Ed Reinecke

Ed Reinecke, a former California congressman and lieutenant governor under Ronald Reagan whose political career was derailed by a 1974 perjury conviction in a case pressed by a Watergate prosecutor, died on Saturday in Laguna Hills, Calif. He was 92. The death was confirmed by his daughter Judy Harger. In April 1974, Mr. Reinecke was cruising toward victory in his campaign to win the Republican nomination for governor and face Jerry Brown, the secretary of state, in the general election. After serving as Reagan’s lieutenant governor for six years and as chairman of the state party for two, he held a commanding lead in the polls over his chief rival, Houston I. Flournoy, the state controller. Without warning, he became ensnared in an investigation begun by Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor. Investigators for the special prosecutor’s office were looking into possible collusion in 1971 between the Justice Department and the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. Mr. Reinecke was indicted by the Watergate grand jury on three counts of perjury (one was later dismissed) and found guilty in Federal District Court in Washington. A half-hour before receiving a suspended sentence of 18 months in prison, Mr. Reinecke resigned as lieutenant governor. The conviction was overturned in December 1975 on procedural grounds. Mr. Reinecke later ran successfully for vice chairman of the California Republican Party and was voted chairman by acclamation in 1983. After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy, serving as a radio officer in the European theater aboard the U.S.S. Cowie, a destroyer. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1950. With his brothers Fred and Bill and his sister, Charlotte, he founded Febco, a manufacturer of irrigation pumps and filters for the agriculture industry. Mr. Reinecke and his wife later moved to Placerville, Calif., where they raised Charolais cattle on the Diamond R Ranch, operated the Zachary Jacques restaurant and ran a real estate brokerage, Reinecke Realty Residential. In 1964, he mounted a successful campaign to represent a sprawling congressional district in the San Fernando Valley. n 1966, he married Jean Carole Hrabik. She died in 2011. In addition to his daughter Judy, he is survived by two sons, Mark and Tom; another daughter, Mimi Weyrick; 11 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.