Cranston--the Right Stuff to Buck a Trend

He was considered too old, too liberal and very likely to run out of his amazing luck. But on Wednesday he was Alan Cranston the Triumphant, the Democratic senator who bucked his state’s Republican trend and vanquished his toughest challenger ever by 116,622 votes.

With his victory over Rep. Ed Zschau, a verdict that was not certain until 4 a.m., Cranston is headed toward legend status in California politics. He and Hiram Johnson are the only California senators to win four terms in this century, and Cranston is now the undisputed don of the state Democrats.

“I am grateful to all the people who care about the issues that I care about and that I raised in this campaign,” Cranston said at a Wednesday morning press conference. “And I’m particularly delighted with my support from younger voters, who were the greatest source of strength in my campaign.”

Favored by Young

The Los Angeles Times Poll showed that the 72-year-old senator beat the 46-year-old Zschau among voters who were under the age of 45. Cranston viewed that as validation of his efforts to end the nuclear arms race and to pass child-care and other family-oriented legislation.

Cranston won by running strong in Los Angeles County, by shaving Zschau just enough in the San Joaquin Valley and in Orange and San Diego counties, and by burying him in the San Francisco Bay Area.

He did it by selling his experience and consistency, which helped offset his liberal image. In speeches and television ads, he painted Zschau as a man who “flip-flops” on major issues, raising questions about Zschau’s character.

And, near the end, Cranston stressed his independence, the perfect foil to President Reagan’s last-minute appeal on behalf of Zschau.

“Alan Cranston is just a damn good instinctual campaigner,” said David Doak, one of the senator’s media consultants. “When Reagan came in for Zschau, Alan asked when Zschau was going to stand on his own feet. It was brilliant, the final blow. None of us would have thought to state it quite that way.”

Cranston also went after victory the way a senator from a big, impersonal state must do it: He found an issue that people could connect to him and he rode it with all he had.

The issue was the environment. Because of the environmental legislation he has passed, Cranston’s credibility on this issue was unassailable. While Zschau’s environmental record is not bad, his opposition to Proposition 65, the anti-toxics initiative, allowed Cranston to offer another sharp contrast.

“I couldn’t believe Zschau handed us that one,” Doak said. “You rarely get somebody on the other side of the toxics issue, but that is what happened.”

Zschau’s business and agricultural financial backers were very opposed to the toxics initiative, and he argued that it would create a “legal blizzard.”

High-Tech Waste

But he knew he was vulnerable because he was a former businessman from the so-called Silicon Valley, where toxic waste from the high-tech industry is a major problem.

The Times exit poll found that those who thought the toxics initiative was the most important issue in the campaign went for Cranston by 74% to Zschau’s 24%.

“The environment was just a big issue for Cranston in the coastal areas and with Republican moderates,” said Caltech political scientist Bruce Cain.

Cranston and Zschau spent at least $11 million each, making the campaign the most expensive in California history. The race--with its high-powered strategists, millions spent on television ads and intricate chess moves by two men who were far apart on many issues--will be studied for years by political scientists and consultants.

They will want to know how, in the age of Ronald Reagan, an aging, untelegenic liberal with 18 years of votes to defend could defeat a young, well-financed “new face,” whose business background and fiscal conservatism appeared to make him the man for the time.

One answer is simple. Turnout was low, and though that usually helps Republicans, who are more likely to vote, this time it hurt Zschau. It was 51% in San Diego County, a battleground that was thought to favor the youthful, success-preaching Zschau. He beat Cranston there by 55% to 42%, but the droves of Republicans who stayed home hurt him.

Turnout was 59% in the Republican stronghold of Orange County. Zschau whipped Cranston by 171,000 votes, his biggest county margin. But he needed a much larger margin to offset Cranston’s strength in Los Angeles and the San Francisco area.

Conservative Suspicions

Because of his moderation on social issues and his late conversion to aiding the Nicaraguan rebels, Zschau was always viewed suspiciously by Southern California conservative Republicans. Even Reagan’s visit could not drive enough of them to the polls to help Zschau.

But ironically, Zschau also lost because he went too far to the right in the end in an effort to shore up his conservative base.

“Zschau was whipsawed,” said I.A. Lewis, director of the Los Angeles Times Poll. “The only way to beat Alan Cranston is to beat him with the moderates. But when you do that you lose the conservatives.”

Doak said he thought Zschau’s fundamental mistake was in not using the conservatives as a foil.

“We questioned his character because of the flip-flops,” Doak said. “He could have cured it by standing up to the right and being a non-ideological candidate.”

But there will never be total agreement on that aspect of the campaign, since many solid Republican consultants told Zschau he had to solidify his conservative base.

Cranston’s high standing among minorities and environmentalists meant that he never had to worry about his liberal base, freeing him to go after the voters in the middle with the experience issue.

Zschau said Wednesday that he thought he lost the election in Los Angeles County. He had expected to get more than the 43% of the huge vote there. Cranston got 55%.

Wins Only 16 Counties

Cranston won only 16 of the state’s 58 counties, but in addition to winning big in Los Angeles County, he got 74% of the vote in San Francisco County, three times what Zschau got.

Ironically, Zschau was the Northern Californian in the race. He lives in the San Francisco Peninsula town of Los Altos. Cranston grew up in nearby Los Altos Hills, but Los Angeles has been his base since 1966.

“Cranston did not do all that well in what I call the Southland--everything in the South but L.A. County,” said Caltech’s Cain. “But since turnout was below average in that area, Zschau could not take advantage of his stronger showing there.

“For the first time in three Senate races, Cranston lost the San Joaquin Valley,” continued Cain, who said Cranston’s opposition to the death penalty and image as big spender probably hurt him with the conservative Anglos there.

“But by winning so big in L.A., in the Bay Area--where turnout was higher--and by splitting the coastal vote with Zschau, Cranston was able to survive by just shaving Zschau’s margins in places like the Central Valley,” Cain said.

Cranston credited his strength in Los Angeles and San Francisco to a get-out-the-vote effort in minority areas, set up by former United Farm Workers organizer Marshall Ganz.

Cranston won reelection by just 1.6% of the 7,340,250 votes cast in the Senate race. His 116,622-vote margin is the slimmest in a California Senate race since 1920. It was a new experience for Cranston, who was reelected in 1980 by 1.7 million votes.

Opponents Impressed

Even Zschau’s managers thought Cranston ran a virtually flawless campaign. Early on, the senator hired Doak and former speech writer Robert Shrum to make his television ads, and they depicted him as a California treasure for his work on the environment and civil liberties causes.

Hitting Zschau as a flip-flopper, and as weak on the toxics issue, their negative TV ads quickly began to define the relatively unknown Zschau after he had electrified the political establishment by winning the GOP primary with millions of dollars in television ads.

“We defined Zschau before he could define himself,” said Cranston campaign manager Darry Sragow. “In the end, Zschau never gave Californians much of a sense of who he was.”

The steady Sragow, a former attorney, juggled the big egos of Cranston’s consultants and Senate staff members, and sent press secretary Kam Kuwata out to speak for Cranston. Kuwata has become so close to Cranston over the years that he could often anticipate how Cranston would handle a press question or problem, giving the campaign an advantage that the Zschau campaign never had.

Ron Smith, Zschau’s campaign manager, politely declined Wednesday to discuss where he thought he had gone wrong. It was a crushing defeat for Smith, who saw in Zschau a potential presidential candidate.

A personable, charismatic former Stanford professor, Zschau charmed many Republican crowds and drew many new people into the party with his candidacy. But his consultants never managed to capture the charisma in television ads, a problem that gave Smith many sleepless nights.

Early Part of Campaign

Like Cranston, Zschau ran a lot of negative TV ads, too. But the Cranston campaign believes that Zschau squandered an opportunity in the summer to present himself to Californians before going negative on Cranston in September.

The Republican challenger was clearly frustrated at the end. Even when he still thought he was going to win he said he had been disappointed by the negative attacks and by Cranston’s unwillingness to debate him one on one.

Cranston never intended to debate Zschau head to head, according to one source in the Cranston campaign, who said, “Alan Cranston was the senator. Why elevate Zschau to that level, which is what a debate would have done.”

On Wednesday, Zschau confronted his defeat gamely at a jampacked room in a Santa Clara hotel. Supporters applauded and let tears stream down their faces. The army of cameras and reporters exceeded anything he had seen during the campaign. What they saw was the familiar Zschau grin, only the slightest bit drawn by fatigue and disappointment.

“You might ask, well, why is this man smiling?” he said. “Well, this man is smiling because he’s filled with pride and gratitude about the future. . . . We started from nowhere. I was just a guy with a funny name, unknown in the state some 17 months ago. And with a lot of hard work, we raised a little bit over $13 million, we had more than 30,000 contributors, more than 2,500 active volunteers working all over the state in order to put together what I consider a tremendously successful campaign.

“We came a long, long way. We just don’t come quite far enough.”

Plans a Comeback

Zschau several times stated quite plainly that he was not finished with public life. “To paraphrase a famous American, you’ll have me to kick around again.”

Known for his scratchy musical ditties on the campaign trail, he wrote and sang a new song to mark his loss. “Thanks for the memories . . .” it went. “Now that we’re all through, with nothing left to do, you can take a little break until 1992.”

That happens to be when the next election is scheduled for Cranston’s seat.

Until such an opportunity, Zschau said he will fill out the remaining weeks of his term in the House of Representatives, try to help his staffers find new jobs and think of what do with his own career.

Then, there was a moment for sentiment as Zschau bowed out. He hugged his wife. He told of a note that his son left before heading east to a new job. “Alan has the seat but we’ve got us,” Ed Jr. reminded the family.

Zschau reached out and shook the hands of reporters who covered his campaign. He walked outside the hotel, opened the doors on his rented campaign car and held them for his wife and a friend from his high school days. A lone photographer caught the Zschaus driving home to confront the night after.

“This is too new an idea” Zschau said, referring to uncertainty about his future.

Cranston Uncertain

Although the networks had projected Cranston a winner early Tuesday night, the race was so close that the senator was still wary when he went to bed. His son, Kim, chairman of his campaign, awakened Cranston at 4 Wednesday morning to tell him he had definitely won. It was a singular moment for Cranston. He had gone to bed knowing that his party had regained the Senate majority but not absolutely certain that he would be around to enjoy it. He is the Democratic whip, or second in command, for his party in the Senate.

The phone call from his son was a special moment for another reason. For years Cranston had heard the pundits say he was such a colorless workaholic that the only reason he ever got to the Senate and stayed there was that he drew weak opponents who were too far to the right.

But at 4 a.m. Wednesday, sitting in his pajamas in his suite, Cranston finally had his vindication. He had whipped Zschau, the high-tech success story whose ability to inspire business audiences allowed him to raise more money than Cranston, and whose moderate positions on social issues prevented Cranston from painting him as a caveman.

Times political writer John Balzar contributed to this article.