Ralph Dills, 92; Longtime Lawmaker

Ralph C. Dills, a Texas sharecropper’s son who became the longest serving California legislator, died Thursday in a nursing home in the Northern California community of Rocklin. He was 92.

His son, Gregory Dills, said the cause of death was old age.

“My father simply stopped breathing while sleeping, at 5:30a.m.,” he said.

A Democrat, Ralph Dills served Gardena, Compton and Lawndale throughout most of his political career.

He served in the Assembly for 11 years and in the state Senate for 32 years.

His accomplishments included writing the legislation that created Cal State Long Beach, and El Camino College, and facilitating the creation of the UCLA Law School.

He also sponsored bills that instituted driver’s education in high school and advanced collective bargaining for teachers.

Popular with the Japanese American community in Gardena, he was one of just two Capitol lawmakers to oppose the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.

He often told colleagues of his friendship with a community member, Joe Kubota, who had once loaned him money to attend USC.

The morning in 1942 that Japanese Americans were assembled for transport to Manzanar, an internment camp in the Owens Valley, Dills said, he drove Kubota to the assembly point at the Santa Anita racetrack.

Forty years later, Dills successfully wrote legislation, signed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, that gave partial reparations to internees.

Born in Rosston, Texas, Dills moved to California with his parents and eight siblings when he was 15.

He graduated from Gardena High School in 1927 and earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA, a master’s degree from USC, and law degrees from Loyola University and the University of the Pacific.

He was first elected to the Assembly in 1939. After spending 11 years there, he was a municipal judge in Compton for 14 years before returning to the Legislature in 1966 as a state senator. He retired in 1998 because of term limits.

In 1994, a victim of redistricting, he still managed to win in a new district outside his core area, using the slogan, “Too old to quit.”

An old-fashioned politician, Dills often was accused of catering to special interests, such as the oil industry.

He was once investigated by the FBI for vote-buying but was not charged.

And he usually spent most of his time at his 50-acre ranch in Loomis, in Placer County, rather than in his home district in Southern California.

Still, he repeatedly proved his political durability.

When Robert Pauley, son of oil magnate Edwin W. Pauley, moved into Dills’ Gardena district in 1974, he thought that, with ample money, he could defeat Dills in the Democratic primary.

But when the votes were counted, Dills had 56% and Pauley ran third with 21%. Another candidate got 23%.

“He was one of the toughest men in the Legislature,” Pauley said Thursday.

“He had support from the unions like none other,” Pauley said. “Our brochures had him in a black box, like he was deceased. But he beat me handsomely. He had an organization I underestimated.”

In 1982, another Dills primary opponent, life insurance underwriter Mickey Carson, sent a photographer to Dills’ ranch to get pictures of his “palatial” lifestyle outside the district.

“Call it a mansion, if you want,” he said. “All the newspaper reporters seem to be interested in is where I sleep.”

Conservationists accused Dills in 1994 of having the worst environmental record in the Legislature.

The senator acknowledged, “They were right. I did have the worst record.”

But, he said, in his old district, “I had oil, oil, oil. Tideland oil. Oil all over the joint. [And] I represented my district.”

In his new district, which included beach cities north to Venice, Dills switched to a pro-environmentalist position.

The League of Conservation Voters, which had endorsed an opponent in the 1994 race, gave him a perfect rating for 1995-96.

“I moved over to the beaches ... where they don’t like oil,” Dills said.

“They want nice, clean fresh air and water.... [Now], I’m 100% with the environment,” he said.

Dills is survived by his daughter, Wendy Lewellen; two sons, Gregory and Leighton; and three grandchildren.

The family asked that donations in his memory be made to any Masonic order.

They said Dills was a 33rd Degree mason, in the Scottish and York Rites.