Vasconcellos eyes governorship

BY MARY ANNE OSTROM AND PHILIP J. TROUNSTINE
Mercury News Staff Writers

SACRAMENTO Veteran Santa Clara County legislator John Vasconcellos will
launch an exploratory bid to become the Democratic nominee for governor
this week, hoping to trade on his hightech connections while selling his
offbeat brand of politics to voters who probably know him best from the
comics.

The bachelor father of California's selfesteem movement, for which he was
once lampooned in Garry Trudeau's ``Doonesbury,'' says he'll spend the next
45 days assessing ``whether I can ignite or spark enthusiasm in enough
people.''

The announcement to be made formally Wednesday, when he sends video and
audio tapes to television and radio stations caps several months of
speculation in the media and soulsearching by the man who in 1979 wrote
``A Liberating Vision: Politics for Growing Humans.''

After serving in the Assembly for three decades, Vasconcellos, 65, trumped
term limits by becoming a state senator last year. If he were to run for
governor next year, he would not have to risk his seat because he does not
have to stand for reelection until 2000.

In an interview Friday, Vasconcellos said he began formulating a run at the
governor's job after winning the Pat Brown Legacy Award in March.

``It struck me that I'd grown into that (Brown) model in a way that I'm
almost surprised by,'' he said. ``But I really have built ties with the
homeless and the hightech and blacks and browns and gays and women.''

Running for governor as a candidate who is opposed to both abortion and the
death penalty positions that clash with those of the majority of
Californians would seem to make the task most difficult.

And never having run statewide, Vasconcellos unlike his possible
competitors, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein or Lt. Gov. Gray Davis is
virtually unknown outside Silicon Valley and Sacramento. Nor does he have
independent wealth to buy name recognition, like Northwest Airlines board
member Al Checchi, who has suggested he would spend as much as $50 million
if he chooses to run for the
Democratic nomination.

Checchi wrote a personal check for $3 million to launch his exploratory
committee. Vasconcellos says he will spend $20,000 in the next month.

However, he says he's not ``Pollyannish'' about the longshot bid and plans
to spend the next month attempting to craft a grassroots campaign. He's
not shy about where he intends to dig up the fertilizer: rich Silicon
Valley executives. Among others, he says he's consulted HewlettPackard CEO
Lew Platt about his intentions. But the only member of his exploratory
committee he would identify by name is former State Sen. Al Alquist.

While a possible Vasconcellos bid already has been lampooned even as a
rumor by some political pundits, others say he can't be dismissed
entirely.

``There's an antiestablishment following out there,'' said veteran
Democratic consultant Joe Cerrell. ``I can see a legitimate grassroots
operation from all the old lefties. It's Stevenson '52. And it's the same
voters . . . Mort Sahl could be the honorary chairman.''

On a more serious note, Cerrell said, Vasconcellos ``could conceivably come
across as the most principled candidate of either party. He's been playing
Don Quixote for a lot of years.''

While Vasconcellos is indeed a New Age Democrat, as comfortable in the hot
tub as he is in the board room, he also has become a leading ally for
Silicon Valley businesses and has mastered such arcane subjects as the
unitary tax and encryption policy. This year his most visible crusade
secured more money to create jobs for welfare recipients forced into the
workplace.

He won his party's Senate nomination in early 1996, when he was opposed by
a hightech executive, with 69 percent of the vote, and he won his seat
with 59 percent in last November's election.

But he still maintains the unofficial title of leader of the aging Esalen
wing of the California Democratic Party.

``If he has any image it is one, created by Doonesbury, as a touchyfeely
politician and an unreconstructed liberal,'' said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe,
political analyst at the Claremont Graduate University. ``And
unreconstructed liberalism doesn't fly today in California, particularly in
statewide general elections.''

During last week's final legislative session of the year, Vasconcellos
could be found buttonholing his colleagues in an effort to secure $1
million in state monies to create a medicalmarijuana research program at
the University of California. He failed, even after convincing Attorney
General Dan Lungren who happens to be the presumptive Republican nominee
for governor to join his cause.

Despite years serving under thenSpeaker Willie Brown as chairman of the
powerful Ways and Means Committee in the Assembly and now as chair of the
Senate Public Safety Committee, Vasconcellos never has shed his image as a
fountain of political psychobabble.

His current resume boasts his commitment to building ``a new human politics
based on the belief we human beings are innately inclined toward becoming
constructive, lifeaffirming, responsible, trustworthy.'' Those are the
Vascoesque qualities that cause Republicans to quiver with excitement at
the idea of his candidacy.

``Vasconcellos deserves credit for being absolutely true to his ideology
and his principles. But it's a 1960s ideology, and that's not going to cut
it with a 1990s electorate,'' said Dan Schnur, consultant to the California
Republican Party.

``I don't know about most Republicans, but I haven't lived a virtuous
enough life to deserve Barbara Boxer and John Vasconcellos on the same
ticket as opponents,'' he said.

Nevertheless, said Jeffe, with Vasconcellos' image, ``he becomes the safe
vote against Gray Davis for the liberals he becomes this campaign's Tom
Hayden.''

Published Sunday, September 14, 1997, in the San Jose Mercury News