George Deukmejian, a two-term California governor who was admired by Republicans and Democrats alike for his willingness to cross party boundaries, and who quietly shepherded the state through a period of rapid growth and sustained prosperity, died on Tuesday at his home in Long Beach, Calif. “He had such an understated manner, you almost missed how pervasive and effective he was in his governorship.” (Professor Starr, of the University of Southern California, died last year.) When Jerry Brown left office in 1983 in his first go-round as governor, Mr. Deukmejian, then California’s attorney general, ran for the higher office with an eye toward reforming a state judiciary that he considered too lenient. “Attorneys general don’t appoint judges, but governors do,” he said in an interview for this obituary in 2012. “And we were very troubled in those days by a lot of the appointments Jerry Brown had made.”

Source: New York Times May 09, 2018 01:34 UTC