Again, some California dreamin’

TRACY, CALIF. —  Braised beef over noodles gives way to bingo at the Lolly Hansen Senior Center, and Pinkie Phillips is busy in the kitchen, slicing donated doughnuts neatly in half so they stretch further. She is 73, juggles four jobs and provides for a chronically ill daughter who limps along without medical insurance.

Sound like a hard life in an uncaring state? Listen to Pinkie Phillips and think again.

“California has given me opportunities,” said the deeply tanned woman, who takes fashion inspiration from her name, “and I feel very fortunate” to have lived here for 70 years.

Although Phillips is reluctant to declare herself a full-fledged optimist, “I want to be; I want to be.” And the election? “As far as I was concerned,” she said with a smile, it “was just fine.”

For the first time in nearly a decade, a sense of possibility is sneaking back into the Golden State. Voters have approved a building spree that will fix schools, patch roads and provide jobs for years to come. They gave Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a second chance and former Gov. Jerry Brown a second act -- or is it a third? -- this time as attorney general.

And election day exit surveys by the Los Angeles Times Poll showed that nearly two-thirds of California’s electorate thinks the state is on the right track -- only the second time optimism has been so strong in the 15 years the poll has asked voters about the direction they believe California is headed.

The first was in the heat of the short-lived dot-com boom, when anyone who wasn’t a millionaire thought he could become one -- at least on paper. This week, unlike during that heady era, interviews with dozens of voters -- from the Central Coast to the Central Valley, from San Francisco to Santa Ana -- revealed more wary hope than irrational exuberance.

“If you ask me if I’m better off [than several years ago], yeah, I am,” acknowledged Gabriel Melendez two days after the election, as he folded huge piles of dark pants at an East Los Angeles laundromat.

The railroad mechanic and father of three was working his second job, for a firm that supplies uniforms to valets and janitors. His candidate for governor -- Democrat Phil Angelides -- had gone down in flames. Melendez worried that he wouldn’t be able to retire in pricey California. But he was still positive about the state’s future.

“I guess it’s going pretty good,” said Melendez, 42, whose Hacienda Heights house has more than tripled in value since he bought it in 1997. “I love California.”

So does Marisol Flores Perez, who manages an Anaheim hotel. She came to California 21 years ago from Mexico, but she sometimes wonders if she can afford to stay. Her optimism, she says, is tinged with worry -- over gas prices, exorbitant housing costs, a state that does not value its immigrants and a governor who will not give driver’s licenses to undocumented workers.

“I think that things in California are going pretty well,” said the registered Democrat as she waited for a bus. “The economy is very good here because there are jobs, but then again, there are troubles. The problems are with the cost of living.”

Maybe it should be more surprising when hope leaches from the Golden State. California, after all, was built on dreams -- of gold and stardom, opportunity and reinvention. Optimists have long been the state’s biggest import. But even the staunchest California dreamers are not inured to bad times, such as economic downturns or political chaos.

Jeffrey Hudson has never voted for Schwarzenegger but did endorse the recall election that catapulted him from Hollywood to Sacramento in 2003. To the 49-year-old mortgage consultant, the state has turned a corner economically since then -- when Gov. Gray Davis was unceremoniously dumped.

“Under Davis, things were heading south,” Hudson said as he waited for his son, Matthew, to finish with soccer practice at the AB Brown Sports Complex in Riverside. “There was a huge budget deficit and growing unemployment. It seemed like the state was in a prolonged funk.”

The day that Davis was recalled, 73% of voters surveyed in a Times exit poll said that California was headed in the wrong direction. On Tuesday came a near-reversal: 62% said the state is on the right track.

To Hudson, the $43 billion in bond measures that voters approved Tuesday is evidence that California is rebounding economically. And, as political scientists and pollsters always say, a flush state is a happy state.

“It’s nice to see that people are willing to put money into their state and community,” said Hudson, who said he voted for the bonds to invest in California. “But then again, if the money isn’t spent well, there will be a huge backlash.”

Ron Miller, for one, is betting on that backlash, which is why he didn’t vote for most of the bond measures. The 52-year-old electrical engineer, full-time horse-lover and part-time skeptic said he does not trust California legislators to spend the money the way they promise -- on housing, roads, schools, levees and clean water.

Besides, “if they would maintain what they already had and plan for the future, then they wouldn’t be having to ask for this money,” the Chatsworth resident said. “They need to just do their jobs.”

Unlike Miller, Lisa Derr happily voted for the bonds, which are poised to help fix nearly 50 years of neglect by tight-fisted Californians. At least that’s the view of this Salinas library worker, who calls the 1970s taxpayer revolt that spawned Proposition 13 “a terrible thing in terms of the infrastructure.”

“Since Proposition 13, we’ve been in a downward spiral, where we got selfish and it was a reflection of the ‘Me Generation,’ ” Derr said. “Suddenly people are falling into potholes. Unfortunately, Americans ... don’t get something until it smashes us in the face.”

Derr was happier about voting for the bonds than she was about supporting the governor’s reelection. Still, when Schwarzenegger admitted that he had erred by calling for an expensive special election in 2005 and then proceeded to make “decisions that are a little more bipartisan,” it was enough to get her “ambivalent” vote.

On the whole, though, “I feel much more hope now,” Derr said the day after the election. “I feel optimistic for the first time in a long time today.”

Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll, credits Schwarzenegger’s return to bipartisanship for some of the wary optimism among California voters.

“He helped with the minimum-wage law, discount prescription drugs, getting the budget in on time, being more bipartisan,” Pinkus said. “And I think the whole idea about the special election has been long forgotten.”

But political scientist Larry Gerston warns about putting too much stock in signs of resurgent hopefulness. Yes, the economy has rebounded, voters with jobs are happy and happy voters reelect governors. But voters are also more likely, he said, to be white and better off than non-voters.

“Huge numbers of people are not participating in the franchise,” Gerston said. “If we believe the voters are reflective of the [general] state of mind, it’s very, very dangerous.”

Tell that to Marcus Feliz, 45, an electrical technician, and Lavera Hamilton, 59, a retired nurse.

During the past year, Hamilton, an African American, has lived in a homeless shelter and relied on social service agencies for food and clothing. She has been heavily dependent on public transportation since suffering a stroke in 2001.

The Perris resident and longtime Democrat said she voted for Schwarzenegger last Tuesday with little trepidation, because “a lot of people are looking over his shoulder.”

She describes herself as “really thankful” to live in a state where infrastructure bonds will fund affordable housing, improve transit and help people like her. She is proud of her vote in support of those measures and says they will continue to move California forward.

“I think things are going to be all right,” she said.

And Feliz? He moved to Riverside from Mesa, Ariz., 11 years ago and hasn’t looked back. Sitting in his Ford Explorer, waiting for his son’s soccer practice to end, he smiled.

“You can’t really beat California,” he said. “The weather, the beaches and the atmosphere are all incredible. Politically, it may be kind of screwy, but if you can look past that, this is the place to be.”

maria.laganga@latimes.com

scott.martelle@latimes.com

Times staff writers Jonathan Abrams, Amanda Covarrubias, Jennifer Delson, Ashraf Khalil and Sara Lin contributed to this report.