GEORGE DEUKMEJIAN
2-term governor in the 1980s led California to the right.
George Deukmejian, a twoterm Republican governor who fought taxes with the same zeal as he sought to toughen California’s approach to crime, died Tuesday at his home in Long Beach. He was 89.
The son of Armenian immigrants, Deukmejian served 16 years in the state Legislature and spent one term as state attorney general before narrowly defeating the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, for governor in 1982. Four years later, in an election marked by voters’ ouster of three liberal state Supreme Court justices whom he had opposed, Deukmejian defeated Bradley again, this time in a landslide.
The recall gave Deukmejian three openings to fill on the seven-member court — and the conservatives he named steered California’s judiciary sharply to the right for three decades, upholding death sentences and limiting lawsuits against businesses and employers.
“He was a fine, decent man of integrity and character who was tremendously proud of his Armenian heritage,” Deukmejian’s family said in a statement. “He loved his family and his friends and was forever grateful to the many loyal people who believed in him and served in his administrations. We miss him deeply.”
Gov. Jerry Brown, who was also Deukmejian’s predecessor as governor, issued a statement saying Deukmejian “was a popular governor and made friends across the political aisle.”
Deukmejian’s style as governor was a marked departure from that of Brown and the Republican who preceded him, Ronald Reagan. He had none of Brown’s out-of-the box thinking, nor Reagan’s star power and speaking skills.
Instead, Deukmejian set a basic agenda — keep taxes and government spending down, and be tough on crime.
His administration embarked on what at the time was the largest prison construction program ever in the U.S., building 14 lockups and driving the inmate population from 35,000 in 1982 to 96,000 in 1990, his last year in office.
In his two campaigns for governor, Deukmejian promised he wouldn’t raise taxes, and he stuck to that promise — sales taxes were raised briefly to help the Bay Area recover from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, but Deukmejian defeated Democratic efforts to extend it.
And he ran a tight-fisted ship in Sacramento — he vetoed more than $7 billion in new spending during his two terms, which helped to close a $1.5 billion budget deficit that he inherited when he took office in 1983. He presided over a $1 billion tax rebate in 1987.
Deukmejian’s critics noted that despite the prison construction boom, inmate overcrowding started to become a problem on his watch. They also accused him of making state government less helpful to California’s needy.
“What people don’t know is how sensitive he is to the plight of the less fortunate,” then-Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, now a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, said in a 1990 interview. “He just couldn’t translate that sympathy into governmental response.”
Democrat John Burton, who served with Deukmejian as a young assemblyman, remembered the former governor as a remarkable public servant.
“He was conservative, but a very decent human being,” Burton said.
Deukmejian also had a surprising sense of humor, although Burton admitted, “That wasn’t his strength.”
Deukmejian was instrumental in the 1986 campaign in which voters denied new terms to state Supreme Court Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other liberal justices, all of whom had consistently voted against death sentences. Deukmejian’s replacements, including his former law partner, Malcolm Lucas, led the court rightward.
“If there was any public figure identified with this campaign, it was the governor,” Harold Meyerson, who directed an organization supporting all three justices, later said.
Deukmejian departed from conservative orthodoxy only occasionally. In the late 1980s, he bucked the National Rifle Association and signed legislation outlawing 55 types of semiautomatic weapons and a bill imposing a 15-day waiting period on purchasers of handguns.
Deukmejian was someone who knew what he wanted — and what he didn’t want, said Bob Naylor, a former San Mateo County assemblyman who was the Republican leader in the Assembly for the first two years of Deukmejian’s time as governor.
Naylor recalled working with Democrats and Republicans over an education bill that called for a mix of new money and school reforms.
“He told me that he really didn’t want to sign the bill, but asked me to tell him why he should,” Naylor said. “So I talked to him and he signed it.”
Deukmejian didn’t profit from his 28 years in public office. His 1989 economic interest statement showed a modest Long Beach home as his only real estate holding, some inherited stock and two $1,000 speaking fees to augment his $85,000 salary.
Deukmejian lived in that Long Beach home until his death Tuesday.
Deukmejian could have run for a third term, but chose not to. “As eight years move along, you take a lot of bashing; you’re kind of a punching bag,” he once said. “I think I’m going to be saying to myself every day, ‘Gosh, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.’ I think I’m going to enjoy that feeling.”
Courken George Deukmejian Jr. was born June 6, 1928, in Menands, N.Y., to immigrants who had fled Turkey to escape the slaughter of Armenians in the 1910s.
His father’s rug business collapsed during the Depression. He worked as a bundle boy wrapping meat in a butcher shop and as a firefighter, a paper salesman and an ice cream maker.
“I worked while going to school. We didn’t have a lot,” Deukmejian said in 1990. “I learned that you have to work for what you get, and you have to work hard. That’s been a major factor in how I’ve done things since then.”
Deukmejian graduated with a degree in sociology from Siena College in New York, then earned a law degree. His rise to political power came just seven years after he moved to Southern California in 1955 to practice law. He was elected to the Assembly in 1962, and four years later won a seat in the state Senate, where he served until winning election as state attorney general in 1978.
Deukmejian had a reputation for being more comfortable poring over legislation and proofreading staff memos than glad-handing. In an effort to liven up his speeches, he drew “happy faces” on his notes to remind himself to smile.
In his final State of the State address to the Legislature on Jan. 9, 1990, Deukmejian said, “Like so many others, I became Californian not by birth but by choice. I adopted a state whose opportunities are as boundless as its beauty, whose future is as bright as it sunshine, and whose possibilities are as varied as its people.”
He said his goal as governor was to leave California in a better place than he found it. “I believe that it is,” he said. Deukmejian is survived by his wife of 61 years, Gloria; his children, Leslie, Andrea and George; and six grandchildren.
Services have not been announced.