We were saddened to hear of the death of Marian Bergeson, for decades a friend of these editorial pages, on Wednesday. Celebrated as the first woman to serve in both the California Senate and Assembly, she also served in numerous local and state offices, including as Orange County supervisor, in her long career in politics.
She also ran for lieutenant governor in 1990. Had she won, her centrist conservative views might have led her eventually to the governor’s office, leading the state and the Republican Party in a more positive direction than they actually took.
More successful was Pete Wilson, who was elected governor in 1990. He implemented a system with school-level instead of individual student assessment tests that was opposed by parents. In his second term, Ms. Bergeson became secretary of education from 1996-99 and helped him establish rigorous new tests that prevailed until recently.
A longtime source of these pages, we talked to her last August just after she amazingly celebrated her 90th birthday by skydiving.
“They need to develop a level of trust,” she said of Republicans trying to rebuild the state party. “People don’t trust the system. That’s why we have all this interest in non-political candidates,” such as Donald Trump. Her model was Ronald Reagan, who she said “was a terrific leader who pulled people together. That’s what’s lacking in government today.”
Her lifelong dedication to education is commemorated in the name of the Marian Bergeson Elementary School in Laguna Niguel.
