Two months ago, California senator Dianne Feinstein celebrated her 90th birthday—a milestone that included plenty of well wishes and, given Feinstein’s frail health, continued speculation as to whether she might resign before her term ends next year (adding to the senator’s woes: her attorneys recently filed a lawsuit accusing her late husband’s estate managers of financial elder abuse).
What many Californians may not realize: another giant of the Golden State’s political landscape turned 90 today. That would be Pete Wilson, who served as the state’s 36th governor in the last decade of the last century (Wilson and Feinstein intertwined in that he defeated her in California’s 1990 governor’s race; Feinstein then won the Senate seat that Wilson vacated in a special election in 1992).
To say that I’m a Wilson partisan would be an understatement. I served in his administration as a speechwriter and communications aide for the better part of five years. In his retirement, I had the privilege of interviewing him for a UCLA oral biography. It’s thanks to Wilson’s Hoover Institution ties—as governor, he turned to Hoover’s economic brain trust for guidance on how to lead California out of a recession; post-Sacramento, he became a Hoover distinguished visiting fellow—that I was able to set up shop here on Stanford University’s campus.
On the occasion of Governor Wilson’s 90th birthday, here are nine things to know about his political odyssey.
1. The Last (Experienced) California Republican? To clarify: Wilson was the last Republican to prevail as a nonincumbent in a regularly scheduled California governor’s race (Arnold Schwarzenegger was first elected in a recall special election in 2003; he was then re-elected as a sitting governor in 2006).
How’d Wilson do it? In part, by courtesy of a solid resume—political comfort food for wary voters—that many a current California GOP hopeful lacks. Wilson served two terms as a state assemblyman (coming to Sacramento in 1967 alongside a new governor named Ronald Reagan), followed by 12 years as mayor of San Diego and eight years in Washington as California’s junior senator before serving his two gubernatorial terms in Sacramento.
Trivia note: as the winner in California’s 1982 Senate contest, Wilson holds the distinction of being the only Republican to best former governor Jerry Brown in a statewide contest—12 years later, also defeating Brown’s sister Kathleen in a governor’s race.
2. How the Senate Has Changed. In 1988, Wilson was elected to a second Senate term—as it turned out, the last time a Republican won a California Senate race (it’s also the last time a GOP presidential nominee carried the Golden State, albeit by a scant 3.5%).
Though not a man given to paranoia, Wilson recognized that his “class 1” US Senate seat came with bad karma: in California circles, it was known as the “jinx seat,” as four of the five previous incumbents saw their Senate tenures come to less-than-dignified ends (either dying in office or defeated seeking a second term).
Since Wilson’s time, California senators have enjoyed the political equivalent of a lifetime appointment. In this century’s eight Golden State senatorial elections, only once has a winning Democrat prevailed by less than 10% (that would be 2018, when Feinstein defeated fellow Democrat Kevin de León in a contest in which the challenger tried to portray the incumbent as not suitably progressive for a left-leaning California electorate).
So much for paranoia.
3. A Hybrid Politician. Wilson’s political jousts with the left during the 1990s—ballot measure fights over illegal immigration, affirmative action, school vouchers, union dues for political purposes—is the same red-meat diet that fuels today’s Fox News prime-time lineup and a bevy of right-leaning web sites and publications.
On the other hand, this is a Republican governor who championed expansive government concepts—early childhood development programs, class-size reduction in public schools (the latter prompting some surprise benefits)—generally associated with Democratic lawmakers (it’s not often a Republican governor’s education agenda gets kudos from the San Francisco Chronicle).
And Wilson’s greatest departure from the right: his support of abortion rights (more on that in a moment).
How many current prominent Democrat or Republican politicians of similar elected stature have campaigned or governed with the same left-right blend?
4. The Best and Brightest. In addition to turning to Hoover economists for policy input, Wilson tapped into another California resource: executive talent. One such example: Wilson’s Council on California Competitiveness chaired by Peter Ueberroth, the former Major League Baseball chairman and president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee for the 1984 summer games.
It was that council’s report, released in April 1992, that showcased California’s troubled economic and regulatory existence (in Los Angeles County, for example, no fewer than 72 separate government agencies oversaw environmental policy). Moreover, it gave Wilson the evidence he needed to coax a reluctant legislature into taking action (in 1993, that meant a capital gains tax credit for small-business stocks, a 6% investment tax credit for the purchase of manufacturing equipment, and reforms to the state unitary tax law to promote foreign investment).
Other governors have tried a similar approach, with lesser results. Gavin Newsom, for example, reacted to the COVID pandemic’s impact on California’s economy by trotting out a Business and Jobs Recovery task force, led by the climate funds investor Tom Steyer. Its end product: a final report long on guidelines and short on specifics, thus reinforcing the perception of a rudderless ship.
5. Presidential Déjà Vu? The more inveterate of Wilson followers might recall his brief presidential campaign in 1995. (The only incumbent governor in the field, he opened a bank account in March to test the presidential waters, said he’d run in June, then formally entered the race a week before Labor Day only to quit the race a month later.)
Due to surgery on his vocal cords the previous fall, Wilson literally struggled to find his voice on the trail. But the campaign also struggled from internal divisions and a nagging sense that the delay in becoming a full-blown candidate cooled the momentum from the previous November’s landslide reelection in California.
Those factors and more—lost momentum, staff shake-ups, strategy second-guessing—similarly haunt the current presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, like Wilson the chief executive of a large state who assumed he could take his message nationally, only to sputter outside his home state.
6. Abortion Redux. In 1996, Wilson found himself in the middle of yet another political controversy: what to say about abortion for that presidential year’s Republican Party platform.
Wilson’s suggestion: remove the part of the platform calling for a “human life amendment” to the Constitution (“The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children”) and replace it with a “personal responsibility plank” (“acknowledg[ing] our reverence for life and our belief that the traditional nuclear family is the best way to provide children with the love, moral values and the sense of duty that all children need to become responsible adults”).
Nearly three decades later, Republicans still struggle for a consensus message on the question of reproductive rights and restrictions. That includes California, where GOP activists are bracing for a contentious debate at the next state party convention over whether to delete the party platform’s traditional opposition to a federally protected right to abortion while maintaining support for “adoption as an alternative to abortion.”
7. Border Disorder. Another Wilson-era issue that still lingers over the national Republican landscape: immigration, along with border security and how to put forth a message that balances the rule of law with human dignity (witness the difference between what George W. Bush and Donald Trump have to say on the topic).
If ever there were an opportune time for Washington to have delivered on a stringent version of immigration reform, it would have been 1995. Why? California’s Proposition 187 had passed the previous fall with nearly 59% support in a state not quite yet a blue fortress, Republicans had assumed control of Congress for the first time in four decades, and then president Bill Clinton used part of his State of the Union Address to acknowledge voter resentment (“It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws that we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it”).
As it turned out, Washington did deliver on immigration reform a year later—including the redefining of noncitizen eligibility for federal, state, and local benefits, plus an expansion of deportation-worthy laws—but it wasn’t as draconian as Proposition 187’s denial of education and health services.
As for Proposition 187, it was voided by a court-approved mediation five years after voters’ approval, with state lawmakers (a Democratic governor and state attorney general) not wanting to pursue the matter up the legal ladder.
8. Women. While we’re reviewing GOP trouble spots, let’s add one more to the list: the gender gap.
In 1994, and seeking a second gubernatorial term, Pete Wilson faced an uphill campaign against then state treasurer Kathleen Brown (Jerry’s sister). Wilson went from a deficit of more than 20 points in a hypothetical head-to-head poll the previous summer to a 14.5 point win.
One of more interesting statistics from that election: according to Field Institute exit polls, Wilson carried the women’s vote by 7 points.
Four years later, and running a gubernatorial effort that highlighted his pro-life stance, then state attorney general Dan Lungren lost the women’s vote by 25 points, which translates to a shift of roughly one million women voters.
Wilson highlighted his pro-choice position in his campaign (a “pro-Wilson” field effort targeted women voters). But he also had his finger on the electorate’s pulse, his message on immigration, the economy, and crime mirroring leading public opinion concerns at the time.
It’s a moral for present-day Republicans to remember—especially a presidential field that’s heavy on “anti-woke” messaging but light on policy solutions.
9. Leaving on a High Note. Pete Wilson retired from public office at age 65, resisting the urge to return to the Senate or the presidential campaign trail. In the years since, he’s been very selective in his political involvement, choosing instead to quietly work behind the scenes in the development of the National World War II Museum in New Orleans (serving as both its Board of Trustees chairman and chair of the museum’s capital campaign).
Meanwhile, the issue of incumbents sticking around past their prime seems a hot topic of late. In retrospect, perhaps an 85-year-old Dianne Feinstein should not have run for one last Senate term five years ago. If the 2024 election comes down to a choice between President Biden and his predecessor, and current polling results change little, more Americans will dislike both major-party nominees than ever before in the republic’s history.
Then again, knowing when to leave the stage was a Wilson family trait.
Well into his retired life in Delray Beach, Florida, after a career in journalism and advertising, Pete Wilson’s father, James, was elected that city’s commissioner. But his foray into public office was brief, with the senior Wilson choosing not to seek reelection.
“He was a quick learner,” the son reflected upon his father’s passing. “He said one term was sufficient.”
Fortunately for California, Pete Wilson was not a one-term act.
Happy birthday, Governor!
