For California Democrats, a New Confidence

Coming home from the Democratic National Convention, members of the California delegation are like drought-weary farmers who have heard the rumble of distant thunder. They believe that for the first time in 24 years, a Democratic presidential candidate has a strong chance of carrying California.

It is not only that they believe, based on polls, that Michael S. Dukakis can finally recapture those fallen-away Democrats who have cost the party so many past elections.

Equally important to them, California Democrats now believe that a Democratic presidential candidate, for the first time in many years, is going to give voters here the respect they deserve.

“For years, we’ve been arguing that California is different from the rest of the country, that you can’t campaign here the way you would in the Louisiana oil patch or an Ohio factory town. For once, I think the message has not fallen on deaf ears,” said John Emerson, a Los Angeles lawyer who ran Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign in California.

The Californians’ confidence began building early in the convention week, as top Dukakis aides sought the delegates’ advice on how to win the state, and peaked when Dukakis decided to give California the honor of providing his winning margin at the nominating session Wednesday night.

“They couldn’t have made the point more dramatically that they see California as the major battleground of the election,” said Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, who, as chairman of the state’s delegation, recited the votes in the traditional roll call of states.

Beyond that symbolic commitment, the team of Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen already has pledged $4 million to the race in California and, starting with a visit Saturday to Modesto, the nominees say they plan to lavish personal attention on the voters of the state.

The choice of Modesto in the state’s conservative heartland is a sign of the Democrats’ determination to win back those party members whose past disloyalty helped put Ronald Reagan in the White House.

‘Go Right to Weakness’

“They want to go right to the weakness, which is those conservative Democrats who have bolted in the past,” said Rep. Richard H. Lehman, a Democrat whose Central Valley district includes nearby Stockton.

The $4 million pledged by Dukakis is substantially more money than California has seen in the past. It is also a welcome departure from past practice, which saw a lot more money flowing out of California into the hands of the national party.

“For the first time in my memory, the money they are raising in California is going to come back into California for voter registration and get-out-the-vote,” McCarthy said. The party intends to spend almost as much on such efforts in California as it spent nationwide in 1984.

Along with the money, the Dukakis camp has promised to give California Democrats, including supporters of Jesse Jackson, leadership roles in the fall campaign.

“They (the Democratic nominees) are not running things from 3,000 miles away and sending people in to push the locals around,” said Sen. Alan Cranston, one of a group of California lawmakers who has been briefing the Dukakis campaign on California issues.

Cranston Pledges Help

“Jimmy Carter didn’t understand the importance of water out West because there wasn’t anybody in his campaign to educate him on the subject. Dukakis will have our help and won’t be apt to make a mistake like that,” Cranston said.

It would be folly for the Democrats not to give California special consideration. With 47 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win, the state is the biggest single prize in the election.

California also is up for grabs this year in a way it has not been for much of the last three decades. In eight of the last 10 presidential elections, the Republican Party has gotten a leg up in the state by putting a Californian on the ticket--Earl Warren (in 1948), Richard M. Nixon or Ronald Reagan. So far, the Republicans have not sought that advantage in 1988, although Gov. George Deukmejian is still a possibility for the vice presidential spot.

Optimistic as they are leaving Atlanta, the California Democrats anticipate a close race in a state that has prospered handsomely during a Republican Administration. The Democrats are full of warnings for each other.

“On the procedural end of things we are doing very well, but we’ve still got to put together a winning message,” said Charles T. Manatt, a Los Angeles lawyer and former national Democratic chairman.

Appeal to Many Voices

It should be a message, say other Democrats, that combines social responsiveness with fiscal responsibility in a way that will appeal to a cacophony of voices from the central valley to the state’s inner cities.

As this week’s elaborate political dance with Jackson indicated, Dukakis knows he needs the help of Jackson’s supporters if he wants to claim the California prize. To this end, Dukakis and his aides met several times during the convention with Jackson’s campaign leaders, including Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Jackson’s national chairman, and Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, chairwoman of Jackson’s California campaign. Both say they will play an active role in the campaign.

However, the fragility of the Jackson-Dukakis alliance was clearly illustrated Thursday morning when the California delegation met for the last time. McCarthy had hoped to end the meeting on a note of unity, but Jackson delegate Jule C. Anderson of San Francisco, though denied a microphone, had the last word.

Surrounded by reporters, Anderson announced she was “damned unhappy” about Speaker Brown’s motion Wednesday night calling for Dukakis’ nomination by acclamation.

Brown said that after the state roll call was taken, Jackson asked him to make the motion to “turn the party over to Dukakis.” But most Jackson delegates did not know this, and assumed the motion was made at the request of Dukakis--”another case of white people telling black people what to do,” as one delegate put it.

“We want unity, but we can’t have unity without respect,” Anderson declared.