Action on the Set

Surrounded by thrusting, omnipresent TV cameras and microphones, California reporters have lately opened some of Governor-elect Ronald Reagan's press conferences with a wry jab at his former profession: "O.K., everybody. Quiet on the set. We're rolling." Yet laugh as they may, ex-Actor Reagan is rolling on to his inauguration with as much professional style as if he had played the part a dozen times.

Immediately after the election, he installed a staff in Sacramento to prepare gradually for the change in government, has opened other offices in Los Angeles and Fresno, and is planning a fourth for San Diego. He has nearly completed the personal staff he will take with him to Sacramento; it impresses most observers as being eminently capable, with few ideological overtones. To preserve peace within the party, he has set up a statewide G.O.P. screening committee, with representatives from all the factions, to suggest nominees for other major posts. To help him find candidates for the hundreds of second-level appointments he will have to make as Governor, Reagan has enlisted the aid of a computer.

From the Deathbed. Realizing that a hostile Democratic majority in the state legislature could stymie many of his programs, Reagan wired assurance to each Democratic legislator shortly after the election that "my mind and my door will always be open to you and your ideas," made clear that capable Democrats will be retained in his administration. Personal meetings followed with Democratic legislative leaders, and Reagan has spent many more hours going over state problems with outgoing members of Pat Brown's administration. His few frankly partisan remarks have been directed at Brown himself, who has, following a hoary political tradition, been taking advantage of new judicial posts created by the past legislature to make some 50 "deathbed" appointments, including the designation of his own brother to an appellate court judgeship in San Francisco.

Reagan's most immediate problems as Governor will be financial. With more than 500,000 new residents pouring into California every year -plus 350,000 instate births -the state faces a continual crisis in providing essential services. Reagan's fiscal advisers have told him that he will face a deficit of $350 million next year, and the Governor-elect has already warned that new taxes may be forthcoming. "As the picture looks now," he says, "I don't see any other way out. It's a dark, depressing picture. We can't postpone the day of reckoning. It has caught up with us."

A Word He Can Use. Like all the other Republican Governors and Governors-elect, Reagan spent the weekend at Colorado Springs. Alighting from one of two private jets that carried a party of 13, he rejected the gaudy gold Cadillacs (complete with seat warmers) that ferried the other participants, plopped himself instead into a sober blue limousine.

He did not want to talk of potential presidential candidates, saying, "I don't disqualify anyone for the presidency." But when somebody told him that New York's Nelson Rockefeller had ruled himself "unequivocally" out of the race, Reagan allowed: "Well, that's not a common word in my vocabulary -but I think I can use it."

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