Ronnie and Nancy_ Their Path to the White House - Bob Colacello [224]
It was just—to go home from the office to that—alone you know.” What’s more, Reagan complained, there was “controversy about everything,” and he was “constantly being attacked.”34
Even before the inauguration, Reagan’s team discovered that Brown had used accounting tricks to cover up an estimated $400 million deficit.35 In an effort to bring the budget under control, Reagan ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cut in spending for all government departments, including the state’s much-heralded higher-education system. He also proposed charging tuition at state universities and colleges for the first time and, to make matters worse, in late January he helped engineer the firing of University of California president Clark Kerr by the Board of Regents, who were dissatisfied with his handling of the ongoing student unrest. Within days Reagan, who had railed against campus “beatniks and malcontents” during his campaign, was hung in effigy at Sacramento State, and protestors at U.C.-Davis staged a mock burial.
California was “the laughingstock of the nation, as far as the academic community is concerned,” declared the Democratic speaker of the State Assembly, Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh.36
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Ronnie and Nancy: Their Path to the White House Uproar followed uproar. In February, when Battaglia asked state employees to work on Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays to save money, only 2 percent showed up. In March, Reagan asked for a $1 billion tax hike—then the largest tax increase ever proposed by a governor in the nation’s history—including higher rates on personal income, corporate profits, retail sales, liquor, and cigarettes.37 Conservatives in his own party howled even louder than the opposition. But Reagan fought back, turning to Asa Call for help in getting corporate chieftains to rein in their lobbyists.38 Tuttle supplied the funds for a series of ninety-second filmed messages that were distributed to local TV stations, a new technique in political public relations that upset reporters, who felt they were being bypassed.
Nofziger told them that was the point. “It’s not a happy picture,” Reagan informed his audience in the first message aired. “Our state has been looted and drained of its financial resources in a manner unique in our history,”
he said, laying the blame for the state’s fiscal crisis at the feet of the previous administration with his usual dramatic flair. The public loved it, and his poll numbers remained high.39 After extensive wrangling between Reagan and Unruh, the tax increase and a record $5 billion budget squeaked through the legislature.
During these same few months, Reagan was confronted with what he said were the two most difficult decisions he would make as Governor. In April he refused a plea for clemency from a black man who had murdered a white police officer while out on bail for a robbery charge; it was the first execution in the state in four years (and would be the last—the California Supreme Court overturned the state’s capital punishment law in Reagan’s second term).40 Also in April, State Senator Anthony Beilenson—whose lawyer father, Laurence, had arranged the 1952 MCA waiver from SAG—
introduced the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which permitted abortion in cases of rape or incest, and when the physical or mental health of the mother was endangered. Reagan anguished over his decision for months while being pulled from all sides. His top aides were split, as was the Kitchen Cabinet, and Catholic friends, including the Wilsons and Betsy Bloomingdale, made their views known to both Ronnie and Nancy. The archdiocese of Los Angeles had hired Spencer-Roberts, and the firm arranged a meeting between Reagan and Francis Cardinal McIntyre, which only added to the controversy. Nancy suggested that Ronnie consult with Loyal, whom she called every day, according to her stepbrother, “to talk about the children or to get his advice.” As a physician, Loyal