SACRAMENTO — Gov. Pete Wilson recently looked out his office window into the lush landscape of Capitol Park, a peaceful panorama of manicured gardens and magnificent trees, and remarked to his chief of staff, "Ya know, Bob, it's a beautiful day out there. Damn it!"
"Every day," reports aide Bob White, "he stands there and says, 'I wish it would rain, I wish it would rain.' "
For weeks, Wilson had hoped for rain, not yet ready to confront both a drought and a record budget deficit. But he began planning for the worst. Now the worst seems inevitable, despite the first major rainstorms in a month. And the new governor is facing a crisis, with the decisions he makes likely to shape the public's crucial first impressions of his Administration.
Although he had wanted to avoid it, Wilson in recent days apparently has been moving toward a delicate decision to invoke a governor's emergency powers and usurp local authority over dwindling water supplies. "That's the train we're on," acknowledged an Administration official who did not want to be identified.
"Generally, a governor gets defined in his first year by the crises that confront him," said Steven A. Merksamer, Gov. George Deukmejian's first chief of staff. "The crises defining Wilson will be the budget and water. And water could be the most defining. The budget ultimately will be resolved. Water is infinitely more complex and difficult. It is a quicksand and has been a quicksand for other governors."
Beyond the immediate crisis of the drought, Wilson's legacy as governor probably will be influenced by how well he displays leadership in working with the Legislature and competing special interests--business, agriculture, environmentalists, the state's varied regions--to plan for California's water needs into the next century.
Wilson seems to have two golden opportunities: The calamity of the drought could bring together long-warring factions to forge a landmark compromise on water--just as the deficit squeeze could pressure the governor and Legislature into negotiating a comprehensive budget reform.
The governor last week described his situation as "a double-barreled crisis--a drought caused by nature and a deficit caused by man" and added, "political gamesmanship just won't cut it." His press secretary, Bill Livingstone, said: "As if the budget weren't bad enough, now here's the drought. Two of the horsemen (of the apocalypse) are on our doorstep."
