In 1990 California voters elected former assemblyman, San Diego Mayor, and U. S. Senator Pete Wilson as governor. Before entering politics, Wilson had graduated from Yale University and UC Berkeley’s School of Law, and served in the U. S. Marine Corps. His defeated Democratic opponent in the 1990 gubernatorial contest, San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, went on to win a U. S. Senate seat in 1992, joining fellow California Democrat Barbara Boxer, who had also just won election to that chamber. This marked the first time in U. S. history that a state had been represented by two female Senators at the same time. Public attention, however, was focused on the economy. Few, if any, of the state’s chief executives have experienced a more dramatic downturn and upturn in California’s economy than Wilson did during his two terms in office.
As a moderately conservative “Gold Coast” resident, Wilson understood California’s connection to the Pacific world. The new governor’s Inaugural Address, delivered on January 7, 1991, showed appreciation of the state’s pivotal position on the Pacific Rim: “For the better part of two centuries, Californians have followed the sun westward, [to] the broad Pacific. And then they joined with Californians from the ancient lands and cultures
U. S. and California Unemployment Rates
Figure 13.6 U. S. and
California unemployment rates, 1976-2009. Source: "Just the Facts: California's Rising Unemployment,” Public Policy Institute of California, March 2009.
California
U. S.
Of Asia and Mexico, and created new frontiers - intellectual, scientific and cultural.” Before those new frontiers dazzled the world in the latter half of the 1990s, Wilson had to contend with a slumping economy as Cold War military spending evaporated.
Signs of severe recession were manifold. A $12.6 billion state deficit confronted Wilson’s administration. Approximately 75,000 California workers in defense plants lost their jobs in the single year from July 1990 to July 1991. Some businesses moved out of state, costing California the corporate taxes they once paid. Between 1990 and 1993 about 820,000 Californians were out of work; in the latter year the state had the nation’s highest unemployment rate, at 9.4 percent. By April 1993 California registered America’s highest rate of residential and commercial foreclosures.
The shaky economy shook even more on January 14, 1994, when a devastating earthquake, centered in San Fernando Valley’s city of Northridge, threatened homes, toppled some buildings, and ignited fires. Sixty people were killed and more than 7,000 were injured by the temblor that was felt in Greater California’s surrounding areas of Nevada, Utah, and Baja. Approximately $20 billion in damage resulted. This was a reminder that California was geologically situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire (see Chapter 1) and that every so often, as in the Loma Prieta quake near Santa Cruz five years earlier that caused 63 deaths, the state’s preparations for such calamities are tested.
A little-known aspect of the Northridge disaster is that the people of Nagoya, Japan (also located on the Ring of Fire), sent relief across the Pacific to the victims of the Northridge quake. The relief was an outgrowth of the Sister City relationship formed in 1959 between Los Angeles and Nagoya to promote peace, cultural exchange, and business under the auspices of Sister Cities International, an organization headquartered in Washington, D. C. The goodwill aid from Nagoya in 1994 was soon reciprocated. In early 1995 the city of Kobe, located not far from Nagoya, was hit by a severe earthquake. Both aid and letters of support came from Angelinos. One of the letters, characteristic of others, read in part: “I am Mexican-American and grew up on Juanita Street. . . among a lot of Japanese people. They all spoke Spanish to me, as that was my first language. Just the kindness of these people was very important in my life. . . . I’m an artist and was a guest of the city of Nagoya when one of my sculptures was given by the city of Los Angeles as a celebration of the 25th year of sister cities. . . . I just love the Japanese people. Please accept this small donation for the Kobe Relief fund. . . . I wish it was within my means to contribute more. [signed] Dolores de Larios, Los Angeles.” Since the occurrences of these major temblors Los Angeles and Nagoya have carried on a mutually supportive transpacific exchange regarding emergency preparedness.
As troubling as these times were, Northridge recovered while a new California economy was in the making. It was computer-based but also included entertainment, foods, financial services, banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and mega-retail enterprises. Intel Corporation, the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, posted a net worth of $24 billion in 1992, signaling a coming boom. Besides, historian Kevin Starr notes: “Aerospace brainpower was not about to migrate from Southern California.” The blue-collar assembly jobs had been lost but the “research, development, design, and engineering of aircraft would remain solidly centered in the Southland.” In 1993 Hewlett-Packard’s sales soared to $21.4 billion. Orange County government eventually rebounded from the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy, declared in 1994 and resulting from the county’s sale of bonds from a risky investment pool. The state’s trillion-dollar economy in 1997 ranked with that of leading nations. In short, Wilson had successfully steered California’s economy into the so-called “dot com gold rush” of the years 1995-2000.
Meanwhile, the center-right governor moved with deliberation and speed in other public policy areas. He both raised taxes and slashed most state expenditures. In the K-12 schools, Wilson reduced class size, froze teachers’ salaries, fought “social promotion” of students who did not qualify for grade advancement, and advocated for statewide student performance standards. Also, he reduced welfare benefits and cut workers’ compensation expenditures by 30 percent. His popular “tough on crime” stance resulted in the 1994 passage of Proposition 184, the “Three Strikes” initiative. Accordingly, those convicted of a third felony would receive a mandatory prison sentence of 25 years to life.
In the 1994 gubernatorial election, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, sister of former Governor Jerry Brown and daughter of former Governor Pat Brown, was the Democratic candidate. She blamed the incumbent governor for the state’s ailing economy. Wilson, on the other hand, used Ms. Brown’s known opposition to the death penalty to characterize her as weak on crime. This worked and along with Brown’s missteps assured his easy reelection to a second term, which on balance proved less eventful than his first.
Proposition 184 has had major impacts on criminal justice, politics, and the state’s budgetary woes. Unwittingly, it resulted in California having the nation’s largest prison population (160,000 inmates in 2000), the cost of which contributed to the serious economic downturn that lay just ahead. “The Three Strikes law. . . produced 5,000 life sentences by September 1999. Half of these defendants were non-violent offenders; one is now in jail for 25 years because he stole a pizza,” declared Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, professor emerita of social welfare at UC Berkeley. The California Correctional Peace Officer’s Association, a major beneficiary of Proposition 184 spending, has been a key contributor to the political campaigns of candidates running on “law and order” platforms. Moreover, claims Gibbs, “There is a relationship. . . between prisons and lack of educational resources in the state.”
World History
