I’m on the campaign trail with Unruh, and we are having breakfast at the counter of some hotel in Los Angeles, when he leans over and steals my hash browns without asking. He mutters, “I hate those good government types.”
It was the first time in years that he was out of power. When he ran for Governor, the legislators put pressure on him to leave as Speaker of the Assembly, because he couldn’t devote enough time to push through legislation.
He was once so powerful, that when a reporter from Life Magazine asked him to point out his seat in the empty California State Assembly chamber, he growled, made a fist and said, “They’re all mine!”
Jesse Unruh was not unlike President Lyndon Baines Johnson: It was political hell, if you opposed him and pure love, patronage and forgiveness, when you praised and supported him. Both of them grew up poor in Texas. Eat, drink and play politics 24 hours a day was their personal style.
There were some differences between the two men: Senator Frank Church told me that LBJ used to say, “You don’t have the guys vote unless you have his pecker in your front pocket.” Unruh, on the other hand, would make sure you didn’t have a pecker after opposing him.
While attending the University of Southern California on the GI Bill, after serving in World War II, he joined together with other veterans at the college to remove “restricted covenants” against Jews and Blacks in the surrounding Adams district of Los Angeles.
Bee Canterbury Lavery, who was the Chief Protocol Officer for Mayor Tom Bradley, attended USC with Jesse and recently told me the aforementioned story. Bee, the daughter of a Quaker family, also attended Whittier High School, and was a student of a social studies teacher, Pat Nixon.
Former Bradley Chief of Staff, Maury Weiner remembers the good and bad of Unruh’s personal touch. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Unruh reached out to the McCarthy delegation. Maury as Co-Chairman of the California McCarthy for President campaign remembers the “warm and personal phone call from Unruh,” who asked him to join his new “Unity” delegation after his winning candidate was murdered the night of the California primary election.
I joined the Unruh campaign against sitting Governor Ronald Reagan during the 1970 election. I was juggling being traveling Press Secretary with Jesse, during the primary, along with pushing radio beeper news, while working for George Brown in his campaign against John Tunney.
I first met Unruh while as a reporter for Radio News West, under Tom Quinn at City News Service in 1968. I was covering Senator Bobby Kennedy at the Standing Room Only (SRO) event at the Sports Arena. Kennedy was running for President against McCarthy and Unruh was a major player in the RFK campaign for California.
Playing the dogged reporter, while everyone else was in the main complex, I decided to look for Kennedy in the foyer to see if I could get a couple of audio quotes.
I was amazed when I spotted Kennedy alone, and without any protection, rehearsing his speech, pacing back and forth. When I interrupted him for a quick response, he said, “See Jesse Unruh.”
Young advance man and sometimes driver, David Thoreau, best described the atmosphere surrounding Sacramento and Unruh during that election. He was about 21 years old and we were getting to be pretty good friends.
David was driving around, not Unruh, but lobbyist Manning Post, who had a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humor. When David, innocently asked, “Why am I driving you to a lunch meeting with Willie Brown?” …. Post answered, “Buy ‘em early, buy ‘em cheap.”
Jesse, during the campaign, became only, “Jess.” Campaign strategist Dick Kline, who was an advertising executive in real life and created the early and popular VW ads, dropped the “e” off his name, to give Jess more of a macho image against Reagan. After that, a few of Kline’s friends starting calling him, “Dick Klin,” while dropping the “e” off his last name.
The Unruh campaign was worried about looking too "hippie" to the general campaign electorate. The pace and issue approach followed that mode. The only problem: A San Francisco Examiner reporter named Patrick O'Patreney. He had very long hair, looking more like a Bay Area street artist than reporter. I tried getting between him and the newspaper photographers while he was hanging closely to Jess. It didn't work and there was usually a photo of a man standing close to Jess in the Los Angeles Times or other newspaper, who had really long hair and everyone reading thought it was just another Unruh supporter. To this day, I have no idea whether Patrick knew of our travail.
I used to regularly suggest to candidates that they get out of the hotel room and hold news conferences and events on location where news was being made. There was a change in news at that point. Newspaper reporters were still king, so most press conferences took place in offices or hotel rooms. When I came around, radio was playing a major role and local television news was expanding.
After Bradley was elected as Mayor of Los Angeles in 1973, the big and final change took place. Tom Brokaw of KNBC in LA told me that the management of the stations, “finally figured out that news made money,” and they spent more money on television crews and time allotted for coverage of news events.
But, sometimes, going on “location” to make news can backfire, as we all found out in the Unruh campaign.
Henry Salvatore was an oilman, if memory serves me correctly, and he was tied into the Reagan machine. Jess drew quite a news crowd when he went to the front of Mr. Salvatore’s house in an upscale part of West Los Angeles.
The only problem was that Salvatore and the Reagan strategists were smarter. While the cameras were rolling and Unruh was making his case (I may still have the audio tape), Mr. Salvatore walks to the front gate, in a bathrobe, and says, “A man’s home is his castle.” That was it. On the news that night, it appeared that the “Big Daddy” of the California legislature was invading someone’s private residence and that no one was safe.
Other than having our one engine plane freeze up over the airfield in Ukiah one day (“Gee, that never happened before,” said the pilot), the rest of the campaign was uneventful.
A couple of years after the campaign, Unruh office manager Madelle Watson told me that Jesse was thinking about running for Mayor of Los Angeles. She said that the “Negro” community liked Jesse. While that statement was true, I knew it would be no contest with Bradley as his opponent and I told her so.
I was Tom Bradley’s Press Secretary in his 1973 campaign and after I was appointed as his first Press Secretary as Mayor, I ran into Jesse at a fundraiser in the Beverly Hilton Hotel where Senator Ted Kennedy was speaking.
Unruh spotted me as he walked into the dinning room, and obviously had too much to drink, said loudly, “There’s Judas Kholos.” I said something in return, which I cannot repeat here, but it ended the conversation. That was until about 2 years later, when I was walking across the state capitol grounds in Sacramento. He obviously had a 3-martini lunch. With someone at his side he looked at me and yelled out, “FAG.” I said something in return, which again, I will not mention here, and that is the last time I ever saw him. I still don’t understand his anger toward me. My ex-wives were never that angry with me.
I never voted for Ronald Reagan because of his politics, but he was a decent guy. I remember when he was governor, there was a controversy because his state staff included members of the GOP Log Cabin Club, which was a Gay organization. Even during the exposure
by the news media, he never succumbed to public pressure and no one lost their jobs because of the controversy. I thought that was a class act.
It should be noted that former Los Angeles Times reporter and editor, Bill Boyarsky, has finished a book on Jesse Unruh and it is at the publisher and soon to be released.
"Whoops factor." David Thoreau reminds me in an e-mail today, June 9th, that my story was correct about Manning Post picking up Willie Brown, but that it was at LAX, not Sacramento. BTW---You have to read David's exciting novel, "City At Bay." An action adventure of Police action on the Bay Bridge.
Thanks for reading,
Bob Kholos
Copyright by Bob Kholos (a lawyer told me to do this for my entire blog).
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