Governorship of Ronald Reagan
was the 33rd governor of California for two terms, the first beginning in 1967 and the second in 1971. He left office in 1975, declining to run for a third term. Robert Finch, Edwin Reinecke and John L. Harmer served as lieutenant governors over the course of his governorship.
1966 Election
California Republicans were impressed with Reagan's conservative political views and charisma after his "A Time for Choosing" speech for the Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964. David S. Broder called it “the most successful national political debut since William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with the ‘Cross of Gold’ speech." Reagan assembled advisors and financiers, and in late 1965 he announced his campaign for governor in the 1966 election. Incumbent Governor Pat Brown intervened indirectly in the Republican primary to undermine former San Francisco mayor George Christopher, thinking that Reagan, as a politically inexperienced movie actor, would be easier to beat. Christopher lost. Against Brown, Reagan emphasized two main themes: "to send the welfare bums back to work," and, in reference to burgeoning anti-war and anti-establishment student protests at the University of California, Berkeley, "to clean up the mess at Berkeley." He was elected to his first term on November 8, 1966, with 58% of the vote, defeating incumbent governor Pat Brown, by 993,739 votes.Reagan was sworn in on January 2, 1967 at ten minutes past midnight—starting early to prevent Brown from naming judges at the last minute.
First term (1967–1971)
Staffing
Reagan's efficiency as governor depended on his three support groups. His high visibility Hollywood supporters included Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Dinah Shore, George Burns, James Cagney, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, as well as producers Walt Disney and Taft B. Schreiber of MCA. His campaign was managed by the well-known firm of Spencer and Roberts. Funding came from California businessman and financiers including Union Oil chief executive A.C. “Cy” Rubel; auto dealer Holmes Tuttle; Henry Salvatori; Alfred S. Bloomingdale; Leonard Firestone; and Justin Dart. The governor's key staffers included chief of staff Philip Battaglia, Lyn Nofziger, Thomas C. Reed, William P. Clark Jr., Edwin Meese, Michael Deaver, and personal lawyer William French Smith. Nancy Reagan, the foundation of his emotional support, was the most important member of the team.When his advisers discovered that chief of staff Battaglia was an active homosexual partnering with junior staff, nine went to Reagan as a group and demanded Battaglia be fired. Reagan was relatively at ease with the gay community in Hollywood, but the California electorate was less tolerant. Reagan chose Clark to replace Battaglia, and the story lost momentum.
Taxes
Reagan campaigned as a tax cutter, promising to squeeze, cut, and trim. Once in office he froze government hiring but increased spending by 9%. He worked with Democrat Jess Unruh, the Assembly Speaker, to secure a series of tax increases that raised rates and balanced the budget, while also cutting property taxes. The sales tax was raised from 3% to 5%. The highest income tax bracket saw a rise from 7% tax to 10%. Taxes on banks, corporate profits, and inheritance were increased slightly. Liquor taxes jumped from $1.50 to $2.00 per gallon; and cigarette taxes from three cents to ten cents per pack. Lou Cannon wrote in 2003: "Reagan's proposal had the distinction of being the largest tax hike ever proposed by any governor in the history of the United States."Mental health care
By 1968, the number of patients in California mental hospitals declined from about 33,000 to 20,000 in five years, with most of the remaining patients requiring intensive care in contrast to patients who could be treated off-site with tranquilizers. Reagan proposed cutting 3,700 jobs from the Department of Mental Hygiene, the state agency in charge of mental hospitals. Early in 1967, the Legislative Analyst's Office had recommended closing three mental hospitals and eliminating nearly 3,000 jobs due to the decline in patient population at those hospitals. Most of those employees targeted for cuts would be psychiatric technicians and support staff comprising nearly 16 percent of hospital workers. Two years into his administration, Reagan advocated a then-record $28 million funding increase for the Department of Mental Hygiene, and subsequent budgets increased funding for community-based mental health care while closing the Modesto State Hospital and some other mental hospitals. There were only around 7,000 mental hospital patients by 1973, midway through Reagan's second term.Abortion issue
Early in 1967, the national debate on abortion was beginning and attention was being focused on California. The American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the California Medical Association, the California Bar Association, and numerous other groups announced support behind new laws that would protect doctors from criminal prosecution if they performed abortions under rigid hospital controls. A bipartisan majority in the California legislature supported a new law introduced by Democratic state senator Anthony Beilenson, the "Therapeutic Abortion Act". Catholic clergy were strongly opposed but Catholic lay people were divided and non-Catholics strongly supported the proposal. Reagan consulted with his father-in-law, a prominent surgeon who supported the law. He also consulted with James Cardinal McIntyre, the Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles. The archbishop strongly opposed any legalization of abortion and he convinced Reagan to announce he would veto the proposed law since the draft allowed abortions in the case of birth defects. The legislature dropped that provision and Reagan signed the law, which decriminalized abortions when done to protect the health of the mother. The expectation was that abortions would not become more numerous but would become much safer under hospital conditions. In 1968, which was the first full year under the new law, there were 5,018 abortions in California. The numbers grew exponentially and stabilized at about 100,000 annually by the 1970s. Elective abortions were legal, as 99.2% of women who requested an abortion received treatment. One out of every three pregnancies was ended by illegal abortion. The key factor was the sudden emergence of a woman's movement that introduced a very new idea—women had a basic right to control their bodies and could choose to have an abortion or not. Reagan by 1980 found his support among anti-abortion religious groups and said he was too new as governor to make a wise decision.Mulford Act
Reagan reacted to the Black Panther Party's strategy of copwatching by signing the Mulford Act in 1967 to prohibit the public carrying of firearms. On May 2, before the act was passed, 26 Panthers were arrested after interrupting a debate on the bill in the California State Capitol. The act was California's most restrictive piece of gun control legislation, with critics saying that it was "overreacting to the political activism of organizations such as the Black Panthers". Reagan also approved additional legislation for a waiting period of fifteen days as a "cooling-off" period for handgun buyers so that they would not purchase weapons in the heat of the moment and could think about their future actions. Although the Panthers gained national attention, their membership barely grew. The act marked the beginning of both modern legislation and public attitude studies on gun control.Berkeley protests
Reagan was involved in high-profile conflicts with the protest movements of the era. During his campaign, he repeatedly promised to "clean up the mess at Berkeley" in response to the Free Speech Movement of 1964. According to UC President Clark Kerr, the newly-inaugurated Reagan soon revealed his complete lack of awareness of the traditional role of the University of California in California public higher education. During a January 12, 1967 meeting with several key UC officials to discuss Reagan's proposal to drastically cut the university budget, Reagan criticized UC for accepting the top 12.5% of California high school students, whom he felt should attend private institutions instead, and he argued that as a public institution, UC should take the bottom 12.5%, that it should take "the Mexicans". Reagan then followed through on his promise to clean up the university by appointing several new regents to the UC Board of Regents who, together with himself aligned with existing board members to form a majority to vote for Kerr's dismissal on January 20, 1967. In a February 3, 1967 letter to Kerr, Regent Thomas M. Storke criticized the "brutal, cruel, and asinine" manner in which Reagan had carried out Kerr's dismissal and also noted that "Ananias is a symbol of Truth compared to Ronnie."On May 15, 1969, during the People's Park protests at UC Berkeley, Reagan sent the California Highway Patrol and other officers to quell the protests, in an incident that became known as "Bloody Thursday." The student newspaper headlines blared:
Reagan then called out 2,200 state National Guard troops to occupy the city of Berkeley for two weeks in order to crack down on the protesters. W.J. Rorabaugh argues that Reagan was unable to break the power of liberal faculty and administrators, or of radical students. However those groups were astonished by Reagan's popularity, and drastically underestimated the force of conservative reaction against higher education.