Commentary / PERSPECTIVES ON THE SEMI-ANNOUNCED CANDIDATE : Who Is the Real Pete Wilson? : He’s No Ronald Reagan

If a person who has been a state assemblyman, a big-city mayor, a U.S. senator and the governor of California doesn’t want to be President, something must be wrong.

Pete Wilson wants to be President. But maybe he should have thought of it sooner. Otherwise, one is forced to wonder why, during his long years in California politics, he seems to have gone out of his way to make his path to the White House more difficult.

In that respect, Wilson differs significantly from the last Republican governor of California to run for President, Ronald Reagan.

Reagan was an includer. Wilson is an excluder.

Reagan was a unifier. Wilson is a divider.

Until recently, Wilson also had been a liberal Republican who, because he is a tough, single-minded politician, has managed successfully to buck the tide in a conservative party.

Before finding it salubrious last year to move rightward during his reelection campaign, Wilson had been openly antagonistic toward the party’s conservatives, in the apparent belief either that they had no place else to go or that he didn’t need them.

Several occurrences over the past 20 years confirm Wilson’s long anti-conservative bias:

* In New Hampshire, during Reagan’s 1976 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Wilson, a Gerald Ford supporter, attacked Reagan as a big taxer and called him “the worst governor in California’s history.”

* In 1984, Wilson, then a senator, and Gov. George Deukmejian served as co-chairmen of Reagan’s reelection campaign in California. Wilson unabashedly attempted to stack the California delegation to the national convention with his liberal cronies at the expense of Reagan supporters.

* At the 1992 fall convention of the California Republican Party, Wilson refused to fight a proposed platform that opposed him on several issues, including abortion. Instead, Wilson, who is strongly pro-abortion, ordered his delegates not to attend; those who did turned in their badges to prevent the presence of a quorum. The gambit failed when the party’s executive committee adopted the platform anyway.

In his first term as governor, the man who had criticized Reagan as a big taxer, foisted a $7-billion tax increase, the largest ever, on California.

Wilson has made almost no effort to build a strong cadre of Republican officeholders, especially if it meant helping to elect conservatives. As governor, he has fought constantly with Republican legislators and with conservative party activists. He appointed John Seymour, a little-thought-of liberal state senator, to succeed him in the U.S. Senate. Not surprisingly, Seymour could not win election two years later, thus turning what had been a safe Republican seat over to a Democrat. Last year, however, as Wilson’s reelection campaign appeared to be in trouble, he began making conciliatory gestures to the conservatives. These included supporting Proposition 187 and challenging a federal motor-voter registration law. Wilson followed this year by jumping on the anti-affirmative action bandwagon.

These stands, however, are not enough. Conservatives show few signs of warming up to Wilson. As proof that he cannot be trusted, they point to his reelection promise--of “read my lips” intensity--to serve out his full four years if reelected and his willingness to turn his office over to a Democratic lieutenant governor

Wilson has failed over many years to unify California Republicans. This, more than any other shortcoming, now seems to be the most serious obstacle to his winning his party’s presidential nomination.

The Line on Wilson

The Times sought comment on Gov. Pete Wilson’s 1996 presidential ambitions from several political figures who have had a relationship--personal or professional, friend or foe--with Wilson over the years.