Obituaries

[pbrower2a]

Eric, I am surprised that you missed this one:

Courken George Deukmejian Jr. (/djuːkˈmeɪdʒən/;[1] June 6, 1928 – May 8, 2018) was an American politician who was the 35th Governor of California from 1983 to 1991 and Attorney General of California from 1979 to 1983. Deukmejian was the first and so far the only governor of a U.S. state of Armenian descent.


Deukmejian was elected in 1982 to his first term as Governor of California, defeating Lieutenant Governor Mike Curb, a recording company owner, in the Republican primary (1,165,266 or 51.1 percent to 1,020,935 or 44.8 percent).[4] One of his early primary backers was former gubernatorial candidate Joe Shell of Bakersfield, California, a conservative who had opposed Richard M. Nixon in the 1962 primary.[8]



Deukmejian (dark red) defeated Tom Bradley (dark blue) with a 49.3% to 48.1% voter margin in the 1982 gubernatorial election
In the general election, Deukmejian ran as a conservative supporter of public safety and balanced budgets.[8] In addition, he was strongly critical of outgoing Governor Jerry Brown and promised to run a very different administration.[5] He also strongly criticized the Supreme Court of California, which was dominated by Brown appointees, notably controversial Chief Justice Rose Bird.[9]

Deukmejian narrowly defeated Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley in the general election.[4] Deukmejian won the election by about 100,000 votes, about 1.2 percent of the 7.5 million votes cast.[4] The victory came despite opinion polls leading up to the election which consistently showed Bradley with a lead, and despite exit polling conducted after voting closed which led some news organizations on the night of the election to make early projections of a Bradley victory.[11][12] The discrepancy between the polling numbers and the election's ultimate results would come to be termed the "Bradley effect", which refers to a hypothesized tendency of white voters to tell interviewers or pollsters that they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, but then actually vote for his opponent.[12]
Altogether Deukmejian's governorship was a departure from that of his predecessor, Jerry Brown.[13] He vowed not to raise taxes, appealing to the business community by repealing some consumer and environmental requirements.[14] In addition, he presented himself as a law and order candidate, proposing new efforts to fight crime.[5] He faced a Democrat-dominated California State Legislature during his two terms as governor.[8] He was the sole Republican statewide officeholder until Thomas W. Hayes was appointed California State Treasurer, following the death of Treasurer Jesse Unruh.[5]

In 1983, Deukmejian abolished the Caltrans Office of Bicycle Facilities and reduced state spending for bicycle projects from $5 million to the statutory minimum of $360,000 per year.[15] In 1984, he vetoed A.B. 1, the first bill to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians, which passed the Legislature.[16]



Deukmejian with President Ronald Reagan at a presidential campaign rally in Fountain Valley, California in September 1984

In 1986, Bradley sought a rematch and Deukmejian defeated him by a 61% to 37% percent margin, a record not broken as of 2015.[5] He was generally regarded as a moderate-to-conservative Republican.[5]

The Deukmejian administration entered office during a national economic recession.[17] He first halted the hiring of new state employees and banned out of state travel for those in government.[18] He rejected the legislature's demands for tax hikes, and pared $1.1 billion from its budget by selectively vetoing spending items.[19] One year later, further cuts, along with a nationwide economic rebound that benefited the state, created a billion dollar surplus for 1985.[18] At one point, his approval ratings reached 68%.[18] His 1985 budget slightly increased spending in highway construction, but cut heavily into the education, health, welfare and environmental budgets.[18] For this he was roundly criticized, and probably led to his low polling numbers at the end of his tenure as governor.[18][19]

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Three years later, Deukmejian faced his own billion dollar deficit.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Deukmejian#cite_note-LAD-17][17] He supported a raise in the state minimum wage in 1989.[17] During Deukmejian's administration, the general fund budget grew by 98% without any increase in general tax rates. (California State general fund budget: 1982–1983 $21.7 billion; 1990–1991 $42.9 billion).[9]

Deukmejian largely made his career by being tough on crime.[20] When he was in the legislature, he wrote California's capital punishment law.[9] As a candidate for reelection, in 1986 he opposed the retention election of three Brown-appointed justices of the Supreme Court of California due to their consistent opposition to the death penalty in any and all circumstances.[4] One of them (the best known) was Rose Bird, the first female Chief Justice of the Court (and the first one to be voted off).[4] Deukmejian proceeded to elevate his friend and law partner, Malcolm M. Lucas, from Associate Justice to Chief Justice, and appointed three new associate justices.[4] Under Deukmejian, the California prison population nearly tripled — as of December 31, 1982, the total prison population stood at 34,640 inmates.[8] He increased spending for the building of new prisons.[4]

In 1988, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush considered Governor Deukmejian as a possible running mate for the presidential election that year.[20] During a trade mission to South Korea in August, Deukmejian sent a letter saying he could not be considered for nomination, refusing to leave the governorship to Democratic Lieutenant Governor Leo T. McCarthy.[20] Deukmejian did not seek reelection to a third term as governor in the 1990 gubernatorial elections.[20] The Republicans instead nominated sitting United States Senator Pete Wilson, who defeated Dianne Feinstein in the general election.[5] He was the last governor not affected by the two-term limit that was passed by voters in 1990.[17][9]

On October 1, 1989, Governor Deukmejian signed legislation authorizing the purchasing of health insurance by uninsured Californians suffering from serious illnesses such as AIDS, cancer, diabetes, and heart disease through tobacco tax revenues.[21]
In 1991, in his last two hours in office, he vetoed the property tax exemption bill passed by both houses of the Legislature which applied to companies building solar thermal power plants in California.[22] Although the Legislature enacted the exemption in early 1991, companies would still face significant levels of property tax and other taxes.[13] This exemption was focused towards the Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) plants then being built by Luz International Limited (Luz) in the late 1980s.[23] The veto led directly to the bankruptcy of Luz.[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Deukmejian