California Again Goes Its Own Way -- or Ways

Across the ballot this week, California showed why it has been called the Great Exception.

State voters defied the federal government and social conservatives, an increasingly powerful political force in America, by passing a measure advancing embryonic stem cell research. They kept Democrats solidly in power in the Legislature and in control of both the state’s U.S. Senate seats, directly contradicting gains made by Republicans across the country.

But the election also confirmed that, like the rest of the nation, California has a red-blue breach. The state’s divide runs down its spine: The more heavily populated coastal communities embraced Democrat John F. Kerry with fervor, while inland areas went heavily for President Bush, a split repeated in the Senate race and on ballot measures, in many cases.

What makes California exceptional is that in most of the rest of the country, increased partisanship favors Republicans. Here, where Democrats outnumber Republicans, it appears to have helped further entrench Democratic lawmakers.

On issues, as the passage of the stem cell initiative showed, California often does what it wants regardless of the mood east of the Sierra -- as it did with conservative tax reforms in 1978, with the landmark three-strikes movement a decade ago, and with liberal-minded drug rehabilitation reforms in 2000.

“They are not sheep,” Garry South, a Democratic political consultant, said of the state’s voters. “They may not take the voter pamphlet and read it from cover to cover, but they do have a good visceral sense of what rings true to them.”

The visceral sense has some distinctly Californian touches. The vote Tuesday reaffirmed a pattern in the state -- moderation on social issues coupled with fiscal conservatism.

Voters raised taxes on the wealthy to pay for mental health care, yet rejected attempts to force businesses to pay for health insurance -- a measure that critics said would cripple the state’s economy. They turned down a $500-million tax increase on phone bills to pay for emergency room services, but approved $750 million in bonds to expand and renovate children’s hospitals.

“The state’s voters have a strong independent streak,” said Jeff Randle, a political advisor to the governor. “They’re fiscally responsible, but compassionate. People vote by the initiative, rather than ideology.”

Even the state’s most popular political figure was not able to bend the electorate fully to his will. Voters took Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s advice on 11 propositions, but they rejected him on four others and ignored his statewide campaign blitz to install Republican candidates in a handful of legislative seats.

If there was anywhere Schwarzenegger moved the electorate, it probably was on Proposition 66 -- the attempt to moderate California’s three-strikes law. The governor pushed hard to defeat the measure, after taking a political hit from crime victims groups for allowing the parole of a far higher percentage of felons than his Republican and Democratic predecessors.

But the defeat of the three-strikes initiative may have had more to do with the governor understanding the electorate than with the electorate blindly following the governor.

Schwarzenegger acknowledged his own tautology Wednesday: Voters support him because he supports the voters. “The reason why I am against taxes is because people are consistently against taxes,” he said at a Capitol news conference.

As analysts parsed the election results, they found reasons for optimism and pessimism for both major parties.

Democrats watched perennially targeted incumbent Barbara Boxer romp to her third straight Senate win, this time over GOP challenger Bill Jones.

Republicans saw Bush run up his vote totals in inland California, in some cases in the swing areas that many see as key to electoral success down the road. In San Bernardino County, Bush won 56% of the vote, compared with 49% in 2000. In neighboring Riverside County, the gain was similar -- from 52% in 2000 to 58% on Tuesday.

Yet Republicans also saw disappointment. When Schwarzenegger was elected in the 2003 recall, they relished the potential for a wave of support for their party, based on the fact that, together, Schwarzenegger and fellow Republican Tom McClintock got more than 60% of the vote.

But it didn’t translate on Tuesday. Republicans ended up with the same number of seats in the Assembly and state Senate as they had the day before the election -- solid minorities.

If anything, this election showed Democrats and Republicans solidifying their positions among the electorate. In the presidential vote, Kerry won 55%, compared to 54% for 2000 Democratic nominee Al Gore. Bush won 44%, up slightly from 42% in 2000.

“Clearly, the recall didn’t remake the state of California,” said Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer’s campaign manager.

Campaign strategist South, who worked for former Gov. Gray Davis, called Republicans consistently “delusional” about the makeup of voters, wrongly assuming that independents would combine with GOP partisans to put them over the top.

“If there is one single example of how the Republicans have not capitalized at all on the lessons of the recall, and probably don’t know how to do so,” it is the U.S. Senate race, South said, alluding to the backing of Jones by former Govs. Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian and by Schwarzenegger, returning the favor of Jones’ support in the recall.

“When you had Wilson and Deukmejian and Schwarzenegger up there endorsing Bill Jones, I was saying: ‘Are you crazy? Bill Jones can’t win that seat. Bill Jones is the oldest of the old warhorses, and he has never been able to raise two nickels to rub together.’ ”

Boxer beat Jones by more than 20 percentage points, including in Ventura, San Bernardino, San Diego, Merced and San Joaquin counties -- all areas carried by Bush.

Some of the Republican failure to make gains in the Legislature seemed inevitable, given that redistricting protected incumbents, and most of those are Democrats. Still, even heavily funded candidates promoted by Schwarzenegger found themselves swamped, suggesting at least a continuing public relations problem for the GOP.

“Obviously, the leadership has figured out it has to broaden the appeal,” said Robert Naylor, former chairman of the California Republican Party. “There are a lot of Democrats who would vote for a good Republican candidate if they got to know them.”

During his news conference Wednesday in Sacramento, Schwarzenegger vowed to change the direction of the GOP, saying: “It’s very important that we help the party and come up with a good, strong theme, and I will lead the way. I will create the theme of which way we’re going to go in the state. It will be me, from this office here.”

But his logic didn’t help sell GOP candidates. He claimed to be nonpartisan but worked only or Republican hopefuls. At the same time, he said: “I was not elected ... to represent the Republican Party. I was elected to be the people’s governor.”

He may find that if he tries to impose a theme from the corner office, his party will fight back -- as GOP conservatives did against former Gov. Wilson.

Moreover, the device backed by Schwarzenegger to fuel change -- the so-called blanket primary -- was defeated Tuesday. That system, in which the top two vote-getters would advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation, was meant to bring in more moderate candidates. Voters decided they liked the current system -- a critical rejection for Schwarzenegger’s attempts to remake California in his image.

Although the governor claimed immediate credit for some of the votes Tuesday, he may have a harder task than he acknowledges in trying to reform California’s electoral system. He is contemplating yet another campaign, perhaps a special election next June or September, which might include a new nonpartisan system for drawing legislative district boundaries.

The governor can rightly claim that Democrats have locked in those districts so it is virtually impossible to unseat incumbents. But he would be fighting history: In the last 78 years, the electorate has faced 13 attempts to change the way California draws its legislative district lines. It accepted only one -- the first, in 1926.

“The Democrats only elect the extreme left. The Republicans only elect the extreme right. And the ones in between are looked at in a strange way,” Schwarzenegger said Wednesday. “I think the action is in the center.”

*

Times staff writers Scott Martelle, Jason Felch and Rachana Rathi contributed to this report.