Pete Wilson

UXL Newsmakers, (2005)

Pete Wilson

Republican Peter Barton Wilson (born 1935) was elected the governor of California in 1991.

As governor of the most populous and economically powerful state in the United States, Pete Wilson is faced with both problems and opportunities of monumental size. His 1990 triumph over Dianne Feinstein for the governor's position made the 60-year-old Wilson an instant candidate for national office—as former California governor and U.S. president Ronald Reagan demonstrated earlier, California politics often become American policies—but for the time being Wilson has his hands full coping with California's massive budgetary, environmental, and population problems. In his first year as governor, Wilson outraged the right wing of the Republican party by raising state taxes $7 billion to help cover California's growing budget deficit, caused by a slow economy and the state's extensive system of social welfare programs. In the land of Reaganism, tax hikes by a Republican governor are viewed as nothing less than treason by many party members; as California Assemblyman Tom McClintock lamented to the New Republic, "All the advantages we [Republicans] had in the 1980s have been thrown away."

Wilson's situation is far more complex than those faced by earlier Republican governors of California, however. The population of the state grew from 23 million in 1980 to 30 million in 1990, with much of the increase in the child population or people too poor to contribute to the state's tax base. At the same time, Californians have grown used to a broad range of social services and tight environmental controls, while simultaneously expressing growing frustration with the size of government and especially with taxes, signaled most clearly by the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, which imposed a cap on real estate taxes. The net result of these disparate forces was a 1991 budget deficit of $14 billion, a rude welcome to the governor's mansion for Pete Wilson.

Peter Barton Wilson was born August 23, 1935, in Lake Forest, Illinois, an affluent suburb north of Chicago. His father, James Wilson, was originally a jewelry salesman who later became a successful advertising executive. The Wilson family moved to St. Louis when Pete was in junior high school. There he attended St. Louis Country Day School, an exclusive private institution, winning an award in his senior year for combined scholarship, athletics, and citizenship. In the fall of 1952 Wilson enrolled at Yale University, where he majored in English and won a Marines ROTC scholarship. A former Yale classmate later described Wilson to the Los Angeles Times as "not the kind of guy who put himself forward a lot," a capable student but not exceptionally gifted nor much interested in student politics.

After graduation from Yale, Wilson served three years in the Marines as an infantry officer, eventually becoming a platoon commander. His Marines service gave Wilson his first taste of leadership, a kind of political initiation which would prove decisive for his later career. After writing a novel in 1958 (which has not been published), Wilson attended law school at Berkeley, having decided that he wanted to live in California while visiting the state as a Marine. He was an average student at Berkeley but became active in political circles, starting a local chapter of Young Republicans and working on various election campaigns. In 1962, while working for Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard M. Nixon, Wilson got to know one of Nixon's top aides, Herb Klein. Klein suggested that Wilson might do well in San Diego politics, and in 1963 the ambitious young Republican moved to San Diego and began his long climb to the governor's mansion. He was attractive, well-spoken, and conservative, all of which made him a good match for San Diego's rather sedate political climate.

Wilson had to take the California bar exam four times before passing, which speaks for his persistence if nothing else. He began his practice as a criminal defense attorney in San Diego, but found such work to be low-paying and personally repugnant—as he later commented to the Los Angeles Times, "I realized I couldn't be a criminal defense lawyer because most of the people who do come to you are guilty." Wilson switched to a more conventional law practice and continued his activity in local politics, working for Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1964. Wilson soon discovered that he genuinely liked politics and that he was good at managing the day-to-day details of the political process. He put in long hours for the Goldwater campaign, earning the friendship of local Republican boosters so necessary for a political career, and in 1966, at the age of thirty-three, he ran for and won a seat in the California state legislature.

As a young state assemblyman Wilson spent much of his time working with Frank Lanterman, a long-time power in Republican state politics. Under the tutelage of Lanterman, Wilson learned the intricacies of the political maneuvering by which the political process is conducted among a host of competing factions. As has always been his fashion, Wilson tended to be quiet and diligent as an assemblyman, neither a brilliant speaker nor visionary policy maker but willing to do the hard work needed for success. In the Republican party, Wilson defined himself as a moderate, while then-governor Ronald Reagan was forging the new coalition of extreme right-wing Republicans that would later carry him to the White House. The two men did not see eye to eye ideologically and were never close personally. At times, Wilson's moderate brand of Republicanism ran head-on with Reagan's conservatism, as when the young assemblyman sponsored a bill that would have created a master plan for controlling use of the California seashore. For the most part, however, Wilson benefitted from the strength of Reagan's popularity, and it was not until the 1991 tax crisis that the philosophical gulf between the two men became apparent.