Amid these conservative Republican stirrings, the glow of the Pat Brown era of achievements (see Chapter 12) faded fast. The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley later became militant as America stepped up the drafting of college-age males being sent to fight in Vietnam; a six-day race riot incinerated much of Watts in 1965 (see Chapter 12); California growers became increasingly resistant to the demands of unionized farm workers; and Governor Pat Brown’s ambitious reforms had left little money in the state treasury. White taxpayers in the state had grown angry with the Democrats who had been in charge in Washington, D. C., and Sacramento during the first half of the 1960s. Into these roiling political waters stepped Ronald W. Reagan, who, like a frontier sheriff, promised to restore “law and order” for the working and middle classes who felt their voices went unheard in Sacramento. The Lincoln Club and other wealthy southern California Republicans, situated mainly along the “Gold Coast,” promoted his candidacy.
Such was the backdrop for the state’s 1966 gubernatorial election. Brown came to symbolize a politics that went beyond the limits, a government and society reeling out of control. After defeating former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher for the party’s nomination, Reagan became the Republican candidate for governor, campaigning to restore “common sense” and economy to government. Reagan pledged to clean up the “mess at Berkeley,” repeal the Rumford Fair Housing Act, reduce welfare, and safeguard California’s cities whose “streets are jungle paths after dark, with more crimes of violence than New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts combined.” Regarding his opposition to the Rumford measure, Reagan insisted that he was motivated by reverence for private property, not racial bigotry. On November 8 he won the governorship by a margin of close to 1 million votes. Most other statewide offices also went to Republicans while the Democrats’ majorities in the Sacramento legislature were reduced.
While combative, the new governor was also likable. Reagan had been born in Illinois in 1911 and graduated from Eureka College, where he excelled in drama and athletics. Throughout much of his life, he exhibited the optimism, Midwestern folksiness, and communication skills that marked his political style. While his style remained unchanging, his politics had shifted significantly from New Deal liberalism to post-World War II conservatism as he grew alarmed about communism in the Hollywood studios. Having starred in several westerns early in his movie career, he was fond of dressing in cowboy boots and other equestrian attire. At his ranch overlooking the Pacific in the Santa Ynez Mountains north of Santa Barbara, Reagan indulged his cowboy persona more fully.
Governor Reagan’s inaugural address, delivered on January 5, 1967, went to the core of his public philosophy: “We are going to squeeze and cut and trim until we reduce the cost of government.” Unlike his more urbane immediate predecessors - Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight, and Pat Brown - Reagan did not see a positive role for government in making California a better place for all. He suspected that many state services “were just goodies dreamed up for our supposed betterment.” Consequently, budget cuts were in store for colleges, mental health care, and welfare.
Figure 13.1 Governor Ronald Reagan riding at his ranch. Courtesy of the Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, CA.
Reagan thought cutting state funding for colleges would serve two purposes. First, it would trim government spending, and second, it “would help get rid of undesirables,” that is, those “there to agitate and not to study.” He also saw to it in 1970 that UC students for the first time would pay tuition, technically described as an “education fee.” While higher education budgets were reduced and tuition imposed, Reagan helped secure the Board of Regents’ firing of the president of the UC system, Clark Kerr. Academics nationwide viewed Kerr’s removal as an anti-intellectual attack on America’s preeminent public university system. A New York Times editorial, titled “Twilight of a Great University,” predicted that the budget cuts and firing of Kerr would result in top professors leaving the system, which in turn would decline in quality and prestige. Some 2,500 student marchers assembled at the state capital. They came from the UC’s nine campuses, demanding a restoration of ample budgets and a rescinding of the tuition policy. Reagan refused. His policies toward the three-tiered higher education system remained unchanged throughout his two terms in office and had large public support.
Regarding mental health, California had one of the nation’s most progressive programs until Reagan took office. That program had institutionalized the seriously incapacitated while providing outpatient care in communities for those who were more functional. The new governor closed hospitals, reduced the number of public mental health workers by 2,500, and shut down numerous outpatient facilities.
To Reagan, downsizing California’s “monster” welfare programs was essential to restoring a politics of limits. He believed that welfare pushed the costs of government “out of control” and made people lazy and dependent even though only 1 percent of male recipients were physically fit to work. About three-fourths of those on federal and/or state aid were blind, aged, or disabled, and the rest were children being raised by single mothers. Undeniably, welfare spending had increased significantly as Reagan entered the governor’s mansion. Federal welfare payments, in the form of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), went to more than twice as many Californians in 1967 (769,000) as in 1963 (375,000). By 1970, when Reagan defeated Democrat Jesse Unruh by half a million votes, the state’s AFDC recipients numbered 1,566,000, or nearly one out of every 13 Californians. The state had supplemented payments to these recipients in additional programs, such as Medi-Cal, which provided health care to low-income families with children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the disabled. As governor, Reagan secured stiffer prerequisites for AFDC recipients and a work requirement for able-bodied people on the welfare rolls; however the courts blocked his attempt to reduce Medi-Cal expenses.
Many of his campaign pledges went unfulfilled. Reagan was unable to deliver on his promise to reduce the cost of government. In fact, state budgets doubled during his governorship, climbing from $5 billion in 1967-8 to more than $10 billion in 1974-5. The operations of the Department of Health Care Services furnish one example of rising government expenditures. When Reagan entered the governorship that “department” was really little more than an office with four or five employees. Three years later, in 1970, that office had ballooned into a full-fledged department with about 1,000 employees. By then the state was wrestling with the new question of how much preventive medical care Californians could expect to receive. To keep the government financially solvent, Reagan raised taxes by introducing a salary withholding policy in 1971 and upping sales, bank, and corporation levies the following year. Reagan backed off of his earlier campaign pledge to repeal the Rumford Fair Housing Act, citing the measure’s “symbolism” to black communities. With the Watts riots (see below) freshly in mind, both Republicans and Democrats in Sacramento were mindful of what could happen if racial tensions went ignored. Though often criticized for being a right-wing ideologue, the Republican governor was highly pragmatic. Regarding his retreat on the Rumford matter, biographer Lou Cannon simply noted: “Reagan was a conservative beyond a doubt. He was also a practical and resourceful politician.”
Despite the fact that his policies in some important instances were at odds with his conservative rhetoric, voters liked Reagan. The charismatic politician’s eventful two terms contributed to his rising profile in national politics. Though losing to Richard Nixon in a bid to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, Reagan’s stature and popularity continued to grow. He presented a formidable, if unsuccessful, challenge to incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford’s nomination in 1976. Four years later his party and the nation would be ready for a Reagan presidency.
World History
