California Weighs In on a Small Scale

Tracy Sherman was leaving a Pasadena theater last week after seeing “50 First Dates” when she paused to discuss Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary.

Sherman is backing Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, though she is hardly swept off her feet. “I don’t know why, exactly,” the 36-year-old social worker said. “I just think he’s the best candidate. He just seems to be more for the average-income person.”

Frances La Torre supports Kerry’s main rival, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. The 56-year-old court clerk knows little about him, but watched his recent appearance on “The Tonight Show.”

“Edwards seems to be the only candidate talking about issues,” said La Torre, laying aside the mystery novel she was reading over coffee in the Bay Area suburb of Walnut Creek.

California is finally having its say in the nomination fight, after waiting six weeks and watching 19 other states and the District of Columbia weigh in. With 370 delegates at stake -- more than one-sixth of the total needed to win the Democratic nod -- California is truly “the Big Enchilada,” as Richard Nixon used to call it.

But for many who plan to vote, Kerry and Edwards are little more than a blur, a sound bite here or video snippet there. The field of political battle on Tuesday -- 10 contests, in states stretching coast to coast -- proved simply too big for them to spend much time in California.

And even though the state set its earliest primary ever, others leapfrogged ahead, leaving California to play a familiar role: choosing among candidates left after others picked over the lot.

“California doesn’t get much of a choice,” said Peter Wachtel, a 49-year-old Santa Rosa salesman who supported Joe Lieberman until the senator from Connecticut quit the race in early February. “My entire life, every time the primaries get to California, it’s already decided.”

Kerry seems poised for a big victory here Tuesday, but not because of any huge reservoir of enthusiasm. Rather, he seems to have benefited from his victories elsewhere, 18 so far. To the casual observer -- which seems to be most Californians intending to vote in the Democratic race -- that has conferred upon him a sense of electability, that most prized of commodities this political season.

Edwards hopes for a better-than-expected showing here and in New York, as well as a victory or two elsewhere -- with Ohio, Minnesota and Georgia his best prospects. Anything less could result in strong pressure on him to quit the race so the party can coalesce around Kerry.

Also vying for votes in Tuesday’s contests are Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York, who are expected to continue their low-budget, message-oriented candidacies through the Democratic National Convention in late July.

From Eureka to Yucaipa, there has not been a single presidential campaign ad aired anywhere in California, which for many people in this far-flung, notoriously inattentive state means there is no presidential campaign to speak of.

The four Democratic contenders debated for 90 minutes on Thursday. And Kerry delivered a detailed foreign policy speech the next day at UCLA. But apart from that event, the hopefuls have staged the California equivalent of mere drop-by appearances, directly courting perhaps a few thousand voters in a state in which nearly 9 million registered Democrats and independents are eligible to vote in the party’s primary.

Some Californians have been paying close attention. One of them is Felix Colon, a 67-year-old handyman in South Los Angeles who was not only familiar with the two leading Democrats, but was also conversant on the hurdles each might face against President Bush in November.

Colon, wearing a grimy sweatshirt and work boots with a hole in one toe, said he was supporting the 50-year-old Edwards because of his relative youth and newness to the national political scene.

The 60-year-old Kerry, a 19-year veteran of Capitol Hill, “has been around so long, I think if he becomes president nothing will change,” Colon said.

For the most part, however, a series of random interviews last week with more than 100 Californians across the state found that many prospective voters knew little about the candidates. Their perceptions added up to little more than a pile of fragmented phrases: a Vietnam veteran, a senator, a Southerner, a liberal from Massachusetts, a trial lawyer, a man “who looks as if his features could be on a dollar bill.”

Setiam Allah, a 21-year-old student at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, vowed to spend the weekend studying up on the candidates. “But in the end,” he confessed on his way to a volleyball game, “I’ll probably just go with what my parents vote.”

A Los Angeles Times poll completed a week ago showed Kerry leading Edwards in the state 56% to 24% among likely primary voters. Although the survey was taken before Thursday’s debate, most analysts saw little chance that the forum would change many minds.

“Edwards needed a breakout performance, and he didn’t have one,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political science professor at USC, which hosted the debate. “And Kerry didn’t make any major missteps. So there was nothing to fundamentally change the dynamic of the race.”

California is a place that has long cherished its trendsetting reputation, in everything from clothes and music to politics. But in this instance, while some may complain about a pared-down field of candidates, many seem content to take their cues from other states.

Deborah Miller, a banking manager on her lunch break at South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa, was one of many Democrats who said she was leaning toward Kerry mostly because he had done so well elsewhere.

Similarly, Nolan Zisman said he would probably back Kerry because Edwards “just hasn’t had the exposure” the front-runner had. “If [Edwards] got the same kind of promotion that Kerry got, he’d probably have a better chance, because people would know more about him,” said the 63-year-old San Mateo retiree.

If the reasons for supporting one Democratic candidate or another often seemed sparse or superficial -- “I just like his personality,” said one Edwards supporter -- there was no mistaking the depth of passion among some of those interviewed for getting rid of Bush.

“He’s the worst president in my lifetime,” said Bill Schmitendorf, a 62-year-old associate dean at UC Irvine.

Frank Reta, 27, an Orange County information technology manager, believes Bush has “destroyed the economy and set us back 50 years in the foreign arena.”

The Times poll found that 51% of registered voters disapproved of the president’s job performance, while 47% approved. Among Democrats, sentiments were considerably harsher, with 75% giving the president poor marks.

To his critics, Bush is a reckless “cowboy,” someone who cares only about “money and oil” and who has alienated the rest of the world by leading the U.S. into a costly and unnecessary war.

“How come they spend lots of money helping Iraq when the [United States] needs the money for children, for hospitals?” demanded Raul Torres, 54, visiting the Panorama Mall with a black smudge on his forehead from an Ash Wednesday service.

Many Democrats were still angry about the disputed 2000 presidential election and questioned the legitimacy of Bush’s presidency. Others were newly inflamed by his endorsement last week of a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages. “This is the first time someone is trying to write bias into the Constitution,” said Johnny Cross, a 23-year-old AIDS counselor in Los Angeles.

But all that pent-up anger aside, a considerable number of Democrats expressed doubts that Bush could be defeated in November, regardless of whom the Democrats put up against him. To the pessimists, the president’s record-breaking campaign treasury -- about $150 million and still growing -- looks to be an insurmountable hurdle.

Among those still smarting from the 2000 contest was Louis, a 33-year-old South Los Angeles Democrat who did not want to give his last name. “The last time people went out and voted, and it came down to a Supreme Court judge making the decision,” he said. “That’s wrong.”

Several suggested the best thing the party could do was field a ticket consisting of the two main finalists, Kerry and Edwards, not necessarily in that order.

“In a perfect world you could meld both of them into one and have the breadth of Kerry with the experience of Edwards,” said Olivia Cottrell, 37, of Silver Lake.

Cottrell, who was heading into the movies at Pasadena’s Paseo Colorado Mall, said she planned to vote for Edwards on Tuesday because “he actually moves people, which is really important.” But she would also work to elect a Kerry-Edwards combination, if it came to that.

Anything, she suggested, to beat Bush.

*

Times staff writers Erin Ailworth, Allison T. Hoffman, Carl Ingram, Seema Mehta, Jean-Paul Renaud, William Wan and special correspondents Robert Hollis and Don A. Wright contributed to this report.