Democrats Exult in Victories as GOP Takes Stock of Losses

As Democrats reveled in a historic victory and Republicans gave in to despondency, Gov.-elect Gray Davis took a triumphant lap through California on Wednesday and began planning the first transition to Democratic control of the Capitol’s corner office in 16 years.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who fought back to defeat challenger Matt Fong by a convincing margin, exulted over her showing as she made the rounds of the morning television shows. Then, exhausted, she headed off for a two-week vacation in Hawaii.

On the morning after the best showing for their party since 1958, Democrats could not have been more thrilled or surprised. Even on election day, Boxer’s own team expected at best a six-point victory, not the 10-point margin that developed.

Davis’ 20-point win over Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren was about double the gap that his most optimistic aides had predicted.

“Everything broke in our direction,” Davis told reporters in Santa Monica, explaining the stunning reach of the Democratic victories.

Davis credited his victory to voter attraction to the issues he hammered home during the campaign--foremost among them, education--and their distaste for the scandal-plagued political scene in Washington.

“People were tired of all the nonsense,” he said. “They want to focus on their problems.”

Lungren and Fong were in seclusion Wednesday, declining to comment on their defeats.

Davis swept into the governorship with the biggest margin in an open race since 1958, when the late Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Sr. defeated Republican William Knowland by an identical 20-point margin. Recent open California races have been won with an average of three points.

The lieutenant governor, by virtue of the money he passed on to fellow Democrats and the enthusiasm generated by his campaign, also powered a near-takeover of the statewide offices by members of his party.

Former Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante became the first Latino elected statewide in more than a century when he defeated Republican Tim Leslie for the lieutenant governorship vacated by Davis. Democratic state Senate Leader Bill Lockyer knocked off Republican Dave Stirling to become attorney general-elect, replacing Lungren.

Former state party Chairman Phil Angelides captured the treasurer’s spot over Republican Curt Pringle. Two Democratic incumbents also won reelection: Controller Kathleen Connell beat Republican Ruben Barrales and Delaine Eastin, whose position is nominally nonpartisan, defeated GOP schoolteacher Gloria Matta Tuchman.

The only Republicans surviving statewide were incumbents--Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, who knocked off Democrat Diane Martinez, and Secretary of State Bill Jones, who declared victory Wednesday with a scant 46.8%-46% lead over Democrat Michela Alioto.

His declaration was based on only partial returns, however, and it remained possible that Alioto could come back when all absentee votes are counted.

The massive scope of the Republican losses had immediate repercussions Wednesday. Assembly Minority Leader Bill Leonard announced that he was stepping down from that post, citing the losses as his rationale. “Did anybody get the license number of that truck?” he joked.

“I did the best I could,” said Leonard, whose departure had been anticipated as Republican chances worsened in recent weeks. “It didn’t turn out the way I wanted or expected, and now it’s time to move on.”

Gender Gap Haunts GOP

Among other Republicans, self-flagellation was the order of the day. Although most of them expected the Davis victory and knew that Boxer had momentum, Wednesday still dawned bleak and unrelenting when it came time to focus on the voters’ verdict.

Republicans suffered staggering losses among moderate and independent voters, with whom each party curries favor to construct victory. Even Republicans abandoned their own this year; 18% of GOP voters sided with Davis, twice the percentage of Democrats who backed Lungren. Fully a third of moderate Republicans supported Davis, repudiating their own party’s nominee, and 24% of self-described conservatives also sided with the Democrat.

The gender gap continued to haunt Republicans, with both Lungren and Fong lagging far behind the Democrats among women. All told, many Republicans on Wednesday were pointing verbal weaponry at each other.

“There is a tremendous vacuum in the Republican Party,” said Republican strategist Kevin Spillane. “We have no clear candidate for governor next time. We have no clear candidate for U.S. Senate. We are in the worst shape since Watergate.”

Republicans acknowledged that their losses did not stem from a lack of turnout among conservatives or even moderate Republicans, although turnout was an all-time low of 50.9%. Instead, the GOP candidates simply lost the allegiance of their usually loyal supporters.

“Republicans went to the polls. They just didn’t vote for us,” said the state party’s political director, Michael Madrid.

“When all is said and done, in 1998 Republicans did not give voters a reason to vote for them. . . . We are much better at articulating what we are against than what we are for, and that did not work in this climate. We needed to give voters a compelling reason to vote for us.”

Crime Focus Is Faulted

In the governor’s race, Republicans faulted Lungren for refusing the advice of successful GOP strategists and focusing his campaign almost solely on crime, an issue that did not matter to voters nearly as much as education.

Although Lungren talked about education in campaign appearances, he made only a glancing attempt to explain his education proposals in television ads, the only convincing form of political communication in a state as vast as California.

Davis successfully painted Lungren as an “extremist,” to use the Democrat’s oft-repeated gibe, one that he repeated after a fashion the morning after the election.

“If my election says anything, it’s that people want problem solvers, not ideologues,” he said on the “Today” television show. “They want to put together coalitions.”

Davis spent the day flying from rally to rally across California, exulting in a victory that was 25 years in the making, dreamed of ever since he served in former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr.’s administration in the 1970s.

Now he is going about the business of forming his own administration, a process that Davis said would be slow and deliberative. Apart from saying that education was his top priority and that he might issue a major announcement Friday, Davis postponed talk of his transition. Davis also told CNN that he would promote a fair redrawing of congressional and legislative district lines.

Buoyant on three hours sleep, he continued to glad-hand campaign-style, going as far at a San Diego rally as inviting guests to send him ideas on education to his lieutenant governor’s office. Then came a voice from the crowd: You’re the governor.

“I’m getting used to that,” Davis said, smiling. “I’ll grow into it.”

Democrats were pledging unity, but already there were signs of the traditional growing pains of success. An aide to Lt. Gov.-elect Bustamante opined that Bustamante would like the new governor to give him free rein over infrastructure issues. And if he does not, the aide said, Bustamante would introduce policy initiatives of his own.

“We’re not going to go into the tent to be the leaf blower,” the aide said.

Without having to worry about the complications of teamwork, Democrat Boxer was simply ebullient Wednesday, evincing a sense of told-you-so.

She made the circuit of the morning news shows, then held a 7 a.m. news conference before boarding her plane to Hawaii. Although she was uniformly optimistic throughout the campaign, she acknowledged Wednesday that the symbolism of her potential defeat weighed heavily on her.

“People were stating this was the end of the ‘Year of the Woman,’ ” she said in San Francisco, referring to the slogan that accompanied hers and other women’s successes in 1992. “Think about what that felt like for me. I had to uphold the notion that women are equal.”

Boxer said she credited the size of her victory and Davis’ to a demographic political synergy.

“His base of support is Southern California; mine is Northern California,” she said. “My base is pro-choice women and environmentalists; his is teachers and unions. . . . When we got together, it was like, Katie bar the door. . . . We complement each other.”

Fong’s campaign was faulted by Republicans and Democrats alike for failing to answer when Boxer leveled a barrage of ads at him on the issues of abortion, assault weapons, HMOs and the environment.

“They beat the hell out of us,” said one Republican strategist. “Not only were we not framing who we were or what they were, but we allowed them to frame our candidate and we saw the inevitable results of that.”

Fong canceled a news conference scheduled for Wednesday morning, but earlier, when his fate became obvious, he said he was unsure whether he would run again.

“I never say never,” he said. “I’m 44 and my first obligation is to my family. I’ve been a citizen-politician. Now I’ll just be a citizen again. I’ll be around and I’ll be interested. We’ll see.”

Although Fong offered no rationale for his loss--apart from what he termed unfair shots from Boxer--his campaign strategist foisted much of the blame on a message-less national Republican Party.

“They never created a national agenda,” strategist Sal Russo said. “What did the Republican Party stand for on election day? It was very ill-defined.”

Among voters, the election seemed to have some definition problems. The secretary of state’s office reported that even when all the absentee ballots are added to the 50.9% of registered voters who cast ballots on election day, the total probably will still be a record low.

Spokesman Beth Miller said Secretary of State Jones had “no idea” why the turnout was so far below his estimate of 62%.

“These predictions are made using historical data and other factors, like the current political landscape,” she said. “For the primary, we used the same factors to come up with an estimate and hit it dead-on. It’s real difficult to say what’s changed.”

In exit polls, there were indications of changes in the huge and diverse California electorate.

In this election, for the first time since Los Angeles Times exit polls began recording it, the percentage of white voters among the overall electorate dropped below traditionally high levels to 64%--a reflection of the growing power of minority voters.

Thirteen percent of voters were Latino; 13% were African American, and 8% were Asian American.

For African American voters, that represented a sharp jump from the 7% of the electorate that they comprised in 1996, and 5% in 1994. For Latinos, the climb was more moderate, up from 10% statewide in 1996 and 8% in 1994.

The percentage of Asian voters, like African Americans, hiked dramatically, from 5% in 1996 to 8% Tuesday, a likely reflection of the presence of Asian American Fong on the ballot

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Dave Lesher, Dan Morain, Tony Perry, Amy Pyle and Jenifer Warren.

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