Nation: Squeeze, Cut and Trim

As Governor, Reagan did just that—to his own ideas

"Horns begin to grow as soon as I cross the Mississippi," jokes Ronald Reagan to top aides who fret about his image, particularly among Easterners, as an inflexible ultraconservative. Most Americans want their next President to have right-wing principles, argues a Reagan adviser, but also to be "reasonable and able to recognize when it is necessary to make an exception" to conservative tenets. Reagan, in fact, demonstrated just that ability when he was Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. As Jimmy Carter and the nation have learned, a man's record as Governor provides only limited insight into how he would perform in the far more difficult role of President. Still, Reagan's conduct in the Governor's office did at least demonstrate that his conservative bark often carried little bite when he tackled the practical problems of governing his state. TIME Los Angeles Bureau Chief William Rademaekers and Correspondent Paul A. Witteman have reviewed the Reagan record as Governor. Their report:

Reagan swept Democratic Governor Pat Brown out of office by nearly 1 million votes, largely on his vow to "squeeze, cut and trim" state spending, taxes and payrolls, much as he now promises to reduce the federal budget if elected President. Yet during his two terms in Sacramento, Reagan did none of those things.

His failures were not entirely his fault. A Governor, like a President, is partially a captive of the situations he inherits. Pat Brown's legacy to Reagan was a state budget deficit of $194 million. This was the result of eight years in which state spending soared from $2.14 billion a year to $4.65 billion. In the same period, the number of full-time civil service employees jumped from 70,000 to 102,000.

Arriving in the state capital to take his first and only elective public office, Reagan had no veteran advisers on whom to rely. Recalls Lyn Nofziger, Reagan's press secretary at the time: "His campaign was run by hired people who then walked away and left it. When he was elected, the big question was, 'My God, what do we do now?' "

What Reagan did often ran contrary to his campaign oratory. Instead of cutting taxes, he solved the budget deficit with the largest tax increase in California's history: a $1 billion jolt, and that was only the beginning. By the time he left office eight years later, he had added $21 billion to the state's tax revenues. Under Reagan, the state's income tax rose from a maximum of 7% to 11% for individuals, and from 5.5% to 9% for corporations. He also increased the state sales tax from 4% to 6%. Facing a state legislature dominated by Democrats in six of his eight years as Governor, he repeatedly opposed legislative proposals to institute the withholding of state income tax from paychecks. Said Reagan in 1969: "The only way I would support withholding is if they held a burning blowtorch to my feet." No one did, but Reagan nonetheless changed his mind and in 1971 signed a tax withholding law.