Hugh Flournoy

In 1974 I had just returned to California and got to know the then Controller of the state who was running for Governor, his name was Houston Flournoy. 1974 was not a good year for Republican candidates. At the time he was 45 and had, in about 15 years of public service, developed a reputation as a thoughtful non-ideological politician. (The Photo is from the LA Times Obituary)

Hugh was born in New York City in 1929 and went to Cornell. He finished a PhD at Princeton. At Cornell he studied under legendary presidential scholar Clinton Rossiter. After he completed his degree he began a career in academe at Pomona College. After the 1958 election he wrote an article about why the GOP had lost so badly in that election. His analysis was on the money. In 1960 he ran for and won a seat in the Assembly. He held that seat until he ran for the Controller's position which he won in the Reagan landslide of that year. (Interestingly enough the first California Controller was one John Houston)

Both he and Bill Bagley, an assemblyman of the time and part of a group of "young Turks", agreed that he was talked into the Controller's race after a night where a group had visited several Sacramento nightspots. He and a couple of his buddies spent the night wondering why Alan Cranston, a United World Federalist who eventually ran for and won a US Senate seat (in 1968) had not generated an opponent for his re-election. Hugh would have to give up his Assembly seat to run, but that was OK. By the end of the night these youngsters had talked Hugh into running for against Cranston. Bagley paid the filing fee before Hugh had the chance to protest. Bill has told me that story a number of times, always with a characteristic twinkle in his eye. Hugh won that race in part because of a split in the California democrats that year (between Unruh and Brown's factions) but also because of the Reagan landslide. But then he worked hard to make the Controller's office a more important and ultimately less political role. Cranston had doled out the assessor positions as perks and Hugh curtailed that. Cranston ended his Senate career as one of the key figures in the Keating Five. Hugh's group of leaders had R's by their names but that R rarely involved overblown rhetoric and righteousness which so often infests politicians of both parties today. He proved that it is possible to hold to values without having to live with preachiness.

Hugh never seemed to want to run again for office. In the few times he was willing to discuss that decision I noticed two sets of considerations. I think he was always a bit chagrined that a dilettante like Brown could beat him. But I also think the glad handing was something he was not comfortable with. His runs for office in the Assembly and even for Controller were retail politics that type of campaigning is probably no longer possible.

In Hugh's peer group were an extraordinary group of public policy wonks who all came into the process about the same time - Hugh and Bill Bagley (a flamboyant Assemblyman who retired to become a successful lawyer and UC regent), Jack Veneman (an extraordinarily bright farmer who made some major changes in welfare), Bob Monagan (who became speaker of the Assembly when the GOP briefly took control of the lower house in 1968), Pete Wilson (who eventually became US Senator and Governor) and Robert Beverly (who was a lawyer who became minority leader of the Assembly and then a dean in the Senate). Each of them had a commitment which is rare in current times - they kept true to their philosophy but were willing to engage the other side to solve California's problems.

Hugh was first an academic. A lot of the time when I watched him campaign he seemed almost uncomfortable in the role - yet when he argued on policy issues he became very much engaged. In a Time article about him at one point he was quoted as saying "I don't have anything against passion, I just happen to be more committed to reason as a basis on which campaigns ought to be fought."

Hugh had two sets of passions in his academic career. First, was the Federalist. That came from Rossiter, who remains the foremost scholar in the history of that important document. Rossiter was the scholar who read the original documents and figured out who had written which paper (among Madison, Hamilton and Jay). I suspect Hugh may have been involved in at least some of that research as an undergraduate - although he never told me that. When I first worked with him at USC, we spent one drive in LA where we were going to the same meeting, trading quotes from the Federalist. He knew both the substance and spirit of those 85 essays which helped think out how our government should be formed. His second issue was reapportionment. When he first came to USC we talked about his interest in writing a book on the subject which unfortunately he never completed. The major case which created the new conditions requiring "one person, one vote" was developing about the time that Hugh was transitioning between Pomona and the Assembly. So in one sense he lived the issue both intellectually and professionally simultaneously.

He had the bad fortune to run for Governor in the year of Watergate. Even though he ran against a relatively flaky candidate, he had the albatross of Nixon which enveloped all GOP candidates that year. In the end he lost by about 180,000 votes or just under 3%. Hugh went back to academe and then served more than 20 years on the faculty of USC and he also established USC's first office of governmental affairs in Sacramento.

He retired from USC in 1999 and divided his time on a couple of corporate and foundation boards and between residences in Florida and California. He remarried a younger woman who actually worked for me for a while. She proceeded him in death because of a series of her own health problems. In those years at USC he served as a mentor to a lot of politicians and guide to many younger people like me on the ways of the Capitol. He was a part of the establishment but more as a senior statesman. But he had the ability to work with democrats also.

In one of my first years as President of the Association the then Speaker of the Assembly proposed legislation which would have drastically reduced aid to needy students in the independent sector. Hugh threw himself into that fight (which we eventually won in the Governor's office). At times when we were beaten in a committee, Hugh and I would go out and think out next steps - he was always a calming influence. In the end we were able to enlist two of his old friends (the Governor - Pete Wilson and the Dean of the Senate Al Alquist) and the bill was vetoed. That fight instilled a calmness that has served me in a lot of subsequent issues.

Hugh had been in declining health for the last several years and on Monday afternoon he died on a flight from San Diego back to his home in Bodega Bay. He was 78. The Governor, who I think never had the chance to meet Hugh, could benefit from having public servants with Hugh's commitment to using reason in the process. But then California could benefit too.