That’s Right, O.C. Conservatism Nears the Mainstream

A group of students and faculty at Chapman University asked me to speak this week at their Social Science Forum, suggesting as the subject “Orange County at Year’s End.”

After a lame opening joke about Orange County at year’s end being the same as at year’s beginning--partly cloudy skies with highs in the 70s and little chance of rain--I tried to get serious. The joke was meant to suggest that things don’t change much around here, and I went on to say that just like the weather, Orange County politics remains as predictably conservative as ever.

But where Orange County’s political conservatism was dismissed a generation ago as a local aberration and frequent embarrassment, it now can claim some legitimacy. To paraphrase an old expression, if Orange County politics aren’t exactly mainstream, at least you can see mainstream from here.

That was not always true. In the 1960s, a cadre of conservative Republican state and national officeholders gave Orange County a reputation as a watering hole for some very strange birds not seen in other climes. Even Richard Nixon gave them pause.

Nixon archives include a letter he received in 1962 from Walter Knott (of Berry Farm fame) while Nixon was running for governor of California. “We will do everything we can to help you win in November,” Knott wrote, “but it would make our work much easier in Orange County if you would lay off the John Birch Society and refrain from depreciating the conservative movement.”

Earlier that year, Nixon wrote to Orange County Congressman James Utt, expressing his fear for the “disastrous effect which the makeup of the John Birch Society, because of its totalitarian makeup and acknowledged leader, can have on Republican candidates.”

That disastrous effect was lost on local voters, who later sent a Bircher to Congress.

For years, local figures like that relegated Orange County to a punch line. Now, as the country has become more conservative and the delegation as a whole is less extreme, the county becomes much more interesting as a gauge of the national mind-set.

At first glance, some recent polls suggest that Orange County is still a conservative stride ahead of the rest of the country. For example, local pollster Mark Baldassare found that 46% of Orange County residents consider themselves “very conservative” or “conservative,” compared with a nationwide figure of 39%.

However, when you combine the more mainstream categories of “conservative” and “moderate” from that same poll, 72% of Orange County residents identified themselves as one or the other. The comparable figure nationwide was 71%, suggesting that Orange County no longer operates in a parallel political universe.

The question that follows is, what direction will this 72% want to go?

For starters, will the anti-illegal immigrant issue that flowered in Orange County take hold elsewhere? Two out of three Orange County residents voted for Proposition 187, higher than the statewide average. Will that reflect the larger national view if, for example, a similar proposal goes before voters in Texas and Florida?

In that same vein, the Baldassare poll found that local residents were less willing than the country as a whole to agree that every citizen should be guaranteed enough to eat and a place to sleep. Will the country also move eventually toward the Orange County position?

Those questions aren’t answerable now, but some clues could be just around the corner. With the shifting of the 1996 California presidential primary from June to March, the state and county will be much more important to Republican presidential candidates. The parade of elephants will begin in earnest in 1995, probably earlier than you’d like, but it’ll be interesting to see how GOP contenders position themselves on the moderate-to-conservative scale.

As recently as a few years ago, their tack would have been obvious: Take as conservative a position as possible and watch Orange County votes pour in.

That may still hold but a cautionary note for the Republican candidates: Yes, the country may be moving toward Orange County conservatism, but local polls also show a majority of Orange County Republicans consistently favoring abortion rights. Perhaps more significant, another Baldassare poll released this week indicates that two of three Orange County residents favor stronger gun-control laws. Baldassare noted that that level of support exceeds what national polls have shown.

No longer either a joke or a punch line, Orange County looks more and more like the straight man.

Good grief! Orange County a bellwether for the nation?

Hard to imagine and perhaps premature, but it’ll never again be a ridiculous question.

To quote John Lennon, “Strange days, indeed, mama.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.