GOP Momentum Has Yet to Reach California Voters

From New York to Hawaii, 1998 is shaping up as a banner year for Republicans running for governor--the best, perhaps, in history.

And once again, California is shaping up as a possible exception.

With less than four weeks to go before the election, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the GOP nominee for governor, remains in the thick of a competitive race against Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis. Compare Lungren’s position, however, to that of fellow Republicans across the country, many of whom are romping to reelection or heading into the home stretch astride enviable double-digit leads.

“We could be hitting a high-water mark,” said Ed Brookover, a strategist with the Republican National Committee. With a gain of just three seats, an optimistic but not impossible goal, the GOP would control 35 statehouses--its highest total ever.

But if a Republican wave is building, it has yet to reach California.

Bigger, more diverse and more inwardly focused than most places--this is, after all, where much of America gets its cultural cues--California over the past several elections has been an island unto itself, largely impervious to outside forces and generally immune to broader political trends. Size is one explanation. Complexity is another.

The political winds that move voters “have got to blow in a lot of different directions in a state that’s so large and so diverse,” said Dan Schnur, a leading state GOP strategist. “California’s got too much space and too many different kinds of voters for one movement to sweep everybody in.”

True to contrarian form, in the 11 largest states holding governor’s races in November, GOP candidates are trailing or even in just two: California and Georgia (where a Republican retread is making his third try for statewide office). In nine others--including New York, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas--the narrowest Republican lead in recently published polls was 9 percentage points, according to Brookover.

Even in Hawaii, a Democratic bastion, the GOP’s Linda Lingle enjoys a double-digit lead over Benjamin J. Cayetano, the incumbent Democrat.

‘We’re a Separate Nation-State’

Although governor races generally tend to be localized affairs, turning on personalities and state dynamics more than national forces, today’s political climate in California is distinctly different from the sunny GOP outlook nationally.

Much can change by election day, particularly as events surrounding the White House sex scandal continue to unfold. But at this point, Republicans appear likely to gain but a single seat in the state’s 52-member House delegation, leaving Democrats in the majority. Republican state Treasurer Matt Fong is locked in a toss-up race with incumbent Barbara Boxer, one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the 100-member U.S. Senate.

In Sacramento, Republican strategists concede there is virtually no chance of taking over the Democrat-controlled state Senate. And privately, they acknowledge long odds against wresting back control of the Assembly.

“California has a history of voting contrary to the national trend,” said Kevin Spillane, a Sacramento-based GOP strategist who forecasts a strong Republican year nationally but frets about the party’s prospects here at home. “We’re a separate nation-state, in many ways isolated from the politics that affect so many other places.”

Whether electing a Republican governor and U.S. senator in 1982--a sterling Democratic year nationally--or sending two Democrats to the Senate 10 years later--when Republicans were gaining congressional seats across the country--California over the last two decades has tended to ignore, if not defy, larger national political trends.

An exception was 1994, when depressed Democratic participation--mirroring turnout nationally--helped Republicans win control of the state Assembly for the first time in 25 years. At the same time, however, Democrat Dianne Feinstein rode out the GOP tidal wave and managed to hang onto her U.S. Senate seat.

Why the California exception?

“I would argue it’s because we’re so big and complex and so different,” said Ken Khachigian, a California native and political alumnus of the Nixon and Reagan administrations.

Or as Schnur, his fellow GOP strategist, put it, “One good political trend can blow through Michigan and pick up Ann Arbor and Lansing and Kalamazoo. It’s a lot more difficult for any wind, particularly one that originates elsewhere, to move voters in Orange County and Fresno and Redding.”

But size and diversity offer just a partial explanation. After all, upstate New York is every bit as different from the Bronx as Eureka, in California’s far north, is from Yucaipa, in the Inland Empire.

One contributing factor may be California’s weak party system, a legacy of the progressive movement early this century, which sought to decentralize political power. The modern byproduct is a much more entrepreneurial, candidate-centered form of politics than practiced in most other states.

Although important, party labels and the messages emanating from the national parties tend to be less important in California than an individual’s wherewithal to raise large sums of money to air TV advertising--which is just about the only way to become known in a state with a population bigger than Canada’s.

Moreover, the state’s initiative system--another hand-me-down from the progressive era--often creates a unique political microclimate in California. In fact, the absence of such a draw leaves many Republican strategists nervous about Lungren’s chances this year.

Seeing a Shift Toward the Middle

In recent elections, ballot measures on gun control, term limits and immigration have all helped shape the campaign agenda--and promoted the election of specific Republican candidates--completely apart from events occurring on the national stage. Not coincidentally, several of these issues subsequently became part of the larger national debate, reinforcing California’s image as the place where trends start before spreading east.

Similarly, some political observers in both parties sense that California has drifted more toward the middle recently and believe that may presage a similar shift nationally over the next several years--much as Proposition 13, the landmark property tax-slashing initiative, was a late 1970s harbinger of the national conservative movement.

In this election year alone, the growing influence of California’s ethnic minorities--particularly Latinos--and the increasing Democratic leanings of suburban voters, most notably women, have helped push candidates for both major parties to campaign closer to the center.

“Clearly, we’re at the forefront of this [demographic] change, which is occurring all over the country,” said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster based in the Bay Area.

Of course, talk of partisan alignment--or realignment--is always a relative thing in California, where people often show more brand loyalty to a favorite gas station than to a particular political party.

Republicans trail Democrats in registration here, so GOP candidates almost always have to come from behind to win statewide races. That’s why strategists for Lungren profess not to worry, despite repeated polls showing him trailing Davis while GOP counterparts elsewhere appear to be running away with their elections.

“The same things that make California resistant to outside forces, its size and diversity, also make it rare for candidates for governor to win or lose by a large margin” in races without an incumbent, said Schnur, a veteran of Gov. Pete Wilson’s 1994 comeback reelection and now a Lungren advisor.

“There are just too many checks and balances built in California for anything but a close race under most circumstances,” he said. “We’re just not a landslide kind of state.”

* DAVIS’ DEEP POCKETS: Gray Davis is leading Dan Lungren in raising gubernatorial campaign funds. A3