This parochialism is remarkable considering the lineage in which Deukmejian stands-one that traces back not only to such nationally prominent California governors as Ronald Reagan and Earl Warren, but also in a sense to New Yorkers Franklin D. He rarely interacts with the national press corps or national conservative activists. Nor has he been a significant participant in the Republican Party’s intramural ideological debates he remained distant from the presidential primaries this year until the result was long decided. His relations with the California congressional delegation are cordial but distant, several members and aides say, and he has never testified before Congress. Deukmejian has not been a force on Capitol Hill. Cuomo of New York and Bill Clinton of Arkansas-are influential in shaping both the political agenda of their parties and the policy agenda of Congress, particularly on issues confronting the states.īy and large, Deukmejian hasn’t been among them. Sununu of New Hampshire to Democrats Mario M. Many governors-from Republicans Thomas H. But it has become increasingly common for the governors of major states to wield national clout. Not all governors, of course, are national figures. Stone, another leading Republican political consultant. “There is no perception of him,” says Roger J. “He is largely unknown in Republican circles,” agrees Republican political consultant John Buckley, press secretary for New York Rep. “There are people I’ve run into in the higher reaches of the federal government who don’t even know who the governor of California is,” says Martin Anderson, former chief domestic policy and economic adviser to President Reagan and now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Dukakis poised to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Atlanta this month, Deukmejian has acquired an identity as the Other Duke. The Iron Duke to his supporters, Deukmejian is virtually the Invisible Duke in national political terms. Interviews with more than two dozen Republican political consultants, Reagan Administration officials, California congressmen, and independent national policy analysts found that Deukmejian, for the governor of the nation’s largest state, has a remarkably low profile in national political circles-even as his name appears on lists of potential running mates for George Bush. But to the po litical elite of his own country, he couldn’t be much less visible than if he were the mayor of California’s insular state capital. George Deukmejian has successfully run a state bigger than most nations.