William Coblentz, Jewish CA power broker, dies - he was the founder of BOHEMIAN GROVE

[MikeWB]

http://www.economist.com/node/17145063

William Coblentz
William Coblentz, Californian power broker, died on September 13th, aged 88
Sep 30th 2010


SOME people believe that a lot of public business is done not in the bright light of the democratic arena but out of sight, perhaps even in dark recesses. Some people are right, as Bill Coblentz could have attested. For over 50 years he played a backroom part in the politics, business and cultural life of California, and often his influence extended well beyond the golden state.

Not that Mr Coblentz was at all sinister, or even secretive. He was an extrovert, unable to contain a good joke he had just heard and unwilling to treat bigwigs any less directly than anyone else. When Norton Simon, an industrialist and art collector, complained that another Californian tycoon, Ed Carter, was a sixth Jewish but would not admit it, Mr Coblentz replied, "Norton, you're 100% and you won't, so what are you complaining about?"

Mr Coblentz was primarily a land-use lawyer, whose firm was involved in many of San Francisco's large civic projects, but his influence owed less to his legal abilities than to his skill at winning people's confidence, his humour and his readiness to listen. These qualities helped him guide disputatious clients to the middle ground, even though, in politics at least, that was not his natural territory: he was a lifelong Democrat of the old school.

Since the law was never a passion, whereas convictions were rooted in his being, politics would seem to have been a natural career for him. He got an early taste of the international variety when, soon after the war, the CIA recruited him to help counter communism by promoting European unity. Working under General "Wild Bill" Donovan, who had run the CIA's wartime predecessor, Mr Coblentz met such luminaries as Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Robert Schuman and Paul-Henri Spaak. By the early 1950s he was back home, working for California's attorney-general, Pat Brown. In time, Brown became governor and Mr Coblentz became his special counsel, but he never ran for public office nor accepted offers to become a judge.


Principles on parade

He did, however, become a regent of the University of California, serving for 16 years, two as chairman. Here his principles came to the fore. His opposition to racial discrimination led him to seek the university's disposal of its South African investments. It also contributed to his part in the regents' decision to take a celebrated affirmative-action case to the Supreme Court. It involved Allan Bakke, who believed he had been refused admission to a University of California medical school because he was white. Lower courts had ruled in his favour, and the Supreme Court eventually agreed that he should be given a place.

It was Mr Coblentz's belief in almost unfettered free speech that led him to support the right of Eldridge Cleaver, "minister of information" in the revolutionary Black Panther Party, to teach at Berkeley, so long as he was not "preaching his gospel" in the classroom. The same applied to Angela Davis, a communist, and Herbert Marcuse, a hero of the "new left", at San Diego. Ronald Reagan, by then the state governor, was horrified: "If Eldridge Cleaver is allowed to teach our children, they may come home one night and slit our throats." Mr Coblentz was unmoved. "I don't like you," he told Cleaver, "but I'll stand up for you."

Not surprisingly, it was among Democrats that Mr Coblentz was most influential, advising national politicians like Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama, as well as Californians like Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. They valued him for the soundness of his advice, no doubt, but also for his connections. Some of these came through his involvement in cultural and philanthropic ventures. Others arose from service on boards as diverse as those of Pacific Bell, California's huge telephone company, the NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund and McClatchy, a Sacramento-based newspaper chain that now extends across America.

Mr Coblentz did not mix only with Democrats, though. He was a member of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, whose annual encampment in a redwood grove upstate drew many of the country's prominent Republicans, and cohorts of business grandees too. Among the 30-odd members of Mr Coblentz's club-within-the-club were George Bush senior, Donald Rumsfeld and William Buckley, along with Tom Clausen and Walter Cronkite.

Another Republican, Catherine Hearst, sought Mr Coblentz's help when her daughter Patty was arrested for bank robbery 18 months after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. And like the Hearsts, the Gettys also went to Mr Coblentz for help with errant children.

Sometimes the young came of their own accord. One such, Bill Graham, was a penniless rock-concert promoter whose San Francisco auditorium the locals wanted to close, saying it lowered the tone of the neighbourhood. Mr Coblentz had the building opposite watched, and was able to show it was a brothel frequented by policemen. Graham won his permit and, in lieu of payment, introduced Jefferson Airplane to Mr Coblentz. As a result, he came to act for the Airplane and also the Grateful Dead, It's a Beautiful Day and Santana.

"Don't do that," he would say when the rockers smoked pot in his office. A behind-the-scenes man he may have been, but he hated smoke-filled rooms.