepared and reeling almost. And reeling, I
suppose, even to this day of not understanding what was happening.
The war it was inconceivable to us. Remember we weren t at
all involved in foreign policy, and we took the position, generally
(I say we, it s Pat but it s also me and everybody else with him)
that this was none of our business. We could well disagree with
the president over education policies, the labor policies, but to
disagree with the president on foreign policy when we didn t have
the facts at hand was inconceivable to us. And particularly a
Democratic president. But we would never have objected to
Eisenhower s foreign policy, either. That governors should take
positions on issues like that, it was unheard of.
The racial thing we had lost, but boy, we were going to fight
through the courts. Eventually, of course, the Rumford Act was
restored in the courts. But it didn t occur to us that people
would riot over it. People were unhappy with the quality of life.
We could understand being unhappy with smog, and we were working
mightily to help air pollution control districts be set up through
out the state. Unhappy with transportation, we worked very hard to
25
Kline: get a new bill for a new rapid transit district in Southern California
and to try and do things. Building highways, we believed, was still
essential and we did. But that somebody would object to us putting
a highway straight down through a park if that was the quickest way.
Why should people object to that? Highways are important. But we
also wanted to build parks. The proudest joint effort of ours with
the Kennedy administration was the Redwood Park. But we didn t
understand the public disturbance that was happening, I think,
dating from the assassination. I think the Kennedy assassination
the effect of which this country is reeling from, and I don t know
when that era ends. I don t think it s ended yet. We couldn t cope
with that or even understand it.
We battled with the CDC. I m the one who got Si Casady as
president of the CDC. My role was to get a new president, somebody
who would really work at it, somebody who would have pull with the
business community. You know about Si Casady? He was a San Diego
newspaper publisher the only Democratic newspaper publisher in
San Diego. His daughter-in-law worked for me as my secretary. I
got the idea, let s get him as president of the CDC. They always
would elect these strange lawyer-types, or something. Let s get a
businessman.
We get this guy elected, and he starts making speeches against
the war. We couldn t understand that. I really had egg on my face
for that. I wasn t really all that high up (I mean I was the middle
echelon of the Brown administration, but Hale was the upper echelon),
but they let me play with that because CDC wasn t regarded as that
important by the governor. So Kline goofed something, okay. You
shouldn t have goofed it, but the point is, it wasn t earth shaking
because the CDC didn t mean that much.
But here we had the leader of the voluntary organization making
speeches against the war against our president. And bear in mind,
Pat Brown and Lyndon Johnson were never that close. Lyndon Johnson
resented Pat (I think to his dying day, probably, because Johnson
resented things for a long time) when Pat back in 1959 accused
Johnson of being a Southerner not a Westerner, because Johnson
wanted Brown s support in his race for the nomination back in 1960.
But nevertheless, we were loyal. He was our Democratic president,
and you don t oppose him in any way.
I don t know if I have answered your question. The university
thing drove us nuts. Here we were irritated all those years about
Clark Kerr because he was so imperious as the president of the
university, coming in demanding things of the governor, demanding
the money from the state. You have to recall, when Fred Out ton
was the executive secretary his basic thrust was that Pat should
26
Kline: concentrate more on education than on water, in terms of use of
state resources and everything else. Hale kind of took the pro-
water view, which was my view. I was the only Southern Californian
on his staff, by the way, everybody else was from the north. And
Southern California needed the water.
So, we had fought Clark Kerr and we were mad at him because he
was so strong; he would beat us on things. And then we find out,
gee, he s terribly weak, he can t control some students. We were
mystified by that. It was all strange. That is all I can say. I
remember it was just utterly strange. All these things happening
around us and why couldn t they be controlled. Why couldn t things
be solved?
Pat never retreated from the battle. He was a very gutsy
governor in terms if there was a governmental problem he would move
to solve it, if it s prisons, or what. He wasn t afraid of anything,
an example of which was Chessman. Things he should have shied
away from he never did, he would plunge in. But these new things
were beyond us. When they had the sit-ins in Berkeley, I can t
recall specifically what we did or didn t do, but I think we took
a relatively hard line. But we were still liberals and so we were
shocked to see students being pushed around. But we weren t all
that liberal, we also believed in law and order.
At San Francisco State, when Hayakawa was there, again. there
was that mixture [laughs]. We weren t in direct control of the
state colleges, anyhow, except we did have financial control. It
was a mystifying time, and we were totally unprepared to run for
re-election in 66. I don t think we understood any of these things.
Glaser: Pat Brown was out of the state at the time of the Watts riot,
wasn t he?
Kline: Yes. He was traveling on vacation in Greece. Glenn Anderson was
the lieutenant governor. When the riot broke out, we got in touch
with Glenn and we briefed him. Hale understood. Winslow Christian,
who s now a judge, was the executive secretary. I think the first
word came that Bill Parker, the Los Angeles chief of police, (bear
in mind a right-wing reactionary) called up Sacramento and talked
to Sherrill Luke, who was the only black guy on the staff. He was
cabinet secretary, or he was Winslow s assistant then. I think he
now works for Hartford Insurance, in Hartford, as head of equal
employment opportunity. Nancy [Sloss] would probably know that.
I don t know where all these people drifted to.
At any rate, the governor s office response when Bill Parker
said this trouble was brewing was of huge scepticism because
27
Kline: Bill Parker was always crying wolf always saying the cops are under
siege, always trying to destroy the First Amendment, you know
[laughs]. And being anti also on the issues of crime. But I think
the governor s office probably reacted a little bit late on it,
which made Parker suspicious. Glenn was brought in, involved
he s now a congressman. He probably was unfairly blamed for things.
He made some statements I m just trying to recall because that
response was the political thing which hurt all of us. It hurt
Glenn, it hurt Pat, et cetera, et cetera". It s all kind of hazy
to me because the thing I do remember so well was the riot itself.
My role, once things got established, was to be the liaison between
the governor s office and the police department during the riot
itself. But it was almost pro forma stuff, relaying information back
and forth, telling Glenn what the police department wanted, and I
think generally there was cooperation. We activated a national
guard and everything else.
But the thing that remains in my mind, of course, is that Parker
withdrew all the policemen from the whole area and it was therefore
open city. People did riot. They looted everyting in this huge
square, miles upon miles of Los Angeles, until we moved in the
guard. We restored order. Parker s point was, "My cops are going
to get killed." Our view was, but not really publicly stated,
policemen have got to control law and order . But we moved the
guard in and that worked well. It was a very efficient operation.
We were proud of the guard. It was the first time we d ever
activated the guard for anything but combat duty.
But the riot, you know, was a tense time. As I say, it was a
reporting function until communications were set up with the guard
and then the guard dealt with the police department. Our next job
was, "What will we do next? What does the governor do?"
Martin Luther King asked if he could come to Los Angeles and we said
yes. Califano was the action man there for the White House.
Andy Brimmer, (who is now on the Federal Reserve Board) a black,
was assistant secretary of Commerce at the time; he came out to
Los Angeles. We met with them all around the clock. I particularly
remember meeting with King, explaing to him, asking what could he
do? It was a very, very difficult thing. What could the federal
government do? Johnson was very much concerned (shows our sense
of loyalty which, by the way, was misplaced which was understandable).
Glaser: I don t understand what you are saying about loyalty.
Kline: Okay. Johnson was concerned that if he gave direct aid to
Los Angeles, you know millions of dollars, to start rebuilding the
ghetto, that then he would be open to providing aid for all the rest
of the country if other riots broke out. And I guess there were
some small riots breaking out following Watts. This was in this
28
Kline: period right after the riot. And so we acquiesced in that; we
understood his point of view. That s loyalty. Had we been more
selfish, I think perhaps we should have demanded everything for
Los Angeles.
But we tried to figure out how to put the pieces back and also
to do it within the framework of a balanced, no tax- increase budget
because we were then at the stage where we had no more money. There
was no money coming from the federal government , and you had this
utter devastation in Watts, as well as the veil taken off the
problems there: social problems, transportation problems, all kinds
of problems. Our first decision was to create a commission to
look into the whole thing. A lot of people volunteered for it, and
we debated who we should ask to head it up.
One telegram came in from a man saying, "I would like to head
it up." That was John McCone, former head of the CIA. A staunch
Republican, right-winger, but he had been appointed by Kennedy to
be head of the CIA. Reported as a very, very smart man, he was
from Pasadena; he was a Californian. We thought, politically,
that the way to get credibility for whatever he recommended would
be to have him serve as chairman. If you get a Republican to do
it, therefore it doesn t look like it s a Democratic ploy. And we
agreed, he did it. We also gave McCone total freedom to write
whatever he wanted, and we gave him full support for his budget
before the legislature.
I guess I was somewhat in opposition to the McCone appointment
because I felt it was a mistake to select someone for short term
"political" profit getting McCone a right-wing Republican, to head
up your commission so its report is credible. My view was the
real credibility would be the nature of the report and that a
McCone would not understand the social problems or deal with them
effectively. And I think that was true. I don t think the McCone
Commission report did mean anything.
But the things we did on our own, which had far more meaning,
we had to do without spending any money. There was no money left
in the state budget. We created the one-stop service centers where
the people in the ghetto could go into one place with several
of them spread throughout the area and get state services, whether
it was unemployment relief, or what else. That was a worthwhile
thing which we came up with in just a week or so, announced that
and did it. But the McCone Commission did point up the obvious
things lack of transportation. Somebody may live in the ghetto
but there was no bus service to get him, say, to the airport to
work in those aircraft industries those things. But I think that
we didn t really deal with the problem; I don t think the country
has dealt with the problems. It wasn t just our fault, we had no
money to do anything.
29
Kline: The effect of that on us politically I don t know if it was obvious
to us or not. Pat still felt he could win, running for the election.
We kept looking at those figures more Democrats, supposedly. And
there was no Republican on the scene, nobody. Goodie Knight wasn t
going to run; he couldn t beat us. There were no Republicans; we
beat Richard Nixon. So, George Christopher looked like the strong
est: the mayor of San Francisco the term before, relatively
moderate. And then this crazy actor, you know. We already had
problems with Sam Yorty who was blaming us for the riot. He got
publicity on it and acceptance generally, but in fact, it was his
police department which really didn t perform in the riot.
That was the most terrifying thing I ve ever seen in my life.
The fact is that for one hundred and some square miles of
Los Angeles there wasn t one single policeman. You see, they all
withdrew on the second day of the riot. "We can t cope," the police
chief said. Every policeman moved out of the area rather than
containing the riot. Yorty did not want to call in the national
guard because, in his view, that meant the state would control
Los Angeles. But he finally had to do it and that s how the riot
was ended. For us, it was downhill from then on, really.
Glaser: Your mentioning George Christopher reminds me that some people
recall Governor Brown saying before the 66 primary that while
he was told Christopher was the one to watch out for, the one
hard to beat, he wasn t sure about that.
Kline: Yes. Well, I was afraid of him myself. And Hale, and all of the
other supposed brains in the campaign felt George Christopher
would be much tougher to beat than Ronald Reagan. We were
conventional thinkers: the people want to elect to high office
those politicians who are qualified for high office.
George Christopher was qualified to be governor, he d been a good
mayor. Ronald Reagan was a movie actor with no public experience
and a right-winger to boot. His own campaign manager had run
Rockefeller s campaign in the 64 primary against Goldwater and
had sent to the press in that campaign the dossier of the
right-wing nuts around Goldwater. Number eleven on the list was
Ronald Reagan [laughs].
All these things seemed to us great experts that Reagan would
be much easier to beat than Christopher. We did what we could and
hoped Christopher got defeated, which we did and he was. And
Reagan was the nominee. We knew that Pat was weak; we knew the
only chance he had of winning re-election was if he was up against
some utter nonentity. But, of course, we were surprised. One, we
didn t understand that the public wanted non-politicians; they
were sick and tired of politicians. Again, Vietnam was growing
in the background there, as well as the riots. Not a happy time
for America. And that s really what happened.
30
Kline: But Pat himself, yes. The candidates often are better politicians
than the people around them, because they re the ones who have to
go out and get votes from individuals. But by then, see, I think we
had so enamored Pat with our brilliance. We had really pulled off
the 62 election, almost in spite of him because we really had to
control him and get him to do the things he had to do. To stick
with his prepared text, not to talk for forty hours, to go with the
news lead we had written for him; to spend all that time in
Southern California, were things that went against his grain.
And the way we had him handle Richard Nixon against his grain
instinctively. But we were proven right. We won the election for
him. So, when 66 rolled around, he was trusting our judgement
more than his own, which was also our mistake, if you can see that.
31
V PERSONNEL IN GOVERNOR BROWN S ADMINISTRATION
Glaser: I m going to give you this list of people, and if you can think of
somebody that should be interviewed that s not on there.
Kline: I didn t know that Jack Abbott died.
Glaser: And as you go along and see somebody that you think is key, if you
could come up with some questions for them.
Kline: Okay. Is May Bonnell married again? Well, Don Bradley certainly
is key. He was the political guy, he then came back in 66 and
ran the campaign. He s the kind of person with a good perspective
of things. Very much anti-Unruh and he could give you more of the
anti-Unruh detail. When I come into this I try to be objective
here as a pro-Unruh person, but I m the only one.
Ralph Brady is extremely good (he was the key guy, he helped
us shape the water plan) on the issues of the water plan, which is
really a lasting monument to Pat Brown. Ralph is really somebody
you ought to talk to.
From Tom Bright you ll get a better perspective on Goodie than
on Pat, because he wasn t really very much involved with Pat.
Ralph Brown s dead.
Well, Jack Burby you have here, and you should talk to Jack.
He was the press secretary all through the Brown years.
Joe Cerell could give you a perspective on Stanley Mosk, I think
more than anybody else.
Well, Hale Champion obviously is a key person to talk to.
Warren Christopher was a key person in fashioning the 1959
legislative program he s Deputy Secretary of State now.
Bill Coblentz is a good guy to talk to in San Francisco. He was
with Chris in his early years. Both of them had left after that
first session.
32
Kline:
Glaser :
Kline:
Glaser;
Kline:
Glaser:
Kline:
Alan Cranston you certainly ought to talk to because Alan could give
you a perspective on the CDC. I must say Alan kind of blames me
for his loss as controller in 1966 because, to his credit, since he
owed so much to Pat (Pat went all out for him in 64), Alan then
went all out for us in 66. We had him make statements attacking
Reagan and everything, and it clearly hurt him, and that s why he
lost in 68. Of course, he finally won majority whip of the
Senate, so it s all turned out well in the end. These things all
had rough days.
One Republican who I think is a hell of a guy, although I m
personally not close to him, is right here in town and that s
Bill Bagley, who was a key liberal Republican leader from Marin
County. You ve got to get into this liberal Republican thing,
the demise of the liberal Republican Party in terms of Tommy Kuchel.
Do you have him on your list?
I don t remember off hand; I can t imagine that we would not.
Well, Fred Dutton clearly.
What questions should we ask Dutton?
of
The whole Kennedy-Brown relationship. Fred was the architect
Pat s program the first two years. Now, he has a certain
perspective of his own regarding Kennedy and Brown, but it s worth
listening to very bright guy. He was executive secretary in 59.
Hale took his place.
Hugo Fisher could give a good perspective, he s now a judge in
San Diego. He was the anti-Unruh person. He was sitting as state
senator. He was the one guy of the Democrats who lost in 62, and
then Pat appointed him head of the Resources Agency. San Diego
simply is Republican country that s why he lost.
Lou Haas is now Alan Cranston s guy in Los Angeles. Lou you
should talk to. Lou and Jack and I did some of the same things,
but we have somewhat different perspectives on things.
I think on the black thing, which is so critical, you should
talk to Gus Hawkins here in Washington. Bear in mind, he s part of
the old timers. Mervyn Dymally, the lieutenant governor, ought to
be talked to.
Where was Dymally in the Brown years?
He was in the Disaster Office, the civil defense thing, in a minor
political job he was nothing. He emerged as the leader of the
activist black community that separated from the ministers.
33
Glaser: And Hawkins is here in Congress?
Kline: Yes, a member of Congress and he s the old timer. He was almost
dean, or he d been in the assembly for thirty years before he was
elected to Congress. He s been in public life a long time very nice
man. But he can give you a perspective, a fair amount.
Now Tom Lynch, Pat s appointment for attorney general, must
be DA of San Francisco, was Pat s closest friend, was often Pat s
alter ego. A guy, again out of Pat s peer group, we could turn to,
much like Clair Engle, for a steadying influence.
Glaser: I understand there was a certain amount of competitiveness on
Lynch s part. He felt that he should be achieving as much as Brown.
Kline: Oh, to a certain extent, but basically they were such close friends
that it really didn t amount to that much. I mean, Tom was always
in Pat s shadow because he always followed Pat. I think he s a fine
man. I don t know how old he is now. I guess he s just about Pat s
age. Pat s always young, you know [laughs].
Frank Mesple, in Sacramento now lobbying for some group or
something, was the legislative secretary after 1962, and could give
you a pretty good run down on that whole thing.
##
Kline: Let me give you somebody here in town who I think is one of the
sharpest, most introspective, most objective guys of all, and you
can mention me when you talk to him, and that s Bill Ames, bureau
manager of CBS broadcast group. He was the news director of
Channel Two (KNXT) in Los Angeles during the Brown years, as well as
their political editor. Probably the most astute political editor
in the state was Bill Ames who wasn t a writer but a television
man, well respected. He heads up all the CBS owned and operated
stations here in Washington.
Glaser: No one else has mentioned him.
Kline: Well, he s the key one you ought to talk to. He was not here at
the start of the Brown thing, but he came in midway through it and
saw a lot of it. Another guy is Tom Brokaw on the "Today Show".
Glaser: Where was he during the Brown years?
Kline: Again, he was the political reporter for Channel Four, the NBC
station in Los Angeles. Some of these television guys I have more
respect for than the newspaper guys because they have a greater
34
Kline: artistic sense. By that I mean greater from your standpoint, of
seeing a larger picture in some regard than the guy who simply is
rewriting the speeches and handouts. But they re both well worth
interviewing. Both are very perceptive. I don t know if you can
get Tom Brokaw in the early mornings because he s on the "Today
Show," but he s well worth talking to in New York.
Tom Rees you ought to talk to. He s now a lawyer here in
Washington. You can mention me there also.
Glaser: What is he doing as a lawyer? Is he representing any group?
Kline: No, just general law. His office is just a couple of blocks away.
He just left Congress this last session. But Tom was the state
senator for all of Los Angeles County prior to reapportionment,
and he was key in the rapid transit legislation. He has somewhat
of a critical view of Pat, but he s a very perceptive person. There
are a lot of Congressmen in town, of course, who were in Sacramento
at that time who could give perspectives. But Tom would be as good
as any.
Glaser: He was an assemblyman?
Kline: He was first assemblyman, and then he was state senator. But he was
up there through the whole Brown era. Tom Saunders is a good person
on the political end of things and you have him here as a
prospective person.
As far as questions to ask these people, I think just do what
you do and it will come and they ll explain it.
Jesse Unruh clearly you should talk to in California, you know
that. You have Charlie Warren here. He s now here in Washington;
I think he s head of the Environmental Quality Board. He was a
young assemblyman then.
Caspar Weinberger, whom you have here, clearly is important
for the Knight years and also to some extent those early Brown
years. There was another guy who really knew a great guy who was
under-secretary of HEW under Bob Finch. He was a good legislative
leader for the Republicans, a former assemblyman from, not Modesto
but one of those towns [laughs]. He s back in California now again.
Glaser : Are you thinking of John Venneman?
35
Kline: John Venneman, yes.
I think you ought to talk with Bob Finch.
Richard Nixon is somebody you ought to talk to, if you can get
to him.
36
VI THE 1962 GUBERNATORIAL CAMPAIGN
Kline: I ll say one thing about the 62 campaign. Nixon was entirely
right in his famous press conference; we did turn the press against
him. We did it on the basis that you build on the press antipathy.
There were some marvelous things we would do that would drive Nixon
nuts because he made the mistake of thinking Pat Brown was a bumbler
and his people were bumblers. But we werent bumblers and Pat
wasn t a bumbler. Pat Brown had never lost an election up until the
last one, which was understandable. After two terms you re going
to lose a third term, most likely.
But we did some classic things. We both started our campaigns
in the spring, in mid-February, and we d have bus tours for the
press. The idea was to make this a happy, confident campaign to
convince the press we weren t afraid of Richard Nixon. That was
our strategy, if you follow me. We had to convince the press (in
the state as well as the national press, mostly in the state because
that was where the voters were) that we were confident of victory.
And so we had this bus and loaded it up with chicken soup and every
thing else. We lavished sandwiches on the press, boozed to some
minor extent, and had a good time. I mean we treated them well,
expressing confidence.
We went up to the Marysville area to a little town called
Paradise. Because it was Valentine s Day, we thought it would be a
good town to go to. And all on his own Pat Brown popped into a
drugstore and bought a valentine for his wife, with all the press
around and everything. So, the news guys lead story was Pat Brown
bought his wife a valentine. And the news guys traveling with Nixon
said, (this was the day before Valentine s Day) "Well, are you going
to buy your wife a valentine?"
And he said, "Of course I am. I m going to buy Pat a valentine"
Pat Nixon. The next day he was up in the gold country and he d
forgotten about it. So, the lead story the next day was that
Richard Nixon forgot to buy his wife a valentine. [Laughs] I mean,
he didn t handle the press well.
37
Kline: Those were in the days when television was in its infancy but
important. The most important guy was not the reporter, it was the
cameraman. He would hold a light here and his camera here against
his eye and shoot you. And if he had that light wrong, all you would
see was a person s ears. We made a great effort to be nice to the
cameraman and the soundmen, not just the reporter. But these are
guys who generally get kicked around and they re ignored. And Nixon
ignored them, and you would see so much of him on television with
nothing but his ears showing. So, film was in those days, if you
follow me [laughs]
We were up in this Paradise, Marysville area, and Nixon was in
the gold country. Our tour ended a day before his ended, so we
bused the press at our expense, those who wanted to cover him, from
where we were two hundred miles to cover Nixon. We told them,
"We want you to cover Richard Nixon." Our object was, "You watch
Nixon. He s not qualified to be governor of this state. We want to
cooperate with you. We ll even bus you to meet up with him."
I ll never forget the time Nixon decided, after all this went
on, that he would have a party at his new house in Trousdale Estates
for the press. Half the press corps traveled with him and half with
us. But some guys from smaller papers had to cover both, so there
were logistical problems. We flew back from San Diego, arrived at
Los Angeles International Airport at seven o clock at night, when
Nixon was having this party at Beverly Hills for the press. We
talked our press into going to that party. They arrived at Nixon s
house in this bus saying, "Brown for Governor." [Laughter] This
kind of thing built this whole thing.
We just provided the press with press releases, every single
thing to make their job easier. Nixon was standoffish, and Nixon
always Part of this idea came to me because I was a reporter when
Nixon was vice-president and I had tried to cover him or interview
him. You couldn t get through to the man. He always was this very
insular person.
Once, on assignment for the American Weekly Magazine, which was
the big Hearst Sunday supplement those days, I planned an interview
with Donald Nixon. It was right before the 60 election. It would
be a nice, friendly, family kind of thing, what the brother thinks
of the brother who s about to become president. And the Hearst
papers were all for Nixon. I remember spending weeks failing to get
that interview because the vice-president s office simply wouldn t
allow it. All these things were in my head during the 62 campaign:
Nixon is afraid of the press. So you capitalize on that.
38
Kline: He was right in what the press did to him. A lot of it was because
of himself, of course. We didn t turn them against Nixon, we simply
capitalized upon this view they had of him. But they did give him a
very rough time.
Glaser: Was Dick Tuck involved in the 62 campaign?
Kline: No, he wasn t.
Glaser: The trick where the train slowly pulled out as Nixon was speaking
from the platform?
Kline: That was in the presidential campaign, the Dick Tuck episode. There
was the one in Chinatown in San Francisco. Every year you have your
traditional Chinese New Year s celebration where they have the
dragon going down the streets, a hundred kids or young people under
neath the dragon, head and tail. And Tuck had arranged on his own
for these signs, "What about the Hughes loan, Dick?" in Chinese
Howard Hughes. In Chinese there was no word for Hughes, so it was
"huge," but it was in Chinese. [Laughs] But that drove Nixon nuts
a little bit. That s the only involvement. Tuck was back in
Washington he really was Dutton s guy. That s the only involvement
Tuck had in our 62 campaign. He did it all on his own. It was
marvelous, or at least we thought it was. Those kinds of dirty
tricks somewhat different from 72.
Transcriber:
Final Typist:
Justin Connell
Marie Herold
39
TAPE GUIDE - Richard Kline
Date of Interview: April 29, 1977
tape 1, side A
tape 1, side B
tape 2, side A
tape 2, side B 33
40
INDEX Richard Kline
Anderson, Glenn, 26-27
blacks. See Negroes
Bradley, Don, 3, 17, 31
Bright, Tom M. , 2
Brown, Edmund G. , Sr. (Pat), 10
Brown-Unruh conflicts, 13-15, 21-23
legislative program, 2-3, 4, 12, 21-22, 24-25
personnel, 31-34
political appointments, 16-18, 22-23, 32, 33
Brown, Ralph, 16
California Democratic Council (CDC), 12-14, 16-17, 25
California State, Department of Motor Vehicles, 1962 scandal, 2
Calif ornians Against Proposition 14, 2, 18, 20
Casady, Simon, 25
Champion, Hale, 1, 3, 16-17
Christian, Winslow, 26
Christopher, George, 29
Committee for the Preservation of the Democratic Party in California, 7-8
Cranston, Alan, 16-18, 32
death penalty, 2, 4, 11, 12
Democratic national convention, 1960, 2, 11
Dutton, Fred, 1, 25-26, 32
election campaigns, California and national
1962, 2-8, 10-11, 14-15, 36-38
1964, 16-20
1966, 5, 29
Engle, Clair, 10, 16-17
Engle, Mrs. Clair (Lu) , 16, 18
fair housing. See also Watts riot
Proposition 14 (1964), 2, 8, 18-21
Rumford Act, 2, 18
federal-state relationship, 21, 24
41
Haldeman, H.R. See Committee for Preservation of the Democratic Party in
California
Johnson, Lyndon B., 19-21, 25, 27
Keene, Jim, 20
Kennedy, John F., 6, 10-12, 14, 20, 23
Kent, Roger, 7-8, 11
McCone Commission, 28
media
billboards, 19
bumper stickers, 19
newspapers, 5, 11-12, 36, 38
television, 5, 6, 10, 37
Mexican-Americans , 8
Miller, George, Jr., 13
Mosk, Stanley, 16
Murphy, George L. , 18-20
National Press Club, 11-12
Negroes
black voters in Los Angeles, 5, 8-9
See also fair housing, Watts riot
Nixon, Richard M. , 3, 5-9
Sullivan, Virgil, 4
Parker, William (Bill), 26-27, 29
race relations, 23-24. See also Watts riot
Reagan, Ronald, 5, 29
Republicans for Brown, 11
Rumford Act. See fair housing
Salinger, Pierre, 16-20
42
University of California, Berkeley campus
Clark Kerr, 25-26
student sit-ins, 24, 26
Unruh, Jesse, 13-15, 16, 18, 21-22
Vietnam War, effect on country, 24-25, 29
Warren, Earl, Jr. , 11
Watts riot, 8, 26-29
Yorty, Samuel W. (Sam), 29
Regional Oral History Office University of California
The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California
Governmental History Documentation Project
Goodwin Knight /Edmund Brown, Sr. Era
Frank Mesple
FROM CLOVIS TO THE CAPITOL:
BUILDING A CAREER AS A LEGISLATIVE LIAISON
An Interview Conducted by
James H. Rowland
in 1978
Copyright (c} 1981 by the Regents of the University of California
FRANK MESPLE
TABLE OF CONTENTS Frank Mesple"
INTERVIEW HISTORY i
I CDC AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY: POINTS OF UNITY AND CONFLICT 1
II PERSONAL HISTORY 5
A Faculty Fellow to Governor Brown 5
As Assistant Campaign Manager: 1962 6
III CDC VERSUS JESSE UNRUH 10
IV COURT-ORDERED REAPPORTIONMENT: CHALLENGING THE RURAL-DOMINATED
SENATE 18
Senate Reacts to Warren Court Decision 18
Governor Brown s Blue Ribbon Commission 21
Legislative Bickering Over Reapportionment 22
Miller and the Standard Oil Lobby 27
A Two-Way Street Agreement: Senate and Assembly Reapportionment 29
A Veto of Liberal Retirement Benefits 31
V THE BRACERO PROGRAM CONTROVERSY 34
Farmers Early Support for Pat Brown 34
Lobbying the Federal Government 37
Ending the Bracero Program: Conflicts with Farmers 38
A Master Plan for Migratory Workers 40
Non-Farm Support for Bracero Program 42
Agribusiness and Governmental Relations in Sacramento 43
Conflicts Between Legislative Houses and the Governor s Office 46
VI LEGISLATIVE SECRETARIES UNDER GOVERNOR BROWN 53
VII GOVERNOR BROWN VERSUS JESSE UNRUH: A CONFLICT OF AMBITIONS 56
TAPE GUIDE 59
APPENDIX A - Senators Elected in 1966, After Reapportionment 60
APPENDIX B - Tax Reform Proposal 61
INDEX 62
INTERVIEW HISTORY
Frank Mesple was interviewed by the Regional Oral History Office for
the Goodwin Knight-Edmund G. Brown, Sr. segment of its Governmental History
Documentation Project. Mr. Mesple 1 s years as cabinet and legislative secretary
from 1961 to 1966 made him a valuable advisor to our project and an important
interviewee in our documentation of legislation, issues, and events as seen
from the governor s office during the Pat Brown administration.
Frank Mesple entered the governor s office in 1961 as a faculty-fellow
from San Francisco State University. Born and raised in the rural setting of
Clovis, California and known affectionately as the "fig picker" among his
Sacramento colleagues Mr. Mesple followed his interest in political science
from Fresno State College to the Georgetown University School of Foreign
Service. He shifted career goals and returned to California to pursue a
graduate program in political science at Stanford University. While studying
at Stanford, he joined the political science faculty at San Francisco State
University where he remained until his acceptance as a faculty-fellow to
Governor Brown s office in 1961.
At the end of Governor Brown s second term in 1966, Mr. Mesple returned
to teaching political science at San Francisco State University and later at
the University of California, Davis. In addition to teaching, he assumed a
lobbyist position for Sacramento County, maintaining his office across the
street from the capitol building. He was active in teaching and lobbying
until his untimely death in October, 1979.
My first meeting with Mr. Mesple occurred in August, 1977 at his
Sacramento office. I was interviewing Frank Mesple on the subject of the
California Senate Un-American Activities Committee, the topic of my master s
thesis at San Francisco State University. At our first meeting I was moved
by Mr. Mesple s warmth and humor and inspired by his encyclopedic knowledge
of personalities and events. I was looking forward to further interview
sessions.
Further sessions with Mr. Mesple continued in my role as interviewer
for the Knight-Brown Project. Our next meeting was again held in his
Sacramento County lobbyist office at the corner of llth and L Streets directly
across from the capitol building. I came upon Frank Mesple at work at his
desk and wearing one of his favorite blue suits with classic wide suspenders.
He greeted me with his customary broad grin and outstretched hand, scurried
about for a chair, and settled down for a two-hour interview session that f
captured the personal, political and analytical dimensions of Frank Mesple.
Among the subjects we covered in our first Knight-Brown interview were
Frank Mesple s personal history, the twists and turns of Democratic party
politics in the Brown era and the challenge to the rural-dominated senate
ii
through court-ordered reapportionment . I was again enthralled by Mr. Mesple /T s
ability to recall personalities and programs of twenty years past in a way
that would breathe life into our study of state government.
Our second interview was held at the Regional Oral History Office at the
University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Mesple continued his rich narration
colored with charming wit and anecdotes. The decision to terminate the
bracer o program, the staffing of the governor s office, and the feuding
between Governor Brown and Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh were among the topics
that Mr. Mesple covered in our final interview.
After rough editing, the interview transcript was forwarded to Mr. Mesple
for final review. He made a point of personally returning the transcript to
our office to hammer out the final interview from the rough transcript. The
final version reflects Mr. Mesple s penchant for detail and accuracy as noted
in the list of post-reapportionment senators found in the appendix.
The epilogue to the Frank Mesple oral history memoir contains an
obituary from the Sacramento Bee. Frank Mesple died unexpectedly of a heart
attack at the age of fifty-three. As a man of charm, wit, warmth, and intellect
he attracted a broad range of friends and followers. In a final tribute to
Frank Mesple , a memorial service was held in the capitol building shortly
after his death. The eulogies given touched on varied remembrances of
Frank Mesple : the "fig picker" from Clovis; the keen, astute political
scientist and teacher; the man who spent each Thursday night at the Sacramento
Children s Receiving Home exploring stamp collecting with some of those less
fortunate.
The following memoir has preserved those sides of Frank Mesple as he
probed and analyzed California s political history during the Pat Brown era.
I
James H. Rowland
Interviewer-Editor
5 November 1979
Regional Oral History Office
486 The Bancroft Library
University of California at Berkeley
I CDC AND DEMOCRATIC PARTY: POINTS OF UNITY AND CONFLICT
[Interview 1: July 17, 1978] #//
Mesple: Dr. Alan Sokolow at the University of California, Davis has the
monograph on the committee chairmanships as senate reapportionment
affected them. But obviously, the greatest impact
Rowland: What was that name again?
Mesple: Al Sokolow. S-o-k-o-l-o-w. I ve got it here somewhere. It s
an Institute of Governmental Affairs publication out of University
of California, Davis. I m sure you can buy one, or check one out
of the UC Berkeley library.
You re going to do reapportionment as a part of the Knight-
Brown project?
Right.
I see.
We re doing issues, legislation, and events during the Knight-
Brown years.
I was hoping they d do one on insights into Pat Brown, that might
have been related to issues, but really delved more into the
intimacy of the office. Sort of what they did with Earl Warren:
an insight into the man, into personal relationships, how he ran
an office, his weaknesses and his foibles, his strengths, and so
forth.
Rowland: That s certainly one direction that Amelia Fry is following, during
her interviews with [Edmund G.] Pat Brown. She s been having regular
interviews with him, and she s been following that theme quite closely.
Rowland :
Mesple :
Rowland:
Mesple :
MThis symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun
or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 59.
Mesple: If you re doing the study of senate reapportionment, the first chapter
of Don Allen s Legislative Sourcebook could very well explain what
happened to California. Very few people understand that California
started with a heavy population concentration in the Bay Area and the
Mother Lode, and then it s all moved to southern California.
So what you d like to talk about today is more exclusively
65- 66; that is, senate reapportionment during those years?
Rowland: Well, following two topics: first the structure and changes within
the Democratic party, the California Democratic Council (CDC) and
the State Democratic Central Committee; secondly, senate reapportion
ment efforts in 1965, when the final reapportionment bill was passed.
Mesple: With the CDC I can give you some specific and general views, particu
larly dealing with the dumping of CDC president Si [Simon] Casaday
in the election of Charles Warren. Also, I can give you the general
relationship of the governor to CDC and its changing character. It s
my view that there s an inherent and general conflict between grass
roots political organizations , particularly those that develop when
the party is out of office. Then grass-roots political organizations
can afford to be very programmatic and specific. They can attack all
of the inadequacies of the opposition incumbent party and they can vow
to do all sorts of things when they get in. And then when their party
gets in, they realize that the making of laws and the necessity of
compromise and negotiation means that they can t really do one hundred
percent of what they ve set out to do. I think that was amply illus
trated with the CDC and the Democratic officials they helped elect.
Although I would say on behalf of the CDC and the Democratic party
that I never guessed that when the CDC came into office after the
election of November of 1958, they would have come as close as they
did to basically accomplishing the platform of the party and of the
CDC. They really had an ambitious platform at the Fresno CDC
convention.
But you have two points of conflict: you have those officials
who were in office long before the CDC was ever invented, who were
the bipartisan oriented Democrats, who had risen politically under
cross-filing. (I ll bring up the other point later.) This group
failed by design to become too closely attached to the Democratic
party, because it wasn t to their advantage to do so. It was to
their advantage to be all things to all people, politically. Now
some of them were exceedingly loyal to general party positions.
But nonetheless, the bipartisan oriented Democrats didn t want
to go out on election day and insist they were Democrats, no more
than Republicans wanted to be identified with their national party.
They came from districts where you could easily win, where no one
knew whether you were a Democrat or a Republican, where there was no
party to hold you accountable, and where you appeared on the
ballot without party designation. Incumbents had a built-in
Mesple : advantage. In the 1946 election, the one hundred seats up for
election twenty Senators and eighty Assemblymen ninety percent
of them were decided in the primary election. Well, there s nothing
a candidate likes better than to be elected in the June primary and
to forget about the November general. Well, with the end of cross-
filing and the insistence by the CDC that you take a strong or
responsible party position, it meant to the Democratic incumbents
that you couldn t have this luxury any longer.
So you had two I ve covered just the bipartisan Democrats;
that is, the pre-party Democrats who were in politics before there
was much of a Democratic party. Under the present California
election laws, you are what you are. If you say you re a Democrat,
you re a Democrat and if you say you re a Republican, you re a
Republican. But that didn t even appear on the ballot under cross-
filing until 1954. You could run for the nomination on both
tickets. So, that was the pre-party aspect of it. In 1959, the
legislature enacted, and Governor Brown signed a law ending cross-
filing.
The other aspect were those who got into office essentially
because of the efforts of the CDC nominating convention; and the
fact that you had somewhere between seventy and ninety thousand
CDC members, who would go out and walk precincts. The CDC developed
the so-called slate mailer; in other words, the post cards that
went out to registered Democrats saying, "Vote the following
party ticket." These people came into Sacramento pretty well
committed, and oftentimes they themselves hadn t even been involved
in CDC affairs. But the natural tendency that I mentioned earlier
happened: if they had failed to vote the "party line," they were
immediately suspect by the CDC. For instance, if a legislator
failed to be strongly for the recognition of Red China which
was a deadly political position to take, they were "suspect"
by many in the CDC.
Rowland: That was a later issue, however.
Mesple : Yes, a later issue. But, if they d failed to satisfy the more
liberal elements of CDC, they were considered turncoats. I must
add and then I ll drop it and let you ask your question that I
think there were a lot of the people who gained office through
the CDC and then said, "Hell, I don t want those characters telling
me how to vote, and doing a voting analysis on me. I can win
without them." Some legislators would build up their own apparatus
for reelection. So it cut both ways.
Legislators didn t like scorecards and the CDC didn t like
the negotiation and compromise so necessary in any legislative
process .
Rowland: We don t have much background on you. The interview you gave with
Amelia Fry didn t get into the details of how you acquired your
position as legislative secretary.
Mesple: Oh, it s very simple.
II PERSONAL HISTORY
Rowland: First, though, because this is a formal tape, and it will be used
by researchers , we would like to include a few items on your family
background.
Mesple: Well, I don t know how far back do you want to go? But since it
was a politically interesting aspect and much was made of it, I
was always called "the fig picker" around Sacramento. That s because
I was born and raised in a little family farm in the area of Clovis,
California and I went to the local schools there. I continued on
to Fresno State College, where I graduated and stayed on for a year
as an instructor. But then I did graduate work at Georgetown
University in their school of foreign service of all things, which
I chidingly tell people adequately prepares one for work in and
around the state. capital.
Then after Georgetown, where I graduated with a master s degree
in foreign service, I decided not to go into the foreign service for
two reasons: first of all, I flunked the foreign language exam and
had to retake it. Secondly, by this time Joe McCarthy was around
and the foreign service morale was very low. Also, I had married
and had begun to have a family, and decided to work on a Ph.D. at
Stanford. So I went to Stanford and began working immediately as a
teacher at San Francisco State College. By this time it was 1950.
I was there as an instructor from 50 until I joined Governor Brown s
staff on January 6, 1961. I was chosen by what was then called the
Citizenship Clearing House which later became the National Center
for Education in Politics.
A Faculty Fellow to Governor Brown
Rowland: You were a faculty fellow, too?
Mesple : Yes, I was a faculty fellow to Governor Brown s office, for one
year but I stayed on; never went back to San Francisco State,
except I have continued always to teach at least a class, either
Mesple: a night class at San Francisco State, or one class a year at
UC Davis.
Rowland: Did you ever get your Ph.D.?
Mesple : No .
So that s how I got to Sacramento, strictly by fate. Also,
I had taught a sort of an extra class at San Francisco State. I d
get six or eight students and get them involved in campaigns in
and around San Francisco. A little private foundation had always
given me a hundred or two hundred dollars a year to help out on
that project. So when the Citizenship Clearing House ran this
program of choosing two Democrat and two Republican professors
nationwide and pairing them off with Democrat or Republican
governors or senators, I was chosen.
Rowland: This was a competitive application?
Mesple: I don t know. I just got a phone call one day from New Brunswick,
New Jersey; the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University handled
it. Don Herzberg, who later became quite a confidant of Jesse
Unruh s and who has written a good deal of articles on state
government, came out and interviewed me on a Monday. I think,
on a Tuesday afternoon or a Wednesday, we drove up here and talked
very briefly with Pat Brown. It was the first time I had really
had any personal conversation with him. I came on to Brown s
staff then in 61 and stayed for his last six years. I came on
really as a utility infielder. I was used wherever needed. I
helped with legislation. I didn t know it until later, but I
was given about a dozen legislators with whom the governor s
office had no rapport whatsoever. The legislators had a low
regard for the governor. They found him an impossible person to
deal with and considered his staff even worse. And so I developed
at least some dialogue with them. Toward the end of the 1961
session, I did bill analysis. I would fill in for other staff
members when they would take vacations. I also served as depart
ment secretary and with the press secretary; I did everything except
the legal areas where, not being an attorney, I could not very
well fill in.
As Assistant Campaign Manager: 1962
Mesple: Then in November of 62, after the legislature had gone home, I
took leave, technically and legally, of the governor s office and
joined the Brown for Governor campaign. I served in that election
Frank Mesple on the campus of
Georgetown University, School of
Foreign Service, Washington, D.C.
1949
Frank Mesple Family, 1957
left to right: Blanche, Eli, Bertha,
Henry, mother Fely, Ivan, Ed, Frank,
Elise, father Emile
Lincoln Grammar School, Clovis, California, 1938
Frank Mesple seated in second row, 4th from left
Mesple: as the assistant campaign manager. There were several assistant
campaign managers; I don t want to leave the impression that I
was the number two man on the campaign. (I moved to Los Angeles
with my family.) My basic function during that campaign really
was to operate, in the sense and degree that they were operated,
the "committees" for Pat Brown. In those days, there still was
quite a little of that done. Oh, Brown s campaign was actually
started about November of 1961 since Nixon declared himself a
candidate fifteen months before the election. Consequently,
we had a long haul. But I had headed up such monumental efforts
as the Barbers for Brown and the Chinese Americans for Brown. It
was all under an umbrella called Citizens for Brown, distinguished,
I guess, from Aliens for Brown.
But I would say the most serious effort on my behalf was to
try to put the CDC element (the volunteer element) and the
professional paid political staff reasonably together, so that
at least they wouldn t be fighting but cooperating as much as
possible. I traveled with the governor extensively. Then I came
back in 63, after the election, to serve on the staff the remain
ing four years.
Rowland: What was your previous background with the Democratic party prior
to joining the Brown staff?
Mesple : Oh, walking an occasional precinct and always interested and inolved
as a citizen. But I had no outstanding record of party activity
even though I was an active volunteer.
Rowland: For his 58 campaign?
Mesple : No. In fact, at that time, I was in Washington, D.C. So it really
was a fluke. I did not come as one who had labored in the vine
yards and who had worked my way up.
But having come here, I think, without sounding self serving,
I found an intuitive interest and the capacity to kind of fill in
wherever needed, because I never considered myself any great
authority on any given area. But with a very profound interest
in politics, and I was one who was always willing to take a trip
with the governor, or cover a conference or be involved in almost
anything.
Rowland: Were there some conflicts with people who had a lot of party work,
felt that you were just a newcomer to the ranks?
Mesple : No, I never felt that at all. I can always remember the first
day I was here. An old staffer, Frank [A.] Chambers, who I think
liked to shock people (we later became the very best of friends)
Mesple: was less than gracious. But I came to find out later that that
was just his style. He didn t think college professors added much
to the political arena. And I would say, particularly with the
old senate, that I had to overcome a little of that. But I think,
coming from a farm background and having always worked in canneries,
and in the fields, I think I was of some interest to them because I
didn t fit the usual stereotype of the academic, which I ve never
considered myself.
Rowland: Were these turning points in your life?
Mesple 7 : I think I milked that a little. I liked it. I mean, I liked to
be known as a "pearf inder"; no one ever knows what a pearfinder is.
To a lot of people, that s a hell of a lot more interesting than
being a college professor, of which there are many, and who are
generally thought of as being in ivory towers .
There was an anti-academic attitude in Sacramento, not so
much as having a political attitude of taking on the unversity.
I think the university was pretty well treated when I got to the
governor s office from the state colleges. But the academician,
in politics was an unusual person, and he was generally uncomfort
able in and around the old politicians and vice versa. Academicians
always wanted to know why people voted the way they did, and they
were always doing studies on folks.
Hugh [M. ] Burns typified a lot of that suspicion of
academicians. He didn t think students or professors ought to
spend much time around political activity. They should just go
home and let us do our work. But like I say, I think we could
talk the same language and tell the same stories or different
ones. Burns used to say, "This Mesple is all right if he just
wouldn t go around the state talking about what we do up here.
The less they know the better off we ll all be."
Rowland: Is there a history of Democratic support and activism in your
family?
Mesple : Oh, yes. But it was different; it was because of French parents,
a large family, a father who was formally uneducated, but who was
a very avid Democrat for one simple reason: it was the party of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. As one goes through
the Central Valleys and looks at that generation, at my generation ,
the first what do you call them the first generation, from
western European, or southern European, or Armenian ancestors,
you ll find they were overwhelmingly Democrats because of Woodrow
Wilson during World War I and FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] in
the Depression.
Mesple: A matter of great interest to me is why so many of the second and
third generations have become generally conservative. It s not
hard to find; they have become successful farmers. In many instances,
those that are left have generally become reasonably wealthy and
have tended to follow the lines of agribusiness.
So I remained in my home town, kind of a stranger politically.
But my own family tends to be very liberal. We have always tended
to support the cause of farm workers. Even though we hired farm
workers, we had all worked in farms and had a general sympathy
toward farm workers. Plus the feeling that, if you worked on a
farm, and the worker working next to you was getting paid a
dollar an hour, that really was about all your work was worth.
But at any rate, I got to Sacramento, I worked the election
campaign, and I got to know many of the legislators better through
the 1962 campaign; after all, the governor was hanging on in 1962.
We had begun seventeen percentage points behind in the polls against
Richard Nixon and we ultimately won by approximately three hundred
thousand. I received one of my first political lessons in that
campaign. When we started out, there weren t too many of the
legislators that wanted the governor in their districts. But as
the election neared we found Brown more and better received.
10
III CDC VERSUS JESSE UNRUH
Rowland: What was your relationship with the CDC during that 62 campaign?
Mesple : I d just about gotten to know most of the CDC leadership: Joe Wyatt,
Toby Osos, Shirley Filiatrault. Also, I d gotten to know a lot of
the people in the local clubs and, being liberally inclined, I
tended to speak their langauge and tended to support the volunteer
in politics.
Rowland: The CDC played a very active role in Democratic politics
Mesple : In 62, they still were a very, very important element. What you
have to understand about the 62 election was that they had begun
to disintegrate because of the problems I have mentioned: the fact
that the CDC and many of the Democratic incumbents had had falling-
outs. Even the CDC and the governor, a very liberal governor, were
not as close as they had been in 1958. They had begun to have
reservations of their affections for Pat Brown. But the CDC was
all united in their deep distaste for Richard Nixon.
Rowland: Why had the CDC lost their affection for Pat Brown?
Mesple : Well, because Brown had to do business with Assembly Speaker Unruh,
for one thing. Jesse would always extract his pound of flesh;
Jesse had turned against the CDC.
Rowland: How could he turn against the CDC?
Mesple : Oh, there was a specific bill: AB 2922, the Truth in Endorsement
Bill of 1962.
Rowland: I think I know the one you mean. It required the CDC to become
an unofficial endorsing group within the party.
Mesplel Well, the one that made it quite clear what was actually the fact
anyway, that they were unofficial. But Unruh made the CDC print a
disclaimer on their materials, and then Jesse had tried to start
11
Mesple: something called the DVC Democratic Volunteers Committee which
was an anti-CDC operation. Now, your question touches upon a part
of my role in the 62 campaign. CDC chapters, (if you ll go back
and check this) tended to be, oftentimes, most strongly entrenched
in areas where Democrats were an institutionalized minority like
the Pasadena club and the Mar in County group, for instance. There
were a number of areas where, because they were the minority and
were still the outs, they tended to be well organized, very
articulate, and very demanding. I mean, they really expected people
to understand their view and to elect "good people," and so forth.
Well, our problem in 62 was not carrying Pasadena or Marin
County. I don t want to say Jesse was overly prominent in the
campaign, but in the closing days, Jesse Unruh was placed in charge
of getting out the vote in the south and that s always the issue
facing any Democratic candidate. The votes were usually there,
but they re not in Pasadena. They re in Watts, and San Pedro;
they re in areas which oftentimes did not have much political
organization.
So my job was to try to get Democratic volunteers to swallow
hard and accept the fact that their "hated enemy," Jesse Unruh, was
being brought in to the Brown campaign, that people were being paid
ten dollars a day to go out and work to get the vote out, that
Larry Margolis, Unruh s lieutenant-aide, was sort of put in charge
of a lot of things that the volunteers thought they ought to be in
charge of. And so, my function at that point was to try to keep
the conflicts to a minimum.
The CDC origins go back to the [Alan] Cranston years and even back
to the [Adlai E.] Stevenson campaigns.
It goes back really to the reaction to the 1952 campaign of
Stevenson and his defeat and their meeting in Asilomar, California.
A valuable source for you would be Don Bradley, now in charge of
what s called the Bradley Group, a professional campaign office
in San Francisco, and, of course, Senator Alan Cranston.
Rowland: Would Richard Richards be a good source?
Rowland :
Mesple:
Mesple:
Yes, Richard Richards and Paul Ward, who works in Sacramento for
the American Hospital Association. And Hal [Harold] Winkler, who
was on Senator George Miller, Jr. s staff. All of these people.
Also Joe Wyatt, who is down in Los Angeles in a law firm.
12
Rowland: I don t recall us going over why Unruh was hostile to the CDC.
Mesplel Well, I can t speak for him, and it s a little gratuitous, but it
would seem to be almost a natural tendency, if you understood
Jesse Unruh s personality and what the CDC hoped to accomplish.
The two couldn t co-exist. Unruh wanted a strong assembly, but he
wanted a strong assembly under the Speaker. He didn t necessarily
want a strong assembly of doctrinaire Democrats. I don t think it
was any great secret that Jesse would give his blessing and his
financial aid to those who supported him. Now this isn t to say
that Jesse was not committed to some very liberal programs.
Pat Brown once said that Jesse Unruh would never have risen to be
Speaker without his, Pat Brown s, acquiesence and blessing. But
he also said, "I would never have achieved what I did, particularly
in the 1959 session, had it not been for the tremendous ability and
help of Jesse Unruh." So Jesse was not an illiberal person. But
Jesse was a pragmatist.
And Jesse would sometimes support, for example, Republicans
against Democrats in an election. Now I don t know that this has
been ever publicly proved or discussed, and I m sure Jesse would
do it usually in those cases where he felt the Democrat didn t
have a chance anyway. But a CDC man supported that person regard
less of his chances if he was philosophically "pure" and
ideologically correct.
Jesse had Republicans who he could count on for votes in
critical issues in the legislature. And particularly, votes
that he could count on on organizational issues; in other words,
who s going to run the shop. To an assembly Speaker, it s important
that you keep forty-one of those legislators around. Whereas to
the CDC, that was a sellout. There were a lot of bills that would
have been difficult for me to support, even though I tended to be
sympathetic and supportive of the CDC. I would have to say that
there were a lot of issues on which you could not have pleased
them and stayed in office. You couldn t be up front on recognition
of Red China in those days. You had to swallow. Because you knew
damn good and well that the polls showed that public opinion was
four or five to one against you. The CDC was probably right, if
you want to judge history by right or wrong, but politically it
would have been very self-defeating.
Rowland: Now, Unruh versus the CDC appears to have had some affect on the
primary battle for Glair Engle s U.S. Senate seat in 1964.
Mesple : Yes. Well, again, I can only tell you my impressions, and yes,
Jesse was very much involved. Pierre Salinger came to California
ultimately by his own decision, but I don t think there was much
13
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple :
Rowland ;
Mesple:
secret that Jesse Unruh was urging him to come. The reason for
that, you ll have to talk to the principals. But it was pretty
obvious that Unruh and Cranston disliked each other intensely. It
was generally written off as a struggle to see who was going to win
elections who was going to succeed in terms of the head of the party,
A clash of future ambitions. In many cases, it was more than that.
Wasn t Roger Kent head of the party?
Roger Kent is very outspoken in his anger and animosity at both the
Republicans and some Democrats. But he didn t care for Jesse.
Pat Brown was ambivalent regarding the Cranston versus
Salinger race, it seemed to me, if you re interested in that.
Pat Brown realized the tremendous power that Unruh had. And it was
this periodic attempt to get along with Jesse. And then other
instances he would seem to rebel, and say, "My God, he can t do
this to the governor." Brown always had a deep feeling of the
"office." It was above the man, and I think he was very sincere
in that. I don t think he used that as a defense.
\
He, for example, was very angered at a series of cartoons in
the San Francisco Chronicle, done by [Robert] Bastian, on the water
plan. One cartoon showed Governor Brown in a wine bottle dressed
in a tuxedo, and obviously sloshed. The bottle was entitled, "The
California Water Plan," and it was during a difficult phase in that
legislative battle. The caption read, "Never mind how I got in
here, just help me get out." Brown actually cursed over that one.
He said they should never do that to a governor. And one of the
problems in his relationship with Jesse Unruh was this same
thing. He felt that Jesse was not adequately I don t want to use
the word reverent that s the wrong word.
Some commentators said that Unruh s politics reminded them of big
boss politics.
Oh, sure, the Big Daddy image: Jesse raised dough and spent dough,
which no other Speaker had done much before him. I don t want to
appear to be equating Artie Samish with Jesse Unruh, but Jesse
Unruh really developed the ability to raise money through the
speakership, and then dole it out.
You see, this was another problem he had with CDC. It
wasn t volunteer politics. But if Jesse threw a dinner at the
Palladium, he d fill it at two hundred and fifty a seat. That would
give him, maybe, two hundred thousand dollars. He could do one
north, one south, and he had the money. People would go to an
assembly Speaker s dinner, particularly an assembly Speaker like
Jesse Unruh, who could kill or pass legislation pretty much as he
14
Rowland :
Mesple:
Mesple: wanted, or at least kill it in the assembly. I don t want to
leave the impression that he was up here in the assembly with
seventy-nine nonentities. But in those areas where the legislature
is the broker between banks and savings and loans, between oil drillers
and oil distributors, between milk producers and milk processors,
the assembly Speaker can pretty well indicate where things ought
to go.
You ve been talking about Brown and Unruh s relationship, but what
about Unruh and Senate pro tern Hugh Burns s relationship?
Yes. If you don t mind, I want to go back and finish one thing.
I think you can get some intimacy here that doesn t usually make
the papers, and you won t find in books.
If Pat asked Hugh [M.J Burns and the senate leadership to come
down to the governor s office, the governor wants to talk to you,
Burns would say, "What time do you want us?" and "Who do you want?"
and they d be there. Hugh Burns, although philosophically very
much at odds with Governor Brown, always called him "Governor" and
respected him as a co-equal member of the government.
When Pat asked Jesse to come down to the governor s office
Unruh would think about it. Then, Unruh would negotiate on time,
and negotiate on who should be there. Unruh would be very upset
if the governor had staff around; he and Finance Director Hale
Champion never got along at all; it was always a struggle. Brown
would always be teed off, to put it mildly; he would be totally
angered by Jesse, the general, showing up late, drifting in with
the assembly leadership, and with nearly always an aura of contention.
Now, what about Unruh and Burns?
Rowland: These are two major Democratic legislative leaders. Jesse Unruh
possibly representing the southern California power, and Hugh Burns
from the Central Valley.
Mesplel Yes. Totally different in style: Burns, of course, had come here
in the mid- thirties. Burns came here as a real liberal, was almost
elected Speaker of the assembly, and then moved over to the senate
in 1943. Remember that Burns became politically successful not
because he was a Democrat, but because he could run a house of
consensus, where he could put Democrats and Republicans together.
Remember he was elected President pro tern of the state Senate,
with two Republican votes: one was Randy Collier who later became a
Democrat. And then the second was a state senator, Louis Sutton , from
Maxwell in Colusa County.
15
Mesple: I don t think that Brown and Unru h were very dear to each other.
I think Unruh did convince Hugh Burns that the legislature had
become, essentially, the second branch of government, and that the
governor tended to dominate the legislature. I might just add
parenthetically that Jesse Unruh believed what I think most other
people did: the assembly was in turn dominated by the senate.
Rowland Did Unruh believe that?
Mesple: Well, Unruh believed it in that he saw it, initially. He didn t
like senate dominance. I think his efforts were to raise the status
of the assembly. That s why Unruh clashed with Senator [George J.]
Miller [Jr.]. The senate used to pretty much get its way on most
issues. A celebrated instance was when Randolph Collier, Chairman
of the Senate Transportation Committee, was not letting assembly
bills out of his Senate Transportation Committee. Unruh went
from the assembly floor to the presiding chair, and simply called
all Collier bills, no matter where they were in the assembly, and
referred them all to the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.
You did not need a Ph.D. in political science to know that Unruh
wanted to protect his house and teach Collier a little humility.
It wasn t long before Randy Collier was seen going over to
visit the Speaker. I suspect if one had a recording of that
conversation, he could sell eight million copies, because never
before had a senator been treated that way by a mere Speaker of
the assembly.
Rowland: Certainly a senior senator.
Mesple: Yes, a senior senator. So, you have some evidence that Jesse was
seeking to create a second house that was equal to the first.
Rowland: So did Burns and Unruh have a good working relationship?
Mesple : Well, Burns and Unruh worked out this Hughie-Jesse bit with the
press conferences. The governor would have his Tuesday press
conference and then you d have the "Hughie-Jesse" show, or press
conference that would follow. Pat Brown was usually angered by
them; Jesse for his fairly constant criticism and Hugh Burns
for being the supporting cast. But I think Hugh Burns went along
with it; number one, because he didn t like the notion of Jesse
sort of dominating the papers and the press
Burns didn t like the fact that Jesse Unruh tended to be
considered the top dog. I think Hughie wanted his house recognized
and heard from. A part of it was also that Hugh Burns felt that
Brown was a little too liberal, although I think that Hugh Burns
16
Mesple: always respected him as the governor. I don t think Burns always
agreed with Brown s policies, by any means. The Rumford Fair
Housing Act was the clearest example of that. That s wher. Hugh Burns
really lost control of his house.
So in the latter years, I think you had Burns going along
with Unruh; not joining him philosophically, but joining him on
practical grounds. Number one, Burns never liked the CDC; they
were a bunch of "left-wing nuts." With Unruh taking on the CDC,
Burns was willing to join him publicly in that. Now, I can t say
what all went into those negotiations.
Then, subsequently, there was the dramatic falling out, and
the celebrated case under Reagan, where let me see if I can get
these facts straight. You ll have to go back and look up the story.
But it s an interesting episode, and as a student of government
you d be intrigued by it. But let me see if I can get it roughly
straight.
The legislature had come to the end of a session in 1968;
they had agreed under the joint rules to adjourn on a given day.
This was, however, when there were one year sessions without any
constitutional deadlines. They had agreed that they were going
to end on a Friday, and Reagan had refused to go along with some
legislation. Again, my memory fails me this morning; I can t
remember precisely what it was, but I believe maybe there was
some Reagan vetoes that Unruh wanted to overturn.
Reagan had left for a Republican National Convention. The
Lieutenant Governor Ed Reinecke was with him. So the President
pro tern of the Senate, Hugh Burns was the acting governor. (God,
I m struggling for the facts in the case.) But at any rate, Unruh
wanted to keep the legislature in session; Burns wanted to adjourn
it. Burns wanted adjournment because he did not want to embarrass
Reagan. And so, Burns now as acting governor, not as President
pro tern of the Senate, simply issued the proclamation that said
the legislature was no longer in session.* Jesse sputtered and
fumed, kept the assembly here a day or two all by themselves, and
finally the assembly disappeared and went home.
So there had been some sharpness between Burns and Unruh. I
would guess that when Burns left the senate in 1970, and ran for
secretary of state in the primary against Jerry [Edmund G.] Brown
[Jr.], was beaten by one and three quarter million to about half
a million, Burns supported Reagan for governor in 1970; he headed
the Democrats for Reagan in 1974.
* In cases when the two houses cannot agree on adjournment, the
governor is empowered to break the deadlock.
17
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland:
Mesple:
Mesple : Burns found Reagan relatively acceptable. In fact, in many ways,
I think he found him downright convivial.
Let s put it this way: Burns found Reagan acceptable because
Reagan fired UC President Clark Kerr.
Yes, that s right. You ve touched upon probably the most significant
reason why they got along together so well: they both shared a deep
animosity to Clark Kerr. Brown did not share that animosity.
So then the schism within the traditional party ranks came later on
during the Reagan years? It appears that during the Pat Brown years,
there was the Democratic party represented by Pat Brown, Unruh, and
Burns in the leadership, which was pretty strong.
It s my contention that the traditional Democratic party has always
been a Janus-like thing. It s always been divided. So when you
say "represents the traditional party," I don t know which one you re
speaking of. Because the traditional party of the 1930s, ^Os, and
50s included very conservative Democrats from the Valley and
elsewhere, and the very liberal ones.
Rowland: Well, as loose as party identity is in California
Mesple : As loose as it is yes. You see, that s one of your problems,
that we tend to think of the parties in terms of presidential
candidacies, usually, or gubernatorial candidacies.
But you ll notice that Jerry Brown didn t get it will be
interesting to see what happens this year. Because supposedly,
the populace has moved rightward. And God knows that the governor,
Jerry Brown, has moved rightward. But you find eight nonentities
getting twenty- two percent, and then you re going to find a dramatic
drop-off, particularly in the Valley, in the area of the more
conservative Democrats, where a lot of people didn t vote either
for Jerry Brown or the eight non-entities. So we ll see where that
one goes.
18
IV COURT-ORDERED REAPPORTIONMENT : CHALLENGING THE RURAL-
DOMINATED SENATE
Senate Reacts to Warren Court Decision
Rowland: From the research I was doing and by talking with the few people
at the Regional Oral History Office, they felt that the CDC and
the Democratic State Central Committee represented an urban versus
rural conflict. And as the reapportionment question went, it
appeared that the battle of senate reapportionment was the rural
domination of the senate versus the urban demands of Los Angeles
County to increase its representation.
Mesple: Well, I m not saying that that s untrue, but I think that is
a very superficial view of the senate. Of course, the Democratic
State Central Committee and the senate tended to overrepresent the
rural, conservative interests. That s what central committees are
all about: they primarily represent incumbents. If the senate,
that was basically rural, mountain rural and valley rural, created
a central committee (they appoint central committee members together
with the few county chairmen) sure it would be rural and more
conservative.
Let me first of all say that a thorough student of that old
state senate had better look at how "conservative" some of those
rural senators were. Now, they were conservative about farm labor
organization. They didn t want to see the north-south county
gasoline tax split changed. But you go into the area of civil lihertie
you go into the area of race relations, and you will experience
what I experienced fifteen, eighteen years ago: that I had keen
grossly misled by the annual publication of the Christian Science
Monitor that showed how reapportionment, or malapportionment, left
the senate or upper house.
According to the Monitor, the senate was apt to be geographically
oriented under the so-called "federal plan." And it was described as
the "dead hand of the past," with old guys in bib overalls right out
of the nineteenth century. Well, the Monitor was dead wrong in
California. I was dead wrong.
19
Mesple: Out of those rural counties came some of the most progressive
people you could imagine, in the areas of the environment, fifteen
years before it ever became politically fashionable, and in the
areas of civil liberties. I would ask you to look at men like
Jim [A.] Cobey from Merced, Joe [A.] Rattigan from Sonoma,
Stan Arnold from Plumas and Modoc. You find many of them taking a
much more pronounced progressive view than their counterparts
in the assembly. Many rural senators were vitally concered about
rapid urbanization, race relations, and the problems that lay ahead
for California.
The assembly, after all, was not controlled by black and chicano
assemblymen from core cities. It was controlled by a lot of suburban
honky districts. You would need to talk to [Richard] Bud Carpenter,
the long time executive director of the League of California Cities.
He went and testified before the U.S. Senate, along with Senator
Edwin [J.] Regan from Weaverville, now on the Court of Appeals here
in Sacramento, and Joseph Rattigan, now on the Court of Appeals in
San Francisco.
Rowland: Oh, he testified for the federal constitutional amendment?
Mesple: Right. And see if you can get a copy of Bud Carpenter s testimony.
And you ought very much to get ahold of Joe Rattigan, in
Santa Rosa. Joe s a great human being, and you ll find that you
have the same problem with him you ll have with me: you d better
have a lot of cassettes and a lot of batteries, [interviewer
laughs] Because Joe likes to talk, too. But he can give you some
of the intimacies along with Steve [Stephen P.] Teale, regarding
the in-house struggle over reapportionment .
But I want to go back to your friends at the Regional Oral
History Office, because I think they re dead wrong. I guess one
could make some kind of quantitative analysis that might prove
that it was urban versus rural, but what you had in the reapportion
ment struggle was not a struggle between the principles of
conservatives versus the principles of liberals, or rural California
versus urban California. You had a struggle in very simple dimensions:
the struggle for political survival, that s all. You had the
incumbents wanting to stay in, as many as possible. And as the
anti-reapportionment vote included conservative rural Republicans,
you re apt to get liberal Democrats voting for reapportionment, so
long as they got taken care of in the process.
20
Rowland: What was the essence of the senate reaction to the 1964 United
States Supreme Court decision ordering reapportionment of the
California Senate?
Mesple: Well, the first reaction was, "What in the hell has ever happened
to Earl Warren?" They remembered when, as Governor Warren, he had
pressed the "federal plan" in the state. He was cursed: young
Earl Warren walked into a meeting of senators, and senate pro tern
Hugh Burns took that occasion to denounce the Chief Justice. They
brought out early quotes in which he had said that he had supported
the federal plan. (I presume you know that the federal plan was the
initiative of 1926).* Now here he was in Washington, Chief Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that it was contrary to the
U.S. Constitution. Well, obviously Earl Warren might have thought
it was good in California, might still have thought it was good in
California, but the fact of the matter was, you couldn t apply the
one man-one vote principle in Tennessee and forty-nine other states
and not do it in California.
So, first of all, there was this total disillusionment: "Let
the other states reapportion; we re not going to do it to ourselves.
Rowland: Was this attitude also reflected in Pat Brown or his staff?
Mesple 7 : No. Well, I never polled Pat Brown s staff, but I think through my
conversations with the governor himself, that he would have liked
to have seen a middle ground, maybe the "Bonelli Plan" of I960.**
*The "federal plan" program of senate apportionment was passed as
Proposition 28 on the 1926 general election ballot. Supported by
farm groups and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, it created
senate districts based on county lines, thus similar the apportion
ment of the U.S. Senate based on states.
**Pushed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Frank G. Bonelli, the
"Bonelli Plan" was placed on the 1960 ballot as Proposition 15.
It proposed continuing the forty member senate but redrew senate
districts so that one-half of the senators would be elected from
thirteen counties roughly south of the Tehachapi Mountains.
Propositon 15 was defeated.
21
Governor Brown s Blue Ribbon Commission
Mesple : Governor Brown appointed a special commission to study the problem,
Rowland: The Governor s Blue Ribbon Commission on Reapportionment recommended
three senatorial districts for Los Angeles. Then [Frank L.] Bonelli
put a new initiative on the 1962 ballot which called for a great
increase of senatorial districts for Los Angeles. And the governor
supported the second Bonelli initiative.
Mesple: Yes, it s a classical case of a guy trying to go half way and being
denounced on both sides.
Incidentally, you ll want to talk to Stephen [P.] Teale, because
I was not privy to it, but before Brown announced the creation of
the blue ribbon commission, he evidently had promised some of the
senators he would stay out of the reapportionment issue. It wasn t
a governor s problem; after all, the senate had protected him against
the excesses of Jesse Unruh. Don t lose sight of that. The senate
and the governor got along pretty well, because the senate didn t
like Jesse Unruh.
Mesple: The governor s office could always protect the senate against the
assembly. The senate could protect the governor s office
against the assembly. It didn t mean, however, that the governor s
office could get what it wanted, but it meant that the governor s
office didn t have to take something it didn t want. But you know,
Unruh could apply a little pressure, too. He was not defenseless.
So Unruh got his anti-CDC bill, first of all, because there were a
lot of senators that didn t like the CDC that much. Secondly, he
could put the screws on the governor s office, too, in terms of with
holding assembly approval to some items if Brown didn t sign the
bill. So it s a game; once you get into that game, everybody can
play it. But if two of you are playing against one, numerically
you ve got a little advantage.
Well, the point I started to make was when you talk with Teale
and Rattigan, ask them about senate attitudes. It s my impression,
(I was not privy to the conversation) that the governor promised to
stay out of the senate reapportionment issue. He wouldn t come out
for the votes on amendment, he wouldn t attack the federal plan,
and he wouldn t advocate "one man - one vote"; he d dummy up. Well,
he didn t entirely dummy up; he appointed Charles Wellman and the
so-called "blue ribbon commission," which was a governor s
commission. George Miller and Hugh Burns were infuriated. Brown
endorsed the Bonelli reapportionment proposal which he had promised,
evidently, not to do. And so there was deep senate anger at the
governor over his getting into the reapportionment battle.
22
Rowland: This was the beginning of the slight schism between the senate and
Brown?
Mesple : Well, it had been, but it more or less got healed. It got healed,
not because of anything the senate or Brown did; it got cauterized,
I would say, because the U.S. Supreme Court closed all alternatives.
The Dirksen federal constitutional amendment didn t get enough votes.
Had it done so, I doubt that it would have ever been ratified, because
you now had reapportioned legislatures that would have had to ratify
it. They re not going to vote for it to go back to pre-reapportion-
ment. I mean, once reapportionment was enacted, state legislators
were not going to unreapportion themselves.
But let me quickly get to the point: the Supreme Court of
California followed the line of the Supreme Court of the United States,
We were the last of the big states to reapportion. I was amazed
that it took from Baker versus Carr, which was what in 1961 to 1965
before the courts would get to a decision on reapportionment. Silver
versus Jordan, the Los Angeles federal district court issued the
order to reapportion the California senate.
Rowland: By July 1, 65?
Mesple:
Yes, which they had not done.
Legislative Bickering Over Reapportionment
Mesple :
Rowland :
Then the schism between the two houses breaks out again, because
of Unruh. The senate was divided. There were those who said, "To
hell with the courts; let them do it themselves." There were those
who said, "Well, if the malapportionment is four hundred and twenty
five to one, let s have four hundred and twenty five senators; that
way we don t have to lose anybody." You had all sorts of crazy
schemes. But all of them were directed at one single basic virtue
as senators saw it: the virtue of keeping incumbents in office.
But finally, I think, a little more common sense prevailed. They
decided to continue with a forty member senate house, not add more
members.
There was also some other kind of strategies and tactics devised,
particularly with Los Angeles Senator Tom [Thomas M.] Rees and his
amendment of Senator Teale s bill. Teale s reapportionment bill
re-districted L.A. County, to create fourteen districts with senators
elected at-large. But Unruh and Don Allen said no, they wanted senators
elected within each senator s districts.
23
Mesple: If the senate is going to reapportion, who do you think would be
the most interested guy in the state to draw those district lines?
It was the Speaker of the assembly. Rees ultimately left for
Congress, so Unruh and Allen got all of their demands. Unruh had
thirteen senatorial candidates in his house. If there s anything a
legislator would like better than a two-year term, it was a four-
year term. That would allow some of them to run for higher offices
in "off" years without losing their present office. They were already
known in the area, so they had an advantage of semi- incumbency. So
Unruh kept wanting to see what the senate was doing, which infuriated
the senators. They would say, "What is this bird doing sticking his
nose into our reapportionment?"
That had always been an historical case, because the shoe had
always been on the other foot. Every ten years the assembly would
reapportion, and the senate would never interfere with assembly
reapportionment. Only once in a while did the senate ever reapportion
itself; with the "federal plan " there was little to reapportion.
Once in a while they d change one county: they moved Alpine
County senatorial district once, and they moved Lake County senatorial
district once. That s all that senate reapportionment ever amounted
to. And whatever the assembly decided to do with its reapportionment,
the senate would accept it. Whatever the congressional delegation
decided to do, the senate would accept it, unless they were losing an
incumbent congressman; then they d be looking for a congressional
seat that maybe a senator or an assemblyman could win. But the
senate had traditionally stayed out of assembly reapportionment.
Now in 1965 Unruh was saying, "Come on, boys. This bill has to go
through two houses, and by God, I want to know where those lines
are." So, in deep anger, Jesse Unruh drew up his plan.
Rowland: Was Unruh trying to get control of senate redistricting?
Mesplel Well, the newspapers reported that he even wanted to get control of
the senate, through electing enough assemblymen or friends. I never
quite believed that. I did believe that Unruh was not so naive as
to think he wouldn t gain considerable leverage with the senate.
And once they were elected, I think something like fifteen assembly
men go over to the senate. Double-check my figures.*
*For a listing of new senators after reapportionment, see Appendix A.
24
Rowland: Yes, I think that s true.
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple :
Well now, if they were Speaker s guys now in the senate, and Unruh
wanted something out of that senate, he could start with fifteen
votes, and he d be in pretty good shape. But I don t think that
ever really developed.
Was Rees plan for reapportionment agreeable to Pat Brown and
Pat Brown s staff?
Not with me. But that did not mean anything, because while I was
always welcomed, invited, and talked with in terms of reapportionment,
the senate would come to the governor personally. For instance, when
it came to a matter of what happens to Senator [James A.] Cobey,
or what happens to some of our guys who can t make it, the senate
leaders would see Brown personally. Why? Because the governor had
the power to appoint. Well, he had the power to appoint attorneys.
He couldn t do anything for Bob [Robert D.] Williams of Kings County
or John [C.j Begovich of El Dorado and Amador Counties.
But he could appoint them to other positions. The governor had
sixteen hundred appointments.
He couldn t do it.
Why not?
Because the Constitution says that a legislator cannot be appointed
to a non-elected position during the term to which he was elected.
There are some who say- that s why Ronald Reagan took the midnight
inaugural oath, so that Governor Brown couldn t appoint Bob Williams
to the Adult Authority or John Begovich to the Youth Authority.
Brown would never have considered doing that. No, that s an
interesting little point. You could appoint an attorney. You could
appoint John [J.] Miller, for instance, as Governor Jerry
[Edmund G., Jr.] Brown had done, or [Joseph A.] Rattigan, [James A.]
Cobey, Frank [S.] Petersen, Howard [J.] Thelin, Stan Arnold,
Ed [J.] Regan as judges, as Brown senior had done. You ll have to
talk to Pat Brown as to whether Tom Rees sat down with him and
discussed Rees plan.
You see, the United States Supreme Court had not been adamant
that there had to be single member districts. Why did Rees want
Los Angeles senators elected at-large? I honestly don t know.
Tom Rees was a devout liberal. The usual conclusion that would come
to one s mind would be, if you could elect people at-large in L.A.
County, what would you avoid? You would avoid blacks and chicanes.
If you elected candidates at-large, you would have essentially white
candidates.
25
Rowland: It would call for a well-financed campaign.
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Yes, a well-financed campaign. You would be much more apt to have
slate campaigns, with your liberals off to one side and your
conservatives off to the other side.
Was there a fear in Rees that the Republican party would get power
instead of minorities?
Well, that s another thing to keep in mind. You can t reapportion
L.A. County by one man -one vote without giving up a lot of
Republican seats. People would say, "Why didn t the Democrats "
You see, the Democrats had reached a majority in the senate of
thirty to ten Republicans. Now, I think by the time 1966 rolled
around, it wasn t quite that: it might have been twenty-seven
to thirteen or twenty-eight to twelve. We lost some, I mean the
Democrats had lost some. (I m betraying my partisanship.)
But, where did the Republicans if you look at the 1966
returns gain six or seven seats? They had gained them in Glendale,
Pasadena, Covina, and Long Beach.
Another one of my academic theories was that reapportionment
would bring government to the blacks and the chicanes, the poor and
the oppressed. But it shifted political power more to the suburban
areas than anywhere else. And that s why you would want to look
maybe at that [Alvin D.] Sokolow book. I think he discusses that
peculiarity.
Well, I can t help you much on the Rees proposal. But let me
just bring you up-to-date historically. The governor tried to
stay out of it; I don t know how hard he tried. There s no question
that Brown would have liked to have seen the senate keep a man like
Senator Joe Rattigan. And yet if Rattigan had run against Randolph
Collier, that would have been a tough, tough race. There were a lot
of liberal and CDC friends who wanted Rattigan to run against Collier.*
Collier wouldn t have come down and urged a Rattigan judicial appoint
ment unless he could have been assured that Rattigan wouldn t run
against him.
Rowland: That s a parallel to the Teale-Begovich primary battle in 1966.
*For further views on Senator Rattigan s appointment to the court,
see his interview, "A Judicial Look at Civil Rights, Education,
and Reapportionment in the State Senate, 1959-1966," California
Legislative Leaders, Volume II, Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1981.
26
Mesple: Teale-Begovich, yes, except you couldn t give Begovich a judgeship,
although at one time, they called him judge; he was a justice court
judge. (These rural judges didn t have to be attorneys.) If you
would read The Last Days of the Late Great State of California,
you would get an idea of Begovich s judicial temperament, because
it was a panic. At any rate, the governor may very well have been
consulted on the predicament facing Rattigan. I m sure the governor
was concerned about Joe Rattigan, but that Brown would not have told
him what to do.
Rowland: Was Rattigan a strong partisan Brown supporter?
Mesple: He was a supporter of Brown so long as Brown was liberal and right,
in Rattigan s eyes. But, you know, he was backing Brown ninety-nine
percent of the time. Frank Petersen was backing Brown ninety-nine
percent of the time, not because Brown owned Rattigan and Petersen,
but because, I think, intuitively, and congenitally, that s where all
of them were. They were basically liberal, New Deal liberal type
people.
Well, at any rate, just let me say this; then if you find
differently, don t let what I say stand in your way. I may have
been Brown s legislative secretary, but there were times when
senators would want to talk to the governor .
And while I sat in on some of those, I didn t sit in on any
arrangements on how L.A. was going to be carved up in the senate
reapportionment plan, or how someone might be appointed to the
court. Incidentally, and let me say this gratuitously, I don t
think there was a single one of those reapportioned legislators who
didn t turn out to be anywhere from a modestly good to excellent
judge. I don t think you got a bummer in the lot. Cobey, Rattigan,
and Petersen have been excellent, and Howard Thelin, a Pat Brown-
appointed Republican, has been excellent.
Almost everywhere you look, those appointments have been good
ones. The only thing that ever went wrong with a judgeship appoint
ment was that a legislator used to all that action would not want to
sit down and listen to people s troubles eight hours a day, five days
a week; some of them would not like the life. But in terms of
preparing for the judgeship, I would say that legislative service
would be one of the best preparations, and you re apt to get your
best judges from there. So people who tell you, "Well, he appointed
those political hacks," haven t really looked at the record. They
were good appointments.
27
Miller and the Standard Oil Lobby
Rowland: I m just going to throw this out as it just popped in my mind.
Elizabeth Snyder in a taped interview said that George Miller Jr.
was against one of the reapportionment initiatives because of the
anti-reapportionment position of the Standard Oil lobby from
Contra Costa County. Chevron stations, for instance, had big bill
boards attacking reapportionment of the senate. What do you make
of that?
Mesple : Miller was a bridge, an interesting person. He never sold out what
he considered to be his principles, and those were essentially civil
libertarian principles. George Miller was the only senator to vote
against the Dilworth Act* when other people crawled under their
desks and voted aye.
Rowland: What about the loyalty oath controversy at the University of California
in 1952?
Mesple: Well, it was a legislative-passed act, requiring employees of the
university to swear to uphold the Constitution. Well, that act was
the [Jack B.] Tenney one
Rowland: That was SCA .13?
Mesple : There was SCA 13 by Tenney, but then there was the Dilworth Act
which came after SCA 13; it was the public school act that "prohibited"
teachers from belonging to the Communist party. Miller. said it was
unconstitutional and it took the court twenty years later to find
that out. So Miller was very gutty on a lot of issues.
Rowland: Is that a dead issue now?
Mesple: Yes.
Rowland: It is? It s still on the books.
Mesple : Well, yes, and you still have to sign that stupid statement Ithe loyalty
oath], but it s been changed to a positive oath rather than a
negative one.
*The Dilworth Act prohibited public school teachers from belonging
to the Communist party. It was authorized by Senator Nelson S.
Dilworth, Republican from Riverside County, and became law in 1952.
28
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Mesple:
That Miller and indeed, many of these liberal senators that I
mentioned, tended to reflect the interests of the business community,
doesn t surprise me. Now, where Liz Snyder s coming from, I don t
know. Big business, as a rule, did not back reapportionment as
ordered by the courts. They were very fearful.
Why?
Well, they
Does it have to do with their lobbying interests!
Sure. They knew what they were working with, and they didn t know
what they would be working with after reapportionment.
Rowland: Especially with the fear of inexperienced legislators coming in.
Mesple: Well, let s face it. One of the lobbyists most amenable folk was
Hugh Burns. Hugh Burns didn t sell out to them; I don t think he
was bought by them. But Hugh Burns tended to reflect that kind of
"what s good for big business in California is good for the state"
mentality. Lobbyists were always very close to Hugh Burns.
Hugh Burns had a lot of personal friends in the third house. Much
was made of George Miller s friendship with the oil company. Miller
is now dead. Much was made of Miller s friendship with Al Shults.
Well, hell, they were friends in high school.
Rowland: Who s. Al [Albert J.] Shults?
He s the lobbyist for most of the major oil interests. I don t
think it was any great secret that the business establishment
lobbyists were called upon by the senate leadership, and this
undoubtedly included George Miller and others, to help whatever
way they could; mostly through billboards and sending California
state legislators out to other state legislatures to talk about the
Dirksen amendment .
Lobbyists picked up senators air flights and their expenses,
no question about that. You stop in Jackson and talk to former
Senator Johnny Begovich about his trips to North Carolina, South
Carolina, Texas and Mississippi, and how those southern states have
their all-white senates. It s not a very happy experience and I
don t know that Begovich will want to talk about it. But accompany
ing him on that trip was Bobby Williams, one of the nicest guys
and a very sensitive person on race relations. He ll tell you that
the attitude of Southern legislators almost turned his stomach.
But it was said that California legislators were fearful of
prospective black legislators.
29
Mesple: At any rate, Liz Snyder may have known something on reapportionment
I had not known. But it was true, that on the reapportionment issue,
the state senate asked for and got business support in whatever
practical efforts they desired. But you see, it wasn t a ballot
measure in 1965. Maybe she was talking about the earlier ballot
measures of 1960 and 62. But when it got down to 65 and the
senate failed to reapportion itself, the senate passed out a last-
minute bill, and the assembly passed out a last-minute bill, and
nothing had gotten done. Beverly Hills attorney Phill Silver
went back to court and said, "You ve got to make them do it," and
the California Supreme Court came back with the second Silver versus
Jordan decision to call for the special session.
A Two-Way Street Agreement; Senate and Assembly Reapportionment
Rowland: Now, the strange turn of events was that California Supreme Court
decision ordering senate and assembly reapportionment. That was a
whole new ball game, right?
Mesple: Sure. Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh was no longer busy watching the
senate. He had to be busy watching his own house. What prompted
the court, I don t know. But in his brief, Phill Silver made great
issue of the Imperial County assembly district, with seventy thousand
people, as opposed to other assembly districts that had three hundred
and fifty thousand. So they had a variance of five to one, whereas
the state senate had a variance between the twenty-eighth district
that s Alpine, Inyo, and Mono counties and L.A. County of four hundred
and twenty-five to one. But they threw in the assembly.
Now, Phill Silver , I think, in his brief requested assembly
reapportionment and the court agreed that both houses should be
reapportioned. But it did mean a whole new ball game. Jesse
couldn t put leverage on the senate. After all, the senate had to
accept a reapportionment of the assembly. And assembly reapportion
ment was dearer to Jesse s heart than senate reapportionment.
So that was the thirty days special legislative session (it
was a special session limited by the court to decide on a reapportion
ment plan; if the legislature balked, the court would take over the
reapportionment of legislative districts.) That was when Senator
Steve Teale was appointed chairman of the Senate Reapportionment
Committee as a whole. That was when the computer people were brought
in. That s when they had a little sign saying "Remember: the magic
number is 383,874 per district." Don Allen s Legislative Sourcebook
has that.
30
Rowland: It appeared that there must have been a two-way street agreement
between Burns and Unruh. Was Pat Brown playing any role there?
Mesple: Pat Brown s role was what to do with those members who were re-
apportioned "out" or defeated in June or November, 1966. Pat Brown
also wanted a decent reapportionment of the senate and assembly.
Pat Brown wanted as many Democrats and, hopefully, as many liberal or
moderate Democrats as possible elected as a result of reapportion
ment. So sure, he was interested. Sure, he d like to have known
what was going on. But if he ever got overly interested, they d
slap his wrists. Legislators were very sensitive. There were three
or four senators and three or four assemblymen that he would have liked
to have seen preserved, because they had been good friends politically,
personally, and he thought they were excellent legislators. And in
those, he always wanted to know what senate and assembly reapportionment
was doing. I don t believe he ever threatened to veto reapportion
ment, but I think he politely reminded them that he could have done
so if a bad bill was passed.
Rowland: If a bad bill is passed? What do you mean by a bad bill?
Mesple / : By bad I mean if it was all deals and no concern with the qualities
of incumbents. I don t know that he ever threatened to veto, but I
think he let it be known that he had more than a flippant interest.
It was interesting for me to reflect on the fact that when
Reagan vetoed the Democratic reapportionment bill in 1972, who
applauded him? Pat Brown, who said, "He s entitled to veto if he
cares to. I wish I had been more involved in the reapportionment
of 1966. I wish I d have had the guts to have done it." So there
obviously were some resentments about the legislature cutting up
its own pie.
We did have one bill introduced that hardly saw the light of
day. It was of some interest because of subsequent events, and it
was interesting that both Pat Brown and Jesse Unruh had supported
the concept: a bill for unicameral legislature. It was never seen
or heard of again. But it was at Pat Brown s request that Senator
Petersen from Mendocino County put it in. He put the bill in and hid.
Because the legislative reaction was, "You ve got to be kidding.
Christ, we ve got to kill twenty-two senators the way it stands.
You re going to have a unicameral house, and we re just going to kill
that many more." The ultimate argument of senators was, what if
31
Mesple: Jesse Unruh got to be Speaker of a single house? In fact, I always
argued with Pat Brown on that matter. I would not know if unicamer-
alism would mean necessarily better government. It might mean that
bills would move a little swifter, and you would get away from one
bill deadlocking with another and one house deadlocking with another.
But I m not so sure that that price of reapportionment was not better
to pay, than having a single house. You would get almost a prime
minister situation. A prime minister with a strong governor and
you would be apt to have a deadlock.
A Veto of Liberal Retirement Benefits
Rowland: Just after Brown signed the major reapportionment bill, Senator
Steve Teale issued a technical correction to that bill. Apparently
Assemblyman Don Allen attached a rider to that technical correction
bill offering an increase in retirement benefits.*
Mesple: The rider was attached in a conference committee report on SB 13
(Teale) which was brought to the floor of both houses. Legislators
were told that it was merely technical; there were technical errors
in the original bill (SB 1) and a cleanup bill would be beneficial.
For example, if one literally reads SB 1, the basic reapportionment
act, you would find that there are a couple of districts whose lines
were not enclosed. In one case, the bill said to follow a telegraph
line in a westerly direction (they meant easterly) and so it would
have gone across to Japan. There were a few blocks of people that
were left out of districts. But nothing that the court couldn t
have corrected.
So there was a technical need for Senate Bill Thirteen which
was this cleanup bill. But Assemblyman Don Allen, in conference
committee, and indicating that he had the governor s support for
it, included retirement benefits for any senator or assemblyman
who failed to run or be reelected. And the retirement benefits
were the following: a legislator would be given credit for his
senatorial or legislative service. (Remember now, legislators
were covered under the legislative retirement act.) In addition,
a legislator would be given credit for "other service." that he
had performed, such as being a city councilman, be it elected or
otherwise.
*See interview with Don Allen, "A Los Angeles Assemblyman Recalls
the Reapportionment Struggle," One Man-One Vote and Senate
Reapportionment, 1964-1966, Regional Oral History Office, The
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1980.
Mesple:
Rowland:
32
There were even some who said you might have been a scoutmaster
and qualify. I don t know if that would have been true, since it
never had seen the test of time. But serving on a planning commission
would qualify. It was considered to be a very liberally constructed
provision.
Now I got into it personally because Don Allen had visited with
me and had talked to me about such a provision. He asked me would
the governor support it? And my answer was the same each and every
time he raised it: "If you want to go down and talk to the governor,
do it. I cannot give you that assurance. I would personally urge
him not to do so. You have received the opportunity for immediate
pension." But to add on this extra time would be considered
double-dipping and raiding the public treasury. I said, "If I were
you, I wouldn t even go down to the governor and talk to him about
it. Because all you ll do is put him in the uncomfortable position
of having to turn down the legislature for a self-serving request.
But he ll do it."
After the governor vetoed SB 13, Allen issued public statements
to the effect that he had received assurances from the governor s
staff and from me that the governor would not object. Allen didn t
say "approve, "but "not object." And that was untrue. Brown vetoed
the bill. Brown tried to reach Senator Steve Teale to find out
where the hell this rider had come from. Teale was with Joe [A.]
Beek out in the Pacific Ocean fishing. I finally reached Teale
on an overseas radio. He told us he could care less: veto it.
Did Allen approach you with the tacit or oral approval of his plan
from Burns and Unruh?
Mesple: No. He never once mentioned either of them.
Mespl/: Don Allen had been around a long while; he d been an assemblyman,
then went back and was a Los Angeles city councilman (they made more
money), then came back and ran for the assembly. Don Allen was
Don Allen s greatest booster. And he was always fighting with the
Marines in Nicaragua, which got to be a little old with some of his
colleagues. But I m not here to put him down.
I would have thought that Allen would have spoken with Burns
and Unruh, but I m just theorizing. He may very well have done to
Burns and Unruh what he did to the legislators. And I might say
that I got phone calls and letters, and one hundred percent of them
said, "Frank, we don t believe that you misled anyone. We were mis
led; we were told that this was a technical cleanup."
Rowland: This was from senators?
33
Mesple: This was from other senators and assemblymen. They said, "We look
foolish." Now, some of them might have known about the pension
rider and wanted off the hook. But the people I knew well said,
"Hell, we just thought it was closing some district lines and
cleaning up some technical defects. We were never told."
Rowland: What role did Senator Teale play in this?
Mesple: I don t know. You ll have to ask Steve. Virgil Sullivan said
that Allen came over to the senate and did mention that he might
put something together. Everybody sort of let Allen do his thing.
I had the impression nobody wanted to touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Whether they knew Allen s plans before or after, I don t know. But
I was late in the galleries when the conference report was brought
to the floor. (This was the ultimate vote on SB 13, which had those
retirement provisions.)
Never once were the retirement provisions mentioned. It was
discussed in thirty seconds on the floor as being purely a technical
bill. The bill was in mimeograph form on their desks, and they took
it up and voted affirmatively without debate or discussion. I can t
believe the argument that a hundred and twenty guys conspired to raid
the treasury. (But maybe it s because I m inclined not to be cynical.)
But I honestly believed that it was a Don Allen solo. But he
might have some legislators who said, "Well, if you can pull it off,
fine, but leave me out of it."
But my role never once indicated that the governor would
support it. I said, "I don t know. I don t know where the governor
is. But if I were he, and if he asked my advice, I d tell him no.
And if I were you, I wouldn t go down and raise it with him." But
I had no idea that he would include it in the cleanup bill and put
it through. But you ve got Don Allen who would say that he had
gotten those assurances, so you have your choice.
Rowland ;
Mesple:
I think we should come to a close.
Okay.
34
V THE BRACERO PROGRAM CONTROVERSY
{Interview 2: September 29, 1978 ]#//
Farmers Early Support For Pat Brown
Mesple: The bracero program, which was a federal program, became a red-hot
political issue in California in the 1960s and particularly in
63, 64, and ultimately in the 66 campaign. As I say, it was a
federal issue: federal law permitted the importation of single
Mexican men under contract. It was admirably suited to California
because a Mexican man without family could be in the United States
during the peak harvest seasons, could move about the various
specialty crops, (in other words, generally going to work in the
early summer crops and staying through into fall) and then could
be returned to Mexico at the close of the harvest; no children to
feed, no wife to hospitalize, no welfare to pay, and good workers,
because they came from a lower standard of living, able to work
hard and save, particularly at piece rates.
But on the other hand, you can anticipate where organized
labor would be on this, particularly Walter [P.] Reuther and the
United Auto Workers [UAW] . They felt that it was very strange
public policy indeed to be importing Mexican contract laborers
when the unemployment rate rose above six percent. Since we needed
congressional votes, and the program was becoming more and more a
California program, it was a case where California had to trade in
a lot of their poker chips in Congress in order to get that program
continued.
Rowland: What do you mean by trading in poker chips?
Mesple^ Well, the Bernie [Bernard F.] Sisk s, and John [J.] McFall s, and
[Harold T.] "Bizz" Johnson s, the agriculture congressman had to
implore their four hundred and thirty-four colleagues that this was
very important to them, and to their state. What did Illinois get
out of it Illinois, a labor state? How can you ask Democrats from
Illinois to vote for California farm labor? And it was an instance
I know I can recall with great admiration the art that was
35
Mesple: exhibited by Bernie Sisk of Fresno when we sat down in the governor s
mansion one night, and he said, "Well, now [Warren Grant] Magnuson
up in Washington needs some help on this, and the potato folks need a
little help on this, and I think we can hold Illinois for another
year. "
I don t know if my illustrations are correct, but at any rate,
it may indicate how Sisk thought he could put it together. But put
it together for one more year, that was the governor s public
posture. He would implore the California delegation to keep the
bracero program another year, phase it out, ask the farmers to come
up with a more attractive program to recruit unemployed Americans,
or unemployed Calif ornians, instruct our department of employment
to develop a meaningful program for moving urban unemployed into
agricultural labor, and so forth.
Rowland: Now, the issue began when? The CDC convention in 1963, as part of
their platform, was definitely against the bracero program and
definitely in favor of improved housing and wage scales for
migratory laborers.
Mesple: My recollection is that it really began to develop in the early
sixties: 60, 61, 62. And if you ll notice, the unemployment
rates topped six percent in 63, and six percent then was considered
a very, very outside figure. Yes, you re right, liberal people,
CDC people, considered the bracero program nothing better than
bondage, than a form of foreign contract labor. On the other hand,
the farmers were equally adamant that they couldn t get anything
but winos , and they couldn t recruit people to do hard manual labor
anymore. People didn t want to do it, they claimed.
Rowland: Did this play into Jesse [M.] Unruh s battle with the CDC versus
the Brown forces?
Mesple : Yes. I don t think that this was a calculated plank in Jesse
Unruh s relationships either with the CDC or the governor. I think
Jesse, as a Speaker of the assembly, was bright enough to under
stand that you couldn t answer it from either extreme. Either the
farmers insisting that you had to keep folks up from Mexico, or
the CDC insisting that if farmers only paid enough, and had enough
outhouses and clean water, that they could get unemployed young
Americans to go out and work in the fields. I can tell you that
emotionally, being a farmer, I ve grown figs and I ve picked figs,
and I don t think there was much of a case for the way in which we
had to deal with farm labor. I think they were really and truly the
forgotten, dispossessed, and poorly treated people of that period.
36
Mesple:
They now were also facing a situation of rapid mechanization: where
they once could travel from the Coachella Valley into Oregon and
Washington and pretty well put together nine and ten months of
work, more and more you began to have the mechanized harvesters
and potato pickers, and the farm laborers were left really only
those things that were basically stoop labor.
Rowland: What agricultural interests supported Pat Brown in his campaigns
in 58 and 62?
Mesple: Well, I can t tell you organizationally who did. My hunch is that
large agriculture is congenitally Republican and probably few, if
any, had any great admiration for Pat Brown s social philosophy
or for his labor relations.
There were, however, a number of west side farmers who supported
Pat Brown for one very specific purpose: that he was the man who was
putting together the state water plan, and would see to it that many
of the large farms of the west side would get water. They were
reaching that point in time where they had to get water; they
couldn t continue to pump out of a rapidly decreasing water basin,
and so the Holland Roberts, Russ Giffins, and Clarence Salyers
backed Brown, probably sensing that Pat Brown was going to win in
58. After all, they were not political idiots there were many
who gave their support to Pat Brown.
Rowland: In opposition to {William F.] Knowland?
Mesple: In opposition to Knowland, who philosophically they probably agreed
with a great deal more, but by the time that November came around,
I think most of them realized that Knowland was really swimming
upstream.
Rowland: Did they financially contribute to the campaign?
Mesple:
Oh, I m sure they did; I have no cognizance of that, because frankly
I didn t get into the financial aspects that much, but I did do
some work up and down the Valley, and we had the usual curious
combination of occasional large farmer support for very specific
reasons of self interest , and then we always had some of the small
farmers, and that s a topic in and of itself.
37
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
I don t know how deeply you want to get into it. But, you know,
the history of the small farmer in the San Joaquin Valley is
essentially the history of first generation immigrant people, whose
fathers and mothers came from countries that remembered Woodrow Wilson
and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and they were basically Democratic but
have become increasingly well, they ve become increasingly
conservative and Republican.
But would this campaign support, when the bracero program became
an issue, place Pat Brown in kind of an uncomfortable position:
he knew he had support, and probably wanted to maintain that support
with certain agricultrual interests, but he just didn t want to
conflict with them by supporting a termination of the bracero program?
All I can tell you is this: I only know what I saw and what I
heard, and I never ever heard Pat Brown weigh a matter of this
nature as against someone having contributed, or what s it going to
mean in the next election. I know that the common attitudes today
generally are, "What s in it for me politically?" Maybe that went
through his mind; he, after all, had spent his adult life largely in
the political arena. But no, I think he was genuinely trying to find
an answer that would satisfy both agriculture and labor.
The fact of the matter is, that he found an answer that satisfied
neither of them. He was castigated by labor, for in effect continuing
the bracero program an additional year; he was castigated by the
farmers for selling out, as they saw it, to Walter Reuther and the
UAW by going for the cutoff. I can only tell you that the congressmen
we talked with said, "Listen, Pat, this is the last damn time I can
go to the well." In other words, go to the front of the House of
Representatives, and vote for another year on the bracero program.
"We won t have the votes; we re squeezing this extra year out of
these guys." Very few people understand or appreciate that that s
really where it was. You weren t going to get any more. You were
either going to take the year or nothing; that was about it.
Lobbying the Federal Government
Rowland :
Mesple:
As a legislative secretary, what was your role in regards to
Pat Brown s compromise on the bracero program?
I was cabinet secretary then, and as cabinet secretary, had that
modest role that we play in terms of federal relations, working
largely with Irvine Sprague, our Deputy Director of Finance,
Mesple:
38
stationed in Washington, who really handled, more so than I, the
federal legislation and the relationships with the agencies. So
Irv and I would be on the phone daily, almost.
Rowland: Who is this again?
Mesple: Irv Sprague, Irvine Sprague. He later went on to be a member of
Lyndon [B.] Johnson s personal staff, and then the legislative
staffing; he was an aide and returned as an aide to John McFall in
the congressional whip s office, and then was appointed by President
Johnson to be the Commissioner for the Federal Depository Insurance
Corporation, FDIC.
Rowland: What was his again, what was his position?
Mesple: Well, we inaugurated and there has since been maintained under
differing circumstances, what is really the governor s man in
Washington. We used instead of a member of the governor s personal
staff, we used one of the positions of Deputy Director of Finance.
So Irv Sprague was a Deputy Director of Finance; while he
technically reported to Hale Champion and the Director of Finance,
he was often on the phones directly to the governor, or to me in my
capacity as cabinet secretary. We d worked together in trying to
coordinate appearances before congressional committees, testimony
of the governor, and communications with the California congressional
delegation. And since we had thirty-eight congressmen (now forty-
three that s a pretty sizable chunk), I must say under Irv Sprague,
I thought that that delegation worked admirably well with the
governor. Democrats to a great extent worked well with Brown and
Republicans quite often as well. Not like we ve had under Jerry
Brown, where it s been less than a raging success.
Ending the Bracero Program: Conflicts with Farmers
Rowland: Turning to that congressional delegation, after U.S. Secretary of
Labor Willard Wirtz ended the bracero program in December of 1964* ,
there seemed to be a battle going on between the Imperial Valley
*Present secretary-tresurer of California Federation of Labor,
John Henning, was undersecretary to U.S. Department of Labor
during Lyndon B. Johnson s administration. He resigned this post
to take appointment as ambassador to New Zealand .
39
Rowland: growers and Pat Brown over whether the growers would accept domestic
workers to harvest the fields. I think they ended up turning away
busloads of domestic workers without contacting the governor s
office, and then the Republican congressional delegation stepped
in and called for a lowering of the minimum wage for California,
so it would be competitive with the southern states. Do you know
Pat Brown s position on that, and what he worked out with the
growers?
Mesple : I m sorry that I can t immediately flash on for you on that, but I
do know that the governor felt very strongly. Our Director of
Employment, Albert [B.] Tieburg, would be the man to talk to if you
really want to pursue this. He has a home both in West Sacramento
and down in Palm Springs. But Al Tieburg and Willard Wirtz worked
very closely together on this. My recollection is that California
had to verify or notarize or testify to the fact that there was a
shortage of domestic labor before you could apply certain importation
regulations, rules, or whatever.
I know that Pat Brown always gave the appearance of really being
caught in the crucible. He wanted to make agricultural labor
sufficiently attractive that, by God, people would leave downtown
Downey or Watts or wherever it may be, and would be willing to work
in the fields, instead of going on to welfare or not working at
all. He had a difficult time understanding why farmers refused
to make that more attractive. It s pretty hard to make stoop
labor attractive.
I think the Imperial farmers were angry I might say, for a
couple of other reasons. I think they became increasingly dis
enchanted with the social policies; they turned out a man who
reflected their views very much, an Assemblyman named Leverette [D.]
House, and they elected Victor [V.] Veysey in his place, and they
threw out Leverette House because Leverette House had voted for
the Rumford Fair Housing Act. And I don t think there are three
blacks in that whole damn district. But this is a southwestern
Democratic, Texas-New Mexico-Arizona Democratic group, and although
the registration figures read Democratic, they weren t about to
vote for some guy that wanted blacks living next to them.
I might add that the Mexican-Americans we would normally have
counted upon were largely unregistered and non-voters. And it was
only until the Civil Rights Act of federal legislation, that we were
able to get those people on the voter rolls. The registrar of
Imperial County went out of his way to see that the Mexican-Americans
of Imperial County did not vote. And he was finally brought into
a court case on that.
40
Rowland: I remember hearing Aaron Quick, who was on the Senate Un-American
Activities Committee, came from the Imperial Valley, too.
Mesple: Yes, Aaron Quick was an old border patrol man.
Rowland: Yes. He originally came from Tennessee, I think.
Mesple : Right. A pretty decent guy, but you know, I mean those folks
[Mexican-Americans] were not his kind of people.
A Master Plan for Migratory Workers
Mesple:
Rowland: Now, coming out of the bracero program and the battle with
Willard Wirtz was Pat Brown s plan for a master plan for migratory
workers, which would include housing, a fair wage, et cetera.
Whatever happened to that master plan?
My recollection is we just didn t have the votes. There were cost
factors, obviously. We were going to assist in the housing, and
we simply couldn t get the votes to mandate those obligations
on the farmers. The state senate wouldn t buy that. We did some
very modest successes, as I recall, like chemical toilets, but I
don t think we had much to show for the effort of humanizing or
improving farm labor conditions by state legislation.
Would you say that the master plan idea came from Brown himself or
came from his own advisers?
Well, you see, I was cabinet secretary then and let me tell you
this. I can t remember a single cabinet meeting we held during
that entire year (we had roughly two a month), and I don t care
what we put on the agenda (we could put on whatever it might be
prison riots, it didn t matter what) that the governor didn t come
in and sit down and say, "Well, before we get started, I want to
talk about the bracero program." It seemed to permeate his mind;
it was a constant, constant irritant to him. We had six percent
unemployment and the farmers kept insisting they couldn t get
people to harvest their crops; we had food rotting
Rowland: This was while the bracero program was continuing.
Mesple: While it was continuing, yes. But we were running into the
Willard Wirtz problem. The federal government s argument was,
"Why couldn t we get these guys back to Mexico and get good red-
blooded Americans out there working in the fields?" And you know,
welfare cases were rising.
Rowland:
Mesple:
41
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple 7 :
Mesple:
We went out two or three times the governor and his staff would
go out and visit a tomato field. And you know, those braceros
would run up and down those rows, and God, they were fantastic
workers no question about it. The fact of the matter is, I don t
think you can get anybody this day to work the way they did. I
don t even know that Mexican peasants work that way anymore,
particularly with the change in the rate of exchange.
But those Mexican men would come here, work for several months
and go home and put a family together for some time to come. They
were sending money home every week. The farmers supplied room
and board at nominal cost. But the farmer got his dollar s worth.
Those guys would run from one fig tree to the next. They d work;
they d get up at sunup and work and work till dark. Well, you
don t find many
A common argument among the growers held that the stoop labor
the braceros performed, would be avoided by the domestic laborers.
That s a true statement. But you know, I wouldn t work that way
anymore either. I think I worked that way as a young man. I
don t think I d volunteer. I don t think anyone would. I don t
think the very farmers that argue how morally uplifting it is,
would go out and work that hard.
There seems to be a point where the University of California got
involved in bracero debate which again caused a division in UC.
There was the Giannini Foundation, which came out of agricultural
extension, that was arguing for the continuation of the bracero
program. And there was the Institute of Industrial Relations at
UCLA, which was arguing against the bracero program.
Right. Obviously because one tended to reflect grower interests
and the other tended to reflect worker interests.
Rowland: Did [James H.] Corley get involved in that episode?
I can t remember. I just hate to take a duck on you, but I can t
remember. Those were essentially budget item issues; see, no
legislation was involved. Reports that came from well, Giannini
of course, and the long-time chancellor from Davis, Emil [M.] Mrak.
And oh, the UC vice-president in charge of agricultural affairs,
the head of the
Rowland: [Harry R-] Wellman.
42
Mesple:
Wellman, yes. And then of course, industrial relations here, well
later, became Don Vial, but essentially tended to reflect Clark Kerr s
liberal philosophies and those of labor.
Non-Farm Support for Bracero Program
Mesple: Just one comment on the bracero program: if you re not aware of it,
and that is you had some strange bedfellows in terms of who supported
bracero and who didn t. For example, we keep talking about labor
opposing the bracero program. That s not true. A very significant
part of labor supported it and that was the Teamsters. The Team
sters supported it because (a) they had a couple of contracts with
farm laborers, namely with the mechanical harvesters and the mechan
ical workers of the Bud Antle farms down in Watsonville, and (b)
remember, you wanted to keep the canneries working.
Rowland: They had now what was that again?
Mesple : They had a contract with Bud Antle farms in either Watsonville or
Salinas .
At any rate, they had two or three contracts. And they were
advertised as farm labor contracts. But these jobs were basically
the more sophisticated, skilled jobs on the farm: the celery
picker packer, the tow motor operators in the warehouses, et cetera.
And then, of course, you had all the Teamsters hauling the produce
to the packing houses and to the canneries, and the most important
of all, the cannery workers, of whom nearly all were organized by
the Teamsters. So the Teamsters supported the bracero program
for one very practical reason: they wanted to keep those canneries
moving. Why was the Bank of America up to its ears in support of
the bracero program? Because all of the dough they had invested
in agribusiness .
Rowland: Safeway, too.
Mesple:
Sure. So you had curious bedfellows there,
me in interest group politics.
It was a lesson to
All I m trying to say, however, that from the governor s point
of view, I never heard him (maybe these wheels went on inside his
head I don t know) Pat Brown say, "Now, let s see. We ve got Safe
way and the Bank of America and the Teamsters over here, and we ve
got these folks over here, and we ve got more votes to get this way
than we have that way." I think he genuinely kept saying, "Gosh,
damn it. We ought to be able to settle this thing. We ought to
be able to solve it."
43
Mesple: And my point simply is, that his solving it, as he saw it, by the
one year compromise program, the one year phaseout, this task force
on improvement of farm labor, and all the rest, made him no friends
whatsoever and made him a whole ton of enemies. And it s another
eloquent illustration of when you do something as nearly right as
you think you can do in politics, sometimes you don t get any damn
credit, and you get a lot of blame. It s a little like the Sproul
Hall incident during, the Free Speech .Movement there at Berkeley.
When you brought in the highway patrol, the liberals said, "My
God, he s no better than Hitler" and the conservatives said, "He
should have brought in the troops and shot them all" and all the
rest. So nobody s happy; they re all angry.
Rowland: You would say Brown s decision then was an equitable decision
from a compromising person rather than a political decision?
Mesple: You know, it s hard to say that a man occupying the state s highest
office doesn t think in terms of political impact and political
repercussions. All I m telling you is, that so far as I was
concerned, I never heard him say, "There s more in it for me doing
it this way than doing it some other way." I saw evidence upon
evidence of his saying, "There ought to be the right way to answer
this thing. The farmers have to give a little, and labor has to
give a little, and we ve got to put something together. We can t
kill off the agricultural industry, but we can t do it on the sweat
of the farm worker."
Agribusiness and Governmental Relations in Sacramento
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland:
Mesple :
Who were some of the key legislative advocates for agribusiness
that came to the governor s office and tried to catch his ear
during this bracero program issue?
Oh, God, I d have to go sort my head out. Let me think.
Well, who in the legislature, then, was particularly in favor of
agribusiness. How about Harold Way?
Oh, Howard Way, yes, from Tulare County. [George N.] Zenovich
was kind of straddling, as I recall, because he had a lot of
Mexican-Americans in his district. Jim Cobey, of course, wished
it would all go away and hide, but Jim was a very sensitve, very
conscionable guy, and he was very concerned both about agriculture
and the farm laborer. Walter [W.] Stiern from Kern County was also
concerned. They all cut nails over this one.
44
Mesple:
It s hard to say that you had one group that said, "Let s do it all
one way." Basically, your Republican conservatives went the way
of agribusiness. Basically, your liberal Democrats, but essentially
from the urban areas, went the route of the chicano, or of the farm
laborer.
As Cesar Chavez comes onto the scene later, then you get
the polarization on ethnic grounds, on highly philosophical
divisions because Chavez changed it from an economic issue into
an emotional, ethnic, and religious issue. He marched always
with a religious symbol of Our Lady of Guadalupe, you know. And
you bring the Kennedy family of Massuchusetts in, and you use the
boycott. The boycott becomes the big issue in farm labor. It
broke the back of Seagrams, not because they wanted to go for
collective bargaining on their farms, but because they wanted to
sell their booze in Boston and in Chicago. But that s a different
story.
You ll have to talk to Al Tieburg. Tieburg was really given,
more or less, the responsibility to put together the governor s
horses and the bracero issue. It s not that as legislative secretary,
I abandoned it, but Al did it, and when he needed help, he came to
me. But frankly, all the help in the world didn t put a hell of a
lot together. Virgil Sullivan from Williams, a farmer himself,
backed the farmers. (Farmers in his district didn 1 1 use braceros that fai
north.) Steve Teale came out , well, after reapportionment, for
the bracero program. George Miller from Martinez; there s no
question but some of the agribusiness people got to George, but
nonetheless, I think he had a basic sympathy with the farm worker.
Rowland: Also oil? Standard Oil owned land in Kern County?
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Mesple:
Possibly, sure.
What about citizens
the farm workers?
lobbies? Which citizens lobbies supported
Well, you didn t have that many around at that time. And I guess
the United Auto Workers came about as close to being a citizen
lobby at that time as any. You know, Walter Reuther and God,
I m trying to think of a guy they sent up Jerry Whipple.
Rowland: What about the American Civil Liberties Union?
Well, the ACLU, the Friends Committee on Legislation, Coleman [A.]
Blease, yes. And then, of course, one of the guttiest little guys
was Joe Gunterman and his predecessor, Bob McClain, with the Friends
Committee on Legislation. Well, you know, they didn t have many
45
Mesple:
Rowland :
Mesple:
Rowland:
Rowland :
votes, and they didn t have any dough, and they didn t spend much
money, but Joe Gunterman and Emma Gunterman walked the halls
talking about these poor folks out in the heat. They, did as best
they could. They pricked the conscience of the legislators.
Now, Senator Teale brought an interesting angle on lobbyists
before reapportionment, and that was that there were basically two
types of lobbyists: those who worked in the assembly to initiate
legislation, and those who worked in the senate to stop legislation
and maintain the status quo. Was this true? You could see it on
the bracero program where the citizens lobbies were trying to work
with the assembly primarily, to initiate legislation, and the
agribusiness lobbyists were working with the senate
I think Senator Teale has overgeneralized, but I would not argue
with his statement. It is true that the senate was essentially
the house that slowed down or in some cases, killed innovative
legislation. And yet, it s really not fair to the Stephen Teales
of the world to suggest that they represented the dead hand of the
past. A lot of your innovative legislation began with the Teales
and the Cobeys and the rest.
However, I would have to admit to you, that on a flat-out issue
on which the farm interests tended to be on a single mind, you had
one hell of a time moving anything through the state senate.
Reapportionment did not dramaticaly change the legislative policies
of this state, except on the issue of protecting the farmer against
organized labor, and then secondly, I would say, on the distribution
of the gasoline sales tax.
Other than that, you know, frankly that old senate was not
made up of political dinosaurs. There were a lot of people there
who felt very keenly about where the state was going, and what it
had to do. In fact, I ve made the statement that I think that
old senate was more progressive on race relations than the assembly
because they were doing it from a hard, tough, practical premise,
whereas there were a lot of cheap votes cast in the assembly that
were being done for the constituency at home.
We d better end it here; we re coming to the end.
fi
I was going through the Sacramento Bee morgue file yesterday, and
I came I was just going through their photo file, and I came to a
photo which showed Pat Brown speaking to a San Joaquin farm worker
in Los Angeles, and there were a group of pickets around him. One
picket sign said, "Tell us why, Governor, why the Mosk investigation
was squashed in Los Angeles." And this was in April or May of 1965.
Do you recall that Mosk investigation in Los Angeles, and why it
was squashed?
46
Mesple :
Rowland ;
Mesple:
Mesple:
Do you mean he was being investigated, or he was investigating
somebody else?
No. It was an investigation by Attorney General Stanley Mosk,
into the bracero program.
In 65, Mosk moves to the California Supreme Court, so it must
have been early 65. I m sorry, I can t
Rowland: You don t recall it at all?
I can t help you.
Did you run into the governor s meeting with Chavez and the
Mexican marchers? Because that s a little something else; he got
all kinds of hell. Chavez did the long walk up to Sacramento,
and got there on Easter Sunday. Pat Brown had planned for months
to be away with his family on Easter, and his political viscera
told him, "God, you can t miss this one." All the staff people
said, "You can t miss Chavez on the south steps of the Capitol,
with all of his troops." And he said, "I don t give a damn. I m
planning to go to Palm Springs, I need a rest, I m exhausted, and
just because Chavez says, I expect you there, doesn t mean I have
to be there." So he really got his dander up on that one. You d
have to check out the dates, but it must have been about 65.
Chavez is beginning to make his mark, and he led one of his many
marches, I guess, from Delano to Sacramento.
Conflicts Between Legislative Houses and the Governor s Office
Rowland: The 1967 Burns Committee on Un-American Activities report on the
grape strike in Delano talked about Pat Brown appointing a man
from Wayne State University to become the governor s mediator in
the strike. According to the report, this overstepped the
prerogatives of the senate agriculture committee. It was a
conflict and hostility between the senate and the governor s office.
Do you recall that?
Mesple : Yes, I recall the event. I think that Mr. [Richard E.] Combs was
making a little more of senate prerogatives than I recall. I don t
remember any great furor. I think the governor volunteered to
help settle it, and I think everybody said okay. I don t recall
the senate committee feeling they had been stiffed in this whole
process. I don t think it was that big of an issue.
47
Mesple:
Rowland: Did the bracero program issue cause any friction between the
legislature and the governor s office, or between the two houses
themselves?
A little between the two houses, because remember you were beginning
to get chicano representation in the assembly. Unruh was having a
hell of a time with MAPA. Everybody had a hell of a time with
MAP A Mexican-American Political Action Committee. Jesse Unruh
had displeased great numbers of Mexican-American leaders because
he wanted to divide up those districts to maximize Democrats, not
to maximize Mexican-Americans. So consequently, he is not highly
thought of; in fact, he paid some of the penalty of that as late
as the 1970 election. They still hadn t forgotten that Unruh had
squeezed them out of a couple of legislative seats, if you follow
that argument. I don t know whether that s true. But Unruh did
not draw chicano district lines.
The chicanes had a so-called 4-2 plan: four assemblymen,
two senators. They wound up, I think, in L.A. areas with something
like two and one. But at any rate, that was an ingredient. But it
was true that you began to have the chicano as a growing factor
in Democratic politics.
And that being the case prior to reapportionment, you re bound
to have a greater sensitivity to it in the assembly. I think the
assembly, on that issue, might tend to reflect a little more the
farm worker point of view. The senate was still basically agri
cultural, mountain, and rural, but I would argue not conservative.
I think there were men like Teale and Cobey and others, who wanted
to find a decent solution to the problem. But if tug came to haul,
they were going to have to stay with their agribusiness constituency,
rather than with their social conscience. Well, I shouldn t put it
that way; they d have to decide between the two. Because the two
philosophies couldn t comfortably co-exist.
Rowland: Particularly after reapportionment
Mesple : Yes. Well, after reapportionment, of course, then you ve got the
senate swinging more into the urban areas. Until the suburban
vote became so clearly also agribusiness, it was really kind of
pivotal. In other words, how does a guy from Pasadena vote on farm
labor? I don t know. Now, he tends to vote essentially the
conservative, business position. The big farmer position has been
incorporated into the political position of the California
Manufacturers Association, the California Chamber of Commerce,
and others.
Mesple : I just want to add a little postscript and that is, I went out
and did some speaking on it, and thinking that I, coming from a
farm background, I could empathize. Let me tell you, those were
the toughest audiences, with the possible exception of discussing
capital punishment in Elk Grove. You get in front of those farmers,
and by God, they just couldn t understand why somebody didn t listen
to them.
And I dig them, you know; I knew where they re coming from.
Part of the problem was the frustration of many of California s
fanners who at the same time this was going on, were being swallowed
up, in effect, by the big conglomerates or going that direction.
But the small family farm was also disappearing, much to my regret.
I m always tempted to tell you something that has no business
in your report, but some of my own brothers, who were farmers,
really sympathized with the farm labor position, and were considered
way out because of it. Although well-liked in their community,
nobody could understand why the Mesples would possibly talk about
minimum wages and sanitary working conditions.
Well, it s the simple fact that my brothers got up every
morning and worked in the fields, and if the product of their work
was one dollar forty-two cents an hour, they weren t going to make
a hell of a lot. And yet there s very little of that thinking.
And I think the real curious political phenomenon is that if you
travelled most of those valley towns, they tended to reflect,
and the small farmers tended to reflect, the farm bureau federation,
the ag council, and the Bank of America, and the Boswell Farms;
in other words, there was no real political division between the
small and large farmers .
Rowland: What particularly political groups did these farmers coalesce
around? Was it particularly the California Farm Bureau and
Fred [Frederick J.] Heringer and Allan Grant?
Mespl/: Yes, Allan Grant and Fred Heringer I should have told you Allan
Grant before when you asked who came in to talk to the governor,
but Allan Grant and his people; Fred Heringer is pr 
