NEWS ANALYSIS : Governor Under Pressure on Family Planning Bill

SACRAMENTO —  Under pressure from Sen. Pete Wilson and other Republicans to defuse a volatile political issue, Gov. George Deukmejian today will announce the fate of a $20-million family planning bill that has caused him deep anger and frustration.

The GOP governor has until midnight to act on a handful of options involving the popular legislation, which would restore funds he previously vetoed for 500 clinics serving mostly poor women.

Deukmejian can fan the political fires by either vetoing the measure or using his gubernatorial “blue pencil” to pare the $20 million to a lower figure. Both courses, Republicans fear, could expose them to the attacks of increasingly vocal abortion-rights activists, because critics of family planning have linked the clinics to abortions.

The way for Deukmejian to please most Republicans running for office this year--including the “pro-choice” Wilson--is to either sign the bill or allow it to become law without his signature.

“He’s just fed up with the whole thing,” said one Deukmejian aide, who like most insiders did not want to be quoted by name.

Deukmejian publicly has voiced his anger at a lawsuit challenging his authority to cut funds for family planning clinics.

A San Luis Obispo County Superior Court judge ordered restoration of the funds, but the governor has appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court. To now sign a bill restoring the money would make him look as if he were surrendering to the plaintiffs and set a bad precedent for future governors, he believes.

Deukmejian also publicly has attacked the family planning clinics themselves, declaring they provide far more medical services than the Legislature originally envisioned. He insists these benefits are available separately from the Medi-Cal program.

Privately, according to people close to him, Deukmejian also thinks the whole issue has been greatly overblown by the Legislature. The program represents only a minuscule part of a $50-billion state budget, he reasons. And Deukmejian really resents being pressured.

But politically, Deukmejian’s arguments will not wash with middle-of-the-road voters, many leading Republicans contend. They fear--and they have told the governor--that Democrats will have a field day accusing the GOP of insensitivity for cutting back such services as birth-control advice and prescriptions, gynecological examinations, pregnancy tests, and screening for venereal disease and AIDS for the 470,000 people who used the nonprofit clinics last year.

Termed a ‘Loser’

“The governor ought to get rid of this thing. It’s a loser,” said one strategist for Wilson, the probable Republican nominee to replace Deukmejian next January. “The governor knows where we’re coming from on this. Pete feels he ought to restore the family planning money. We’re not seeking fights with Duke, but Republicans are getting killed with this kind of stuff.”

The Wilson adviser, who requested anonymity, added that if Democrats attempt to tar Wilson with an anti-family planning brush because of what Deukmejian does, “Pete can always say, ‘Well, this candidate would be a different kind of Republican governor.’ But he would prefer not to have to say it. So there’s been a lot of communication (with Deukmejian people).”

What makes family planning especially volatile politically is that it is linked indirectly with abortion, perhaps the hottest campaign issue of the last few months, at least in California.

Conservative Republicans in the Assembly originally opposed the family planning programs because they believed many clinics promoted abortion. During a budget crunch last July, Deukmejian went along with their objections and vetoed $24 million from the state’s $36-million funding package for the clinics.

But his action was taken before voters began seriously contemplating a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, just a few days earlier, that gave states greater leeway to regulate abortion.

“This whole abortion issue is like a dagger at Republicans,” said former Deukmejian chief-of-staff Steven A. Merksamer, who now is a private attorney and a part-time Wilson adviser. “The Supreme Court made it a real issue. A lot of people who were indifferent before the ruling have become activists.

“I can’t think of another issue that tends to make politicians throw up as fast as abortion, because whatever position you take you are going to alienate a vociferous single-issue constituency and do political damage to yourself,” said Merksamer. “And that’s something politicians try to avoid at all cost. . . .”

Merksamer, like most of Deukmejian’s advisers, hopes the governor somehow can protect the constitutional separation of powers, rid himself of the political issue and also save face.

“I understand the governor’s concern about his line-item veto authority,” he said. “But, hopefully this issue can be resolved in a way that preserves his authority and at the same time gets this issue behind him and the Legislature so they can get on with the broader issues that confront this state.”

That is the message Republican legislative leaders have been sending Deukmejian. They also have been reminding the governor that GOP and Democratic legislators negotiated the compromise family planning bill under the cooperative, watchful eye of his Administration. And now they feel the governor has pulled the rug out from under them.

“But sometimes you can push the governor too much,” noted Senate Republican Leader Ken Maddy of Fresno.

Assemblyman William J. Filante (R-Greenbrae), one of the GOP legislators pushing for family planning funds, said he admires the governor for being “a very straight person, squeaky clean, who has the guts to look at something and give it his best shot and do what he believes in. . . . He’s not acting on the basis of who’s for it and who’s against it.”

When a reporter pointed out that many legislators think these Deukmejian traits add up to stubbornness, Filante added: “Stubbornness is when you won’t listen to reason. In this case . . . “ Filante paused. “Maybe he is stubborn. . . . It’s maddening sometimes.”

One legislative land mine for Deukmejian and Republicans, if Deukmejian should veto the bill or “blue pencil” most of the funding, is the threat of the governor’s first veto override. Deukmejian publicly has said he is not worried about being overridden. But some GOP insiders have reported that he, indeed, is concerned about it.

Aides’ Reaction

And eyebrows rose in the governor’s office--where most aides reportedly have been urging him to avoid an outright veto--when Deukmejian late last week told reporters he was “considering, of course, the fact that this bill passed by an overwhelming vote of both houses.” (The legislation passed 65 to 8 in the Assembly and 30 to 5 in the Senate.)

Getting Republicans to vote for a bill the first time is one thing. Getting them to vote to override their lame-duck governor is quite another. And in recent days, it has not seemed that Democrats would be able to muster enough GOP votes in the Assembly to achieve an override. What worries Republican leaders, however, is that even an override attempt would focus more public attention on the issue. “We’re getting killed,” said one GOP lawmaker.