Bos’ Death Leaves Void in Wilson’s Circle of Advisers

Otto Bos was far more than an articulate spokesman and skilled strategist for Pete Wilson, he was a trusted friend whose death has left a huge void within the governor’s tight inner circle that will be impossible to fill, associates said Monday.

Wilson’s alter ego, a source of creative energy, a memory bank--these were among the superlatives used by colleagues and former foes to describe Bos’ value to the governor.

Indeed, so close was Wilson to Bos that the governor--along with Chief of Staff Bob White--flew immediately to San Diego from Sacramento on Sunday night after learning of his 47-year-old adviser’s death from a heart attack while playing soccer. Wilson and White “said goodby” to Bos in the hospital, where he had been pronounced dead on arrival. “It was the first time I had ever seen them both cry,” an aide said.

Bos, an all-American soccer player in college who was 6 feet 4 and solidly built, recently had decided to go on a liquid diet to lose 20 pounds. He had shed 14 pounds by the day of his heart attack, a colleague said, and had been checked out by a physician two days earlier.

An autopsy Monday by Dr. Brian Blackbourn, chief examiner of the San Diego County medical examiner’s office, showed that Bos had suffered severe coronary artery disease that led to the massive attack. Blackbourn said that further tests will be conducted this week to examine, among other things, the possibility that the liquid diet contributed to the attack. “The diet has not been ruled out,” the doctor said.

A memorial service will be held Thursday at 4 p.m. in San Diego’s Balboa Park. Burial will be private.

On Monday, the governor’s office was in a state of shock because of Bos’ death. Wilson flew back to Sacramento in the morning for another round of budget negotiations with legislative leaders. “His mood is definitely more somber, but he’s carrying on,” Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said.

Among Wilson’s staff aides, Bos and White were the two closest to the governor. “Otto was the kind of guy that Pete would shoot the breeze with late at night,” said press secretary Bill Livingstone.

Bos was an immigrant from the Netherlands who did not arrive in America until age 13, yet learned to speak fluent English with no accent. He was a San Diego newspaper reporter covering Wilson as mayor when Wilson recruited him as his press secretary.

“This is going to create a very huge void that will be impossible to fill,” said Larry Thomas, a former Wilson press secretary and political adviser, echoing the views of many. “You can’t replace 14 years of personal relationships like that. Politics is the closest thing you have to being in a foxhole during war.

What people who observed Bos found amazing, especially in view of his not being a native American, was his natural instinct for American politics and the press. He innately knew how best to sell his boss through the news media to the public, colleagues recalled. At the same time, reporters respected him as a straight-shooter and credible spokesman for Wilson.

“He came to America as a teen-ager and he loved it. His powers of observation were so keen that, as foreign-born, he saw things we never saw,” said Lynda Schuler, a colleague when Wilson was a U.S. senator.

One invaluable ingredient that Bos brought to Wilson, many recalled, was a human touch and sense of humor that he constantly urged the governor to emphasize in an effort to erase a rather drab public image.

He once talked Wilson, when he was a senator, into helping save a veterinarian’s imported donkey from being destroyed because it had flunked a U.S. Department of Agriculture test. “He saved that donkey and made Page 1,” Schuler recalled. When Wilson was inaugurated governor last January, Bos had the San Diego Chicken flown up to meet the new chief executive and his wife. The event got wide display on television and in newspapers.

Bos, whose title was communications director, enjoyed being referred to in political newsletters as “the vicar of the videos” and “the maestro of the media.” But there was a much deeper side to him that Wilson also relied on, colleagues said. “The news media looked at Otto as the quintessential spin doctor,” said Wilson political aide Marty Wilson (no relation), referring to Bos’ ability to put the governor’s preferred spin on a story. “But he had a lot of substance, too.”

Bos was very concerned about the environment and frequently pushed Wilson into emphasizing his support for it.

If need be, he also was candid and blunt with the governor. In January, he scolded Wilson for commenting that his proposed welfare cuts would leave poor mothers “less for a six-pack of beer” and persuaded the governor, in effect, to publicly apologize for the offhand remark.

Bos also served as a staff diplomat. At a Republican state convention in 1990, while Wilson was running for governor, Bos shuttled back and forth between Christian fundamentalists and gay rights activists working out a compromise resolution between those warring factions. In the end, he got a standing ovation from both groups.

Bill Carrick, who managed Democrat Dianne Feinstein’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Wilson last year, praised Bos for being “incredibly tenacious and aggressive in the day-to-day combat of the campaign.”

Carrick said that the idea of Wilson running for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination--as many expect--”without Otto right in the middle of it is just hard to believe.”

Actually, Bos was preparing to leave the governor’s personal staff Aug. 1 and form a political consulting partnership in Sacramento with longtime Wilson political operative George Gorton and pollster Richard Dresner. Just last week, Bos had purchased a home in Sacramento and was planning to move his wife, Florence, and their three children here from San Diego.

“Otto might have been leaving the state payroll, but he wasn’t going to be leaving the governor,” Gorton said. “Now, when we’re all meeting and Pete is there, we’ll be looking around saying, ‘Where’s Otto to explain this to us?’ ”

Gorton added: “He couldn’t have figured out a better way to go than playing soccer. We’d actually talked about it.”

Times political writer Bill Stall contributed to this story.