Rebecca Morgan

Republican state Sen. Rebecca Morgan has told Gov.-elect Pete Wilson that she is not interested in being appointed to his U.S. Senate seat, saying that she wants to stay in California. Morgan, of Los Altos Hills, said Wilson told her she was on his "short list" of possible candidates, but she asked that her name be removed.

Sen. Rebecca Q. Morgan of Los Altos, a moderate Republican and one of six women in the California Senate, announced her surprise mid-term resignation Thursday to join a nonprofit Silicon Valley group. Morgan, who was reelected last year to a third term, said she will leave the Senate on Aug. 17, a move timed to enable Gov. Pete Wilson to call an election to fill the vacancy Nov. 2, which coincides with a statewide special election.

Sen. Rebecca Q. Morgan of Los Altos, a moderate Republican and one of six women in the California Senate, announced her surprise mid-term resignation Thursday to join a nonprofit Silicon Valley group. Morgan, who was reelected last year to a third term, said she will leave the Senate on Aug. 17, a move timed to enable Gov. Pete Wilson to call an election to fill the vacancy Nov. 2, which coincides with a statewide special election.

Republican state Sen. Rebecca Morgan has told Gov.-elect Pete Wilson that she is not interested in being appointed to his U.S. Senate seat, saying that she wants to stay in California. Morgan, of Los Altos Hills, said Wilson told her she was on his "short list" of possible candidates, but she asked that her name be removed.

Three Republican lawmakers said they would oppose GOP efforts to slash state spending on abortions for poor women. State Sen. Rebecca Morgan of Los Altos Hills, along with Assemblyman Charles Quackenbush of Santa Clara and Escondido Assemblywoman Tricia Hunter, said it was illegal to cut funding for Medi-Cal abortions and costly to defend the action in court.

The state Senate on Thursday narrowly approved a pilot voter registration program that would entitle San Fernando Valley high schools to a dollar reimbursement for every student who is registered. The bill by Sen. Alan Robbins, D-Tarzana, is designed to increase voter registration among 18-year-olds. "I think it is very important we get young people started in the process early," Robbins said. The Senate sent his bill to the Assembly on a 21-12 vote--the bare majority needed.

Claremont Graduate University on Thursday named three poets as finalists for its Kingsley Tufts Award . With a $100,000 prize, the Kingsley Tufts award is one of the most significant awards given to an American poet; previous recipients include D.A. Powell, Lucia Perillo, Yusef Komunyakaa, Carl Phillips, and Chase Twichell. The three finalists for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award are Marianne Boruch for "The Book of Hours" (Copper Canyon Press), Edward Haworth Hoeppner for "Blood Prism" (Ohio State University Press)

Five HealthSouth Corp. officers pleaded guilty to conspiring to inflate company earnings by as much as $2.5 billion, an alleged fraud almost twice the size previously estimated by U.S. authorities. Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had accused fired Chief Executive Richard Scrushy and Birmingham, Ala.-based HealthSouth of inflating earnings by at least $1.4 billion, charged him with insider trading.

Rebecca Morgan, a senior at Canyon High in Anaheim, won $650 for placing first in Orange County in the 24th annual patriotic slogan contest sponsored by the Americanism Educational League. Rebecca's slogan, "Our Statue of Liberty--the Real First Lady" was selected from among 10,753 entries submitted this year. In the slogan contest, second prize and $450 went to Gina Homik of Foothill High in Tustin for the slogan, "In America--Your Future is Up to You!

Even before the jury on Friday found Bill Honig guilty in his conflict-of-interest trial, the scramble was on to succeed him as state superintendent of public instruction. Since winning the job in 1982, Honig has turned the nonpartisan post into a bully pulpit for education. Last year he announced he would not seek a fourth term in June, 1994. The nature of the campaign to fill Honig's job in the 1994 election will depend on whom Gov. Pete Wilson appoints to succeed him.

The man who will fill in for state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Friday that he has no ambitions beyond temporarily acting as superintendent but will continue pushing Honig's reform agenda as long as he is in charge. William D. Dawson, 53, executive deputy superintendent of the Department of Education, also said he would not hesitate to call on Honig--convicted on four felony conflict-of-interest charges--for advice on running the state's educational bureaucracy.

A carefully crafted budgetary sleight-of-hand engineered by Democrats to ease funding problems for the state's beleaguered school system collapsed Friday in the face of a solid wall of Republican opposition. With time running out, Democrats tried to win legislative approval of a new budget procedure that their leaders hoped would have made it easier for Gov.