California May Be Showdown for Democrats

The end is near.

At long last, gazing west from New York, past Pennsylvania, beyond Indiana, down from Oregon, its outline emerges--the California June 7 presidential primary, mop-up vote of the 1988 nominating elections.

For Democrats, comprehending the upcoming primary is about as easy as taking hold of the proverbial soup sandwich: Will it be High Noon come June 7, a final struggle between Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson? And what of telegenic Tennessee Sen. Albert Gore Jr.? Can he stay in the contest long enough to get into the bright lights of this most media-minded of states?

Or could it be the Democrats are finally out of surprises? Will their nomination, along with the Republicans’, be all but decided beforehand?

For the GOP’s George Bush, the campaign for California will be a relaxed, uncontested dry run for the general election in November. Here is a chance to introduce himself to voters in a state and region where he is, frankly, a distant stranger.

California offers the largest-in-the-nation blocs of nominating delegates, the biggest and most variegated population in the country, a place that as often as not defines change in America.

And it brings up the end of the primary election sequence for 1988, along with New Jersey on the same day.

It is plain that no Democrat can earn a delegate majority--2,083 of 4,164--here or elsewhere during the next seven weeks of the primary campaign. But if one cannot secure the nomination outright in the primaries remaining, it is still crucial to finish the season victorious.

The New York primary occurs next week, Pennsylvania the following Tuesday, Ohio and Indiana the Tuesday after that, then West Virginia next and Oregon on May 17. Finally, two weeks later, come California and New Jersey.

“Whoever wins California will have the momentum. You will have shopped your wares most recently in the largest states in the union,” says Willie Brown, Speaker of the California Assembly and national campaign chairman for Jackson.

Two Possible Scenarios

Campaigns are beginning to assemble in earnest in California, facing two possible scenarios: a fight to the wire or a preamble to the general election.

“We’re going to operate on the assumption that it’s going to be a hard-fought, crucial primary and, if it’s not, then we are not worse off,” said Deputy City Atty. John Emerson, an important Los Angeles Democratic Party insider and Dukakis adviser.

At political saloons and back rooms, the Rubik’s Cube of Democratic politics is easy enough to twist into a potential California donnybrook.

One example: Jackson wins the New York primary, with Gore demonstrating surprising strength. Gore might then dream of putting together his first Northern state victory, this in Indiana on May 3. Suddenly, his campaign treasury is replenished and he heads West with everyone talking Gore, Gore, Gore.

Just a week ago, to prepare for such a possibility, Gore’s California campaign announced a list of key backers and operatives designed to demonstrate his credibility here.

Veteran Consultant to Lead

The senator’s team will be led by 30-year veteran consultant Joseph R. Cerrell, whose roots go back to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Gore’s manager in California will be Los Angeles attorney Darry Sragow, current campaign manager for U.S. Senate candidate and Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and manager of the 1986 reelection of Sen. Alan Cranston.

Other key Gore backers include fund-raisers Duane B. Garrett, a San Francisco attorney who previously supported Bruce Babbitt, and M. Larry Lawrence, the San Diego hotelier who formerly supported Gary Hart. The list additionally includes financier Eli Broad, real estate developer Stephen D. Moses and John F. Cooke, president of the Disney Channel.

“We’re taking things one at a time,” Cerrell said. “If he doesn’t do well in New York, there won’t be a California. But I told them they had to do something in case there is.”

Success in California will depend to some degree on how much money Gore can pull together for advertising. Sragow estimates that a “decent television campaign, adequate but not great” will cost about $500,000 a week for a couple of weeks minimum.

“If he raises that much, clearly he is going to be in competitive shape in California,” Sragow said.

Until recently, Jackson has competed around the country on a financial shoestring. But in California, “we think we will be able to raise the money in a fashion that allows us to equal or come close to the spending level of others,” Brown said.

In this regard, the arithmetic of Democratic politics may help Jackson, who is already extremely well-known among Democrats generally and who commands a seemingly unshakable base of enthralled followers in the black community.

“We figure if we spend equal dollar with Dukakis, that amounts to outspending him. . . . Dukakis probably has to spend $3 for every $1 to get the same bang for the buck Jackson gets. Gore probably has to spend $6 for every $1,” Brown said.

The Speaker predicted that Jackson will win 18 to 20 of California’s 45 congressional districts, regardless of the outcome in preceding elections elsewhere, and could do much better, perhaps even winning the popular vote in the state.

(Delegates in the Democratic race are apportioned according to how candidates finish in each district. Candidates, however, must obtain 15% or more of the vote in a district to qualify for any share of delegates.)

“I think Jackson is going to be the beneficiary of the Hart vote. Not so much the Hollywood part, but the rest of the Hart vote--the Hart vote that is environmentalist, the Hart vote that is gay, the Hart vote that is peacenik,” Brown said.

Other Jackson backers in the state include Los Angeles Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, nearly all of the black members of the California delegation to the U.S. House of Representatives, Oakland Assemblyman Tom Bates, actor Kris Kristofferson, actress Margot Kidder and music producer Quincy Jones.

Dukakis, for his part, confronts the finish of the 1988 race in straightforward fashion.

He must win as much as he can by as much as he can. Nothing fancy.

His chief operative in the state is Richard Ybarra, a former United Farm Workers union organizer, son-in-law of UFW founder Cesar Chavez, one-time aide to Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and recently a Bakersfield private eye.

Around him is assembled a diverse list of supporters from California’s congressional delegation, the Legislature and municipal government, as well as civic notables and celebrities.

3 Congressmen in Camp

Among them are Reps. Robert T. Matsui of Sacramento, Matthew G. Martinez of Monterey Park and Norman Y. Mineta of San Jose. San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos, Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles Supervisor Ed Edelman, former state Democratic Party Chairman Richard J. O’Neill of Orange County, actress Sally Field and movie producer/fund-raiser Ted Field are also in his camp.

“There is going to be a high premium on Hispanics. He will reach out to the so-called ‘New Collar’ and blue-collar voters and I will recommend that he go after black voters too,” Emerson says.

Past spending trends by the campaign and the overall federal ceiling would seem to indicate that Dukakis could devote about $1 million to California.

While the various campaigns prepare for battle, the political landscape is perhaps most oddly exceptional this election for the number of neutrals.

The biggest names in the party are hanging back: Cranston, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, Controller Gray Davis, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and the lavishly courted Westside Democratic political coalition run by Reps. Howard L. Berman and Henry A. Waxman and Berman’s brother Michael, a political consultant.

Some of the neutrals are torn between candidates. For Waxman and Berman, for instance, there is a fondness and old loyalty to Gore but a hard-nosed foreboding that Dukakis is unstoppable in the primaries. “We are anguished and at sea,” said Carl D’Agostino, a strategist and spokesman for the political organization.

Others apparently are lying low to save themselves grief.

“What these candidates want is for you to raise money for them. Why would you go out and set yourself up for that--to be somebody else’s fund-raiser,” explained Santa Monica-based political consultant Kam Kuwata.

Being wrong time and again has not entirely eliminated the political odds makers of 1988. And their nod these days favors the race winding down before California.

This counts on Dukakis to overpower Gore and restrain Jackson enough to sail into California as the nominee-in-waiting.

That leads many Democrats, like their Republican counterparts, to begin pondering party unity and a fall campaign for a state the GOP has carried in eight of the last nine presidential elections.

“It is virtually impossible to draw a scenario where a Democrat wins the White House and loses California,” Democrat Emerson said.

Indeed, Rich Bond, national political director for the Bush campaign, keeps in his upper right-hand desk drawer a typewritten sheet titled: Modern Republican Electoral Base. At the top is California, with 47 electoral votes of 270 needed to win the presidency.

The Democratic challenge in California is a matter of keeping their coalition together, winning back voters who have been drifting away and creating enough excitement--or organization--to get their voters to the polls.

Jackson backers contend that win, lose or draw, they have deepened the Democratic base.

New black voters drawn into politics by Jackson “will turn out to be generic Democrats . . . and they have strengthened the party. Without Jackson, the party would be in real trouble this year,” Brown said.

But others feel that the black-white politics that has characterized the Democratic race will drive off uneasy whites, particularly among activist Jews who express little interest in reaching accommodation with Jackson, who has endorsed a Palestinian state and embraced PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

Blacks represent about 13% of the Democratic electorate here and Jews about 10%. Both have been key elements of the Democratic coalition that now dominates government in Los Angeles, Sacramento and in California’s delegation to Congress.

“There is concern that he (Jackson) will drive more Jews into the Republican Party,” said Donna Bojarsky, an important activist in Los Angeles’ Democratic and Jewish communities.

Jewish Leaders Back Wilson

Already, notable Los Angeles Jewish leaders long affiliated with the Democratic Party have given support to the reelection of Republican Sen. Pete Wilson. And some Jewish leaders suggest that they might now make the attachment to the GOP permanent.

Apart from those tensions, the California electorate has been moving toward a GOP majority for some time. Voter registration favors Democrats (51% to 38% Republican, the highest since 1975) but public opinion polls, including one conducted last year for The Times by the Gallup Organization, found that more people at heart considered themselves Republicans than Democrats.

Still, Democrats are not in full retreat. Mickey Kantor, a Westside attorney and one of the California Democratic Party’s steadiest hands, notes that the string of GOP presidential victories in California have not all been landslides.

At least three times since 1960, Democrats have just barely lost the state--by only 75,623 votes in 1960, 223,346 in 1968 and 139,960 in 1976. And now, there is no Republican favorite son like Reagan for the GOP to count on.

In addition, the latest California Poll by the Field Institute shows Dukakis beating Bush in a head-to-head test, 50% to 40%. Bush beats Jackson by 14 points and Gore by 18 points in similar tests.

“If Dukakis can win there in the primary and it looks like he is holding the Democratic coalition together--except for blacks who will go for Jackson in the primary--it indicates the Democrats have a reasonable opportunity for the fall,” Kantor said.

Part of this cautious Democratic optimism about California is the GOP nominee-apparent, Bush. Perhaps more than any other important state, this one is unfamiliar territory for the vice president.

For eight years, Bush has devoted himself to building a political operation state by state, region by region. Everywhere, that is, but in California, where backers of favorite son Ronald Reagan welcomed no eager interlopers.

Only now is Bush coming to know the GOP cognoscenti. And in the meantime, as required really nowhere else, Bush has had to hire a stranger to run California for him.

She is Orange County consultant Eileen Padberg, a veteran of ballot initiative campaigns and much regional politics. Padberg is an outspoken philosophical moderate in a conservative region and is closely connected to the influential Republicans around multimillionaire Irvine developer Donald L. Bren.

“Bush has built a network in California. I’m always amazed that, wherever I go, I find people who say they’ve been corresponding with George Bush for 23 years or something. But a base? He has no base in California,” Padberg acknowledged.