The Working Class Republican

by Henry Olsen

  Reagan studiously avoided announcing for president, but did run as a “favorite son” in California’s winner-take-all primary. Such a run was a tradition at that time for many state leaders who wished to control their state’s convention delegations; as many as sixteen favorite-son candidates had entered the 1968 race at one time. Reagan could then use his state’s 86 delegates (667 were needed to win) as a base to springboard to the top.

  In the end, Reagan’s late entry into the race (indeed, he did not formally declare until August 7, the day the nominee was selected) and his recent entry into politics weighed against him. The conservative heavyweights Barry Goldwater, Texas senator John Tower, and South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond (the same man who had run for president in 1948 on an anti–civil rights platform; he had left the Democrats after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act) lobbied conservatives for Nixon. In the end, they delivered for the former vice president: Reagan would garner fewer than 100 delegates from outside California, while southern states gave Nixon 298 votes.48 Ever the astute showman, Reagan went to the podium and moved to make the nomination unanimous.

  Two things stand out from Reagan’s brief, unsuccessful foray into presidential politics. First, he had based his appeal on populist issues rather than the antigovernment themes that Goldwater had stressed. Reagan’s name was placed into nomination by California State Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest, the first woman to nominate a presidential candidate, and she told cheering Reaganites that their man would “confront the radicals on campuses and the looters in our streets and say: The laws will be obeyed.”49 Reagan’s million-vote 1966 victory proved he was “a winner,” she said, and he would “fight to win” when freedom was threatened.50 Almost no one wanted to make another political Pickett’s Charge against the New Deal with Goldwater’s electoral bloodbath still etched in Republicans’ memories.

  Second, Reagan’s defeat also changed his approach to national politics. He had found that his rhetoric could move crowds but it could not move hardened pols. Future efforts, if any were to come, would require greater planning and organization than the slapdash, last-minute effort he had just employed. In his two subsequent contested races for the Republican nomination, Reagan would studiously reach out to local leaders to solicit their support well in advance of the actual vote. He would also work to unify the party’s factions during the campaign rather than rely solely on the emotional support from one group.

  The remainder of Reagan’s first term offers little more than continued examples of his unique brand of conservatism. With revenue growth restored by his tax hike, Reagan’s budgets dutifully increased spending in accord with state law for most programs while seeking to return some of the annual surpluses that had started to arise to the people in the form of tax rebates. He used his line-item veto to remove spending he thought wasteful, but this merely reduced the rate of government spending growth rather than make significant changes to sort of government that the state government provided. He vigorously (and successfully) opposed a tax-cutting initiative sponsored by Los Angeles County Assessor Phil Watson.51 He continued to work for party unity, avoiding involvement in party primaries even when the contrast was clearly between a liberal and a conservative, as was the case in the 1968 primary for US Senate between the liberal incumbent, Tom Kuchel, and the conservative state superintendent of public instruction, Max Rafferty.52 Hard-line conservatives may have been disappointed, but Reagan remained popular among most conservatives and among the working-class Democrats he assiduously courted.

  Reagan’s reaction to the rise of the environmental movement provides a fine example of his governing philosophy. In his first campaign he seemed to side with landowners and developers in their battles with the then-new environmental movement. His quip “If you’ve seen one tree, you’ve seen them all” haunted him throughout his career. But in office he surprised, and even shocked, many liberals with how often he used government to protect open space and clean up the air and water.

  Some of his actions could be seen as refusing to use government to indirectly subsidize development. He stopped construction of two dams, for example, that would have provided water and electricity to surrounding regions.53 But many others involved increasing the degree of regulation over landowners or businesses that many observers thought he would never sanction.

  Perhaps the best examples of these efforts are his support for the creation of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). The TRPA regulates land development in the Lake Tahoe basin in an attempt to maintain the crystal clear blue water this alpine lake uniquely possesses. Reagan and a fellow conservative, Nevada governor Paul Laxalt, established the agency because the alternative was to spoil permanently this national treasure.54 CARB, as the board became known, obtained the power to order pollution-control measures throughout California, including establishing regulations for automobile tailpipe emissions. In both cases, unelected men and women, people whom Reagan would otherwise likely have labeled as bureaucrats, told other people what they could or could not do with their property.

  It’s not hard to see why these environmental regulatory bodies have maintained their power decades after their creation. In each case, a large majority of people—Tahoe tourists in the first case, any resident of California’s cities in the second—reaped significant benefits from the regulations these agencies promulgated. I vividly remember what life in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley was like in the late 1960s. Brown smog would envelop the area, preventing people from seeing hills just a mile or two away, much less the majestic mountains to the east. My seven-year-old self would have to come inside on summer days, unable to breathe after riding my bike because of the toxins that invaded my lungs. Living in urban California may have been a good deal for most, but curbing air pollution would give those people a new—and better—deal.

  Reagan’s embrace of environmental measures has often been ascribed to his love of nature or to the strength of his adviser for environmental affairs, Ike Livermore. It’s true that he demonstrated his love of the outdoors throughout his adult life, especially through his purchase of a series of ranches where he could stable and ride horses. It’s also true that he followed the successful executive style he learned from Ralph Cordiner and delegated decision making to capable subordinates whenever possible. These explanations, however, presume that Reagan acted against his philosophy for purely emotional or personality-based reasons. Many on the left and right often have argued that Reagan’s actions to expand or fail to dramatically shrink government resulted from these factors rather than his principles, hence the obsession among conservatives with White House personnel during his presidency. It’s not that the people who make this argument are wrong; Reagan was an emotional man and he did trust his close advisers. But like “our liberal friends” whom Reagan chided in his “Time for Choosing” speech, there is just so much the people who make this argument know that isn’t so.

  Reagan’s seemingly inconsistent decisions, as governor and as president, almost always can be explained by going back to his core beliefs. Throughout his life he believed in the dignity of the common individual and supported the exercise of governmental power to give that person the opportunity for a comfortable life of his or her own choice. With respect to environmental protection laws, those he favored were similar to the social welfare measures he supported: they gave a powerless many the voice to prevent harm from a powerful few. Where Reagan saw ordinary people on both sides of an environmental question, as he did with proposals to create a state redwoods park on the North Coast, he tried to find a balance so that workers whose jobs would be threatened and environmentalists could both benefit.55 Neither Secretary Livermore nor any other aide ever took Ronald Reagan somewhere his principles did not already permit him to go.

  Reagan entered the 1970 election in a very strong position for reelection. He ran unopposed for renomination, showing how popular he was among Republicans, and was opposed in the ge
neral election by his longtime nemesis, Assembly Speaker Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh. Unruh tried to portray Reagan as a friend of the rich, someone who pushed through property tax cuts for his big business and wealthy backers’ interests.56 Reagan ignored these attacks, instead focusing on his opposition to drugs, his belief in welfare reform, and his environmental protection record.57 The outcome was never really in doubt. While his margin was cut in half from 1966, Reagan won comfortably by a half-million votes.

  Reagan again ran well ahead of Republican candidates. He won working-class cities like San Leandro and Lakewood that Republicans often struggled to carry.58 He won most rural counties at a time when they still normally elected Democrats. In doing so, he ran well ahead of other Republicans. His old conservative friend George Murphy, for example, lost his reelection bid by over six hundred thousand votes, and the Republicans lost their tenuous control of the state legislature. Reagan’s unique New Deal conservatism again attracted voters other Republicans could not.

  Most conservatives are more familiar with Reagan’s second term as governor. He used his victory to focus on reducing California’s exploding welfare rolls and campaign unsuccessfully for a constitutional reduction of state taxes. Both efforts show Reagan’s ongoing determination to ensure that government “helped the needy, not the greedy” (a rhyme he would use often throughout the remainder of his career) while protecting the taxpayer.59 Both efforts were opposed by liberals who believed sincerely in more redistribution and higher taxes, a shift in thinking from FDR’s days that Reagan’s official biographer Edmund Morris called a change from support for benefits to belief in entitlements.60 In neither case, however, did Reagan’s efforts involve an effort to reduce the level of services available to most Californians.

  California’s welfare spending was increasing rapidly throughout the late 1960s, but it accelerated dramatically in the final year of Reagan’s first term. The AFDC caseload, the number of people receiving checks from the state’s largest welfare program, went up from 769,000 individuals when Reagan took office to 1,150,687 in 1969 and a whopping 1,566,000 in 1970.61 The caseload was going up by 40,000 people per month. Spending on Medi-Cal was also going up rapidly, as anyone on AFDC was also eligible for Medi-Cal. Unless spending on these and other welfare programs was quickly curtailed, the state would need to raise taxes again to meet its constitutional requirement of a balanced budget.

  Raising taxes without reducing welfare spending was not on Reagan’s agenda. He had long thought that “the dole” could be a “narcotic” that encouraged dependency, often quoting Franklin Roosevelt to that effect.62 “The dole,” Reagan wrote privately, “except for the aged and disabled, should be eliminated and a government work force be instituted for the able-bodied.”63 Failure to reform these programs would force the state to cut back on “the types of things people should ask of government—parks and everything else.”64

  Reagan convened a task force to study the state’s many welfare programs and offer a comprehensive package of reforms. Under the direction of a trusted aide, Ed Meese, this effort produced a long report offering hundreds of proposed administrative and legal changes to the programs. These changes had four stated goals: increase assistance to the truly needy; require those able to work to do so or get job training; make Medi-Cal no more generous than private insurance; and strengthen a family’s responsibility for its own welfare.65 The Medi-Cal proposals were a reprise of the battle Reagan had fought and lost in 1967; the other goals were nothing more than a concrete expression of the principles he had articulated for years.

  Reagan presented his ideas to the people in his second inaugural address. Recognizing the reality of Democratic legislative control, he said that bipartisanship was possible, citing environmental protection, infrastructure construction, and support for the mentally ill as examples.66 He then turned to the need for welfare reform, telling the assembled legislators there would be no tax hike. His goal was to “eliminate waste and the impropriety of subsidizing those whose greed is greater than their need.” The result, he said, would be programs that “maximize human dignity and salvage the destitute.”67

  The legislature sat on his proposals for months, coming around to negotiate only as time grew short for the passage of a timely budget. Reagan had made televised and personal appeals to Californians on this issue, saying he got the idea to bypass the legislature and go directly to the people from FDR’s fireside chats. He would later ascribe the legislature’s willingness to negotiate as a result of the calls and letters his efforts generated, saying that Democratic Assembly Speaker Bob Moretti told him on their first meeting to “stop those cards and letters from coming.” Whatever the cause, the two men met frequently in mid-1971 to personally hammer out a compromise. The result included many of Reagan’s proposals, including the reining in of Medi-Cal, stiffer eligibility requirements for AFDC, and a hike in benefits for those who remained on the rolls—the first since 1958.68

  Reagan was proud of that latter achievement. He would refer to it frequently in the years ahead, writing one correspondent that

  our welfare reforms did not deny help to any deserving person. As much as anything, they were designed to enable us to do more for those who truly needed help. There had been no increase in grants from 1958 to 1971. We increased the grants by 43 percent.69

  This sentiment was not uniform on the right. In his autobiography, Reagan criticized unnamed conservatives who wanted him to end welfare instead of just cutting the abuses.70 Doing so, however, would violate Reagan’s long-held principle that government support of people who really needed help was entirely appropriate.

  Welfare reform worked as advertised. The rolls started to drop almost immediately. By 1973 they had dropped from a high of 1,608,000 to 1,330,000.71 Spending was curtailed enough that a second major tax hike was avoided. While a state Supreme Court decision on K–12 school spending72 forced him to hike income and corporation taxes in 1972,73 the rest of Reagan’s final term was dedicated to reducing taxes and restraining the expansion of government power.

  In 1972, environmentalists placed an initiative on the general election ballot to create a coastal commission to regulate the development of and public access to any privately owned piece of property on the California coastline. Governor Reagan opposed this initiative, arguing that existing state laws provided sufficient protection for the coast.74 Despite his prestige and a large financial advantage for opponents of the measure, it passed by a 55–45 percent margin.

  Reagan would meet another, more personal defeat at the ballot box in 1973. Still trying to reduce the cost of government and the tax burden of average Californians, he sponsored an initiative to limit state taxation and spending to a set amount of California personal income. The complex measure would have reduced over fifteen years the amount in personal income the state could take in taxes from about 8.75 percent to a flat 7 percent.75 It would also have reduced state income taxes in 1974 by 7.5 percent and exempted from paying any state income tax all families earning less than $8,000 a year, which was then slightly less than the average family income.76

  The campaign was hard fought. Groups benefitting from government spending like teachers’ unions argued that the proposition would endanger spending on schools and other services people valued, while Governor Reagan said the government could keep spending rising and still cut taxes. The “Yes” campaign ran ads saying voters could “beat the politicians,” get lower taxes, and still keep necessary state spending on things like “schools, the environment, and public safety.”77 Voters nevertheless opted to stick with their current system, rejecting Proposition 1 by a 54–46 percent margin.

  Reagan afterward ascribed the loss to a misleading campaign by opponents that contended local taxes could go up, not down, in response to the limits.78 But he may have been more accurate when he said, “It is an axiom of politics that when people are confused about an issue, many will vote No.”79 That’s just another way of saying what he had told conservatives
right after Barry Goldwater’s defeat, that it is “human nature to avoid change and people will bend over backward to avoid radical change.”80 Reagan’s proposal may have been reasonable, but it was radical. Enough Californians bent over backward that they continued to allow the legislature to tax and spend without limit whenever it wanted to.

  Five years later, however, Californians had seen enough. The tax hikes Reagan had supported in 1967 combined with a hot economy to create a witches’ brew of increasing taxes and rapidly rising property values. Reagan often fought to lower property taxes by using recurring state surpluses for property tax rebates, but he was never able to get the Democratic-controlled legislature to agree to a permanent tax cut. By 1978 the state was sitting on a record $5 billion surplus, equal to over a third of the state’s annual budget.81 Two antitax crusaders, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, placed a voter initiative on the ballot to cut property taxes nearly in half and limit their future increases dramatically. Reagan endorsed this measure.82 Infuriated by years of inaction, California voters approved Proposition 13 with a nearly two-thirds majority. Californians took another step toward Reagan’s vision in 1979 by passing Proposition 4 with 74 percent of the vote. The proposition limited state and local spending to the amount spent in 1979 plus increases for changes in the population and the cost of living. Since personal income normally increases at a faster rate than the sum of population increases plus inflation, Proposition 4 did through the back door what Proposition 1 tried to do up front: gently place the tax burden on Californians on a slow, downward glide. Once again, Reagan was ahead of the political curve, one that this time he had helped to shape.

  The state’s and the nation’s turn to the right, however, was years in the future. Reagan’s last year in office, 1974, would go down as one of the worst in modern history for the Republican Party. The Arab oil embargo, which lasted from October 1973 until March 1974, sent energy prices skyrocketing. Firms started laying people off, sending unemployment steadily up throughout the year. The economic downturn led to a stock market decline; stocks lost over 45 percent of their value between 1973 and 1974. To top it off, the Watergate scandal slowly strangled the Nixon presidency. Nixon’s political viability was ended by the July 1974 release of some secretly taped Oval Office recordings that conclusively showed that the president had, despite years of denials, known of efforts to cover up a 1972 break-in by his campaign’s operatives of the Democratic National Committee’s Watergate hotel offices. On the evening of August 8, 1974, I, like millions of Americans, sat transfixed before my television as the only president I had ever known told us that he would “resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.”83 Three months later, the GOP endured heavy losses in midterm elections, dropping forty-nine House seats and leaving it with less than a third of the total.