Cranston Treads Lightly, and Mostly on Television

It is lunchtime in a crowded airport lobby and Sen. Alan Cranston putters at what the Democratic whip of the U.S. Senate does best--negotiating. In this case, it’s his quart of buttermilk for a stranger’s bag of peanut brittle.

The deal is sealed on the spot, and none of the hundreds of people in sight take notice.

Welcome to the reelection campaign of California’s senior U.S. senator.

With less than three weeks before the election, Cranston, a fixture in California politics for a generation, a man with power to influence the course of the nation, a Democrat whom President Reagan denounces as “one of America’s most strident liberal leftists,” stirs no more excitement or notice on the campaign stump than his quart of buttermilk.

He spent a whole day recently traveling the length of California for press conferences on education and brought out three reporters. He went to UCLA and found fewer than half a dozen students on hand to greet him. For most of the fall campaign so far, he has been 3,000 miles away in Washington striking a senatorial pose and promising to give Californians their money’s worth on the congressional tally sheets.

Ennui is so pervasive it may as well be Cranston’s campaign slogan. Newsweek magazine headlined it: In Politics, the Golden State Is Dullsville.

Odd thing, Cranston seems content to have it this way.

The senator’s campaign against Republican Rep. Ed Zschau appears destined to be the most expensive in California history, with each side budgeting more than $10 million. But it’s an aloof battle for the venerable Cranston--a campaign built around the calculating technology of television advertising and the ceaseless demands to raise more money to pay the way.

As for old-fashioned press-the-flesh politics and campaign hoopla?

“It went out with television and money, I guess,” Cranston said. “Door-to-door work is harder to do when you are interrupting people watching their favorite television show.

“Rallies take a lot of staff work, a lot of time. They’re a risk. If you get a small crowd you get a very negative story instead of a positive one. It’s hard to get people away from their TV sets to come out to rallies. . . .

“Unfortunately, campaigns have come down pretty much to a candidate raising money and translating that money into television commercials.”

Today, for instance, Cranston must make a $600,000-plus purchase of television advertising time for the upcoming week’s fusillade. And there is one more Thursday billing date before the election with an equally staggering price tag. The campaign estimates that 64 cents of every $1 raised will go to producing and broadcasting television commercials.

A Video Story

A dozen 30-second Cranston commercials have aired in the general election so far, and perhaps three more are still to come. It adds up to a story 7 1/2 minutes long, painstakingly crafted in video-editing laboratories by highly paid men who are at the top of the heap in the small, colorful fraternity of political consultants.

The commercials are tested before small audiences, paired with other commercials to send out double-barreled “tracks” or messages, and then targeted to specific groups of television viewers. This is the backbone of the Cranston campaign.

After all, as Washington campaign consultant Robert Shrum puts it, “A campaign rally in California is three people around a television set.”

At his best, Cranston is a cautious politician. Now, with his political future entrusted to television advertising and a lead in every credible public opinion poll so far taken, it seems as though he could walk across Christmas ornaments, so lightly is he treading.

Recent Campaign Swing

Take, for instance, his recent campaign swing through Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego to declare his interest in improving public education. Cranston sketched the outline of a bill he wants to introduce in the next Congress to reward schools that improve the quality of education. Point: Cranston cares.

Perhaps the most important question about such a new education initiative is how much it will cost the debt-ridden federal government. To this, Cranston demurred. We’ll see after the election, he said. Point: Let’s not burden our talk about improving education by bringing up the budget deficit.

Cranston insists, “Sure, you’d like to be having a reasonable discussion of reasonable issues. But when you do, you vanish.”

Except on television.