Former California Governor Deukmejian Dies; Leaves Legacy of Fiscal Conservatism and Bipartisanship

George Deukmejian served from 1979 to 1983 as California State Attorney General. Prior to that, he served in the California State Assembly from 1962 to 1967 and in the State Senate for twelve years from 1967 to 1979, where he represented Long Beach and surrounding Southern California communities.

He was the recipient of nine honorary degrees and was Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Politics of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He was a Regent Emeritus of the University of California, and a former member of the Board of Trustees of California State University. During its 2013 dedication of the new Long Beach courthouse in the County of Los Angeles, it was officially named the “Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse.”

In a 2005 memoir, David Gardner, who was president of California’s university system in the 1980s, wrote of the governor’s stand on apartheid in South Africa, “All of this killing and violence, directed mostly against blacks, reminded Deukmejian of the Turkish massacres of Armenians in World War I.”

Recalling the episode in 2012, Deukmejian said, “My feeling was, there but for the grace of God go I.”

Gardner had strongly opposed divestment, but at the governor’s urging, the state pulled some $3 billion in stock holdings out of South Africa. During a visit to California after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela said the action by the University of California — the first large public institution to take a stand — played a critical role in ending white minority rule in South Africa.

A staunch fiscal conservative, Deukmejian was a consistent opponent of new taxes and government spending increases, to the point where his Republican colleagues in the legislature nicknamed him “The Iron Duke” for repeated vows to veto spending bills.

Courken George Deukmejian Jr. was born on June 6, 1928, in Menands, N.Y., north of Albany. His parents had emigrated from eastern Turkey in the early 1900s. His father worked in a series of jobs — as a photographer, Oriental rug dealer and paper wholesaler. His mother worked in a necktie factory.

Deukmejian attended Siena College in Albany County, graduating in 1949 with a bachelor of arts in sociology. He received a law degree in 1952 from St. John’s University School of Law in Queens.

Deukmejian was known to be especially tough on crime. While governor, he presided over the building of more than a dozen prisons.

After leaving office in 1991, he became a partner in the Los Angeles office of Sidley & Austin, commuting from his house in Long Beach, which he and his wife had lived in since 1960.

He is survived by his wife, Gloria; their children, Leslie, George and Andrea; and six grandchildren.

One of the signal moments in Deukmejian’s governorship came in 1989, after a gunman killed five elementary school children in Stockton, Calif., using an AK-47. Bucking his party, Deukmejian supported a Democratic-sponsored bill outlawing semiautomatic rifles, one of the first such bans in the nation.

Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco, who was speaker of the State Assembly when Deukmejian was in office, said of the governor’s support for the ban, “It was the right thing to do, not the politically right thing to do.”

“Deukmejian was a registered Republican, but he elevated the level of governorship above his party choice,” Brown said in an interview for this obituary. “I think his time in office will be seen as the last the State of California actually had a bipartisan, working relationship between the governor’s office and the legislature.”

Considered a politician of great integrity, he was respected on both sides of the aisle and credited for his ability to work with members of both parties to enact legislation of great consequence to the state in the areas of transportation, law and order, gun control and public safety to name but a few. Many have said that the Armenian genocide informed his lifelong quest for justice and anti-violence.

“Today, another son of the Armenian nation joins the ranks of other extraordinary Armenian American public figures, including Kirk Kerkorian and our own former AGBU president Alex Manoogian. They have left an indelible legacy of hope and inspiration to those seeking to balance worldly success with giving back to their fellow Armenians,” stated AGBU President Berge Setrakian on behalf of the worldwide organization. “George Deukmejian was a shining example of effective leadership to both his country and the community that shaped his character and world view.”

(The New York Times contributed to this report.)