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In that first election, Reagan beat Incumbent Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown with nearly 57% of the 6.5 million votes cast and won a surprisingly high one-fourth of the Democratic vote. Declaring that "there are simple answers," he took office in 1967 with a promise to reduce state spending by 10%, cut welfare, curtail the growth of state government and crack down on student protesters. He turned out to be more pragmatic than his rhetoric suggested, in part because he had to compromise with a Democratic legislature. He managed to limit, but not reverse, the growth of state government; he boasts of vetoing 194 items of legislation that would have cost Californians billions of dollars. But many liberals share the view of Dean McHenry, chancellor emeritus of the University of California at Santa Cruz, that "his bark proved worse than his bite." Even Jesse ("Big Daddy") Unruh, a longtime foe who was the defeated Democratic candidate for Governor in 1970, grudgingly admits, "As a Governor, Reagan was better than most Democrats would concede, though not nearly as good as most Republicans like to think."
Partly because of inflation during Reagan's eight-year administration, state spending doubled, to $9.3 billion, and state taxes per capita jumped to $768 from $426; both increases were at about the same rate as those during Democrat Pat Brown's eight-year administration, which Reagan had attacked as spendthrift. Still, Reagan held state employment to about 116,000, an increase of less than 10%, compared with the 75% increase of Brown's years. Moreover, Reagan substantially raised state aid to schools and other local services. Unquestionably, he left California's state government on a sounder fiscal footing than he found it when he came to office. In contrast to the $194 million deficit he inherited from Edmund G. Brown Sr., Reagan bequeathed a $500 million surplus to his successor, Edmund G. Brown Jr.
Reagan's most notable success was a 70-point welfare reform program adopted in 1971. Among other things, eligibility rules were tightened, benefits for people with jobs were reduced, and fraud was prosecuted more vigorously. In addition, able-bodied recipients were required to take job training courses or work without pay at least four hours a day for their communities—cleaning up parks, directing traffic near schools and the like. To make the reforms more palatable to Democrats, Reagan agreed to increase benefits for those still on welfare by an average of 15%. In the first two years, the reforms cut the welfare rolls by about 220,000, to 2.1 million people; costs were cut by about $1 billion.