CALIFORNIA : FROM THE TEST TUBE FOR THE FUTURE TO THE PERILS OF RIGHT NOW--THE MOST POPULOUS STATE BECOMES A MIRROR OF AMERICAN

As America’s center of gravity shifts West, California is no longer that crystal ball of national trends. Now, it’s al most a mirror--or perhaps a simulcast--of the most important things starting to happen to America.

So forget the tax revolt, hot tubs and computer geniuses tinkering in Santa Clara garages. The California of the 1990s will have to balance the existence of America’s most opulent real estate just miles from the most impoverished suburbs. Foreign challenges to Silicon Valley’s pre-eminence could send shock waves nationwide--even as the rest of California becomes Japan’s beachhead on the U.S. mainland. And state voters show signs of replacing tax-limitation populism with a ballot-box harassment of the insurance, chemical, oil and tobacco industries that is already spreading to other states. Overall, California may even emerge from the Goldwater-Nixon-Reagan era as more Democratic than the nation as a whole--and tilt U.S. politics accordingly.

To some extent, that’s because the bloom is off the orange groves. Hollywood may not have to rename the Oscars the Fujis, but California culture is changing. The descendants of the Dust Bowlers who fled to California 50 years ago are moving back to Oklahoma--and so many Asians and Latinos are pouring in that two more generations might just give the Golden State a Third World gilding. California is no longer the Future because, as the Farm Belt and Rust Belt go the way of the Saturday Evening Post, California is becoming the Big Today--with roughly 13% of America’s gross national product, 12% of the population and the certainty of having more than 52 of the 270 electoral votes needed to put a President in the White House in 1992.

Some of California’s trend-setting stereotypes are still valid and need little comment--being out in front on environmentalism, for example. From auto emissions to offshore oil drilling, toxic substances to restrictions on smoking, the state has been a bellwether. Even the John Birch Society has stopped joking about tree-huggers.

Multiracialism is another California signal of a national transition--although next century’s probable nonwhite majority may not be collaborative. High-achieving Asians look down on Latinos and blacks, and the children of these same Asians are an ever larger proportion of the entering classes of top state universities. Whites are being squeezed out--by smog and crime as well as schools--and they are moving by the thousands to Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Oklahoma. There is a net emigration of the white middle-class, something California has never experienced before.

All this gives national relevance to the state’s signals in five pivotal areas: the shifting mood of populism; the emergence of homelessness and a widening rich-poor cleavage; rising U.S economic nationalism; the changing balance between conservatism and liberalism, and the prospect of a more pivotal California role in U.S. presidential politics.

Americans tired of voting on so many issues--initiatives, bonds and a whole lot more--can blame a Californian, Sen. Hiram W. Johnson, father of the early 20th Century’s popular initiative movement. In the last few years, even Californians have grown frustrated with the crush of initiatives and the flood of dollars spent by pressure groups. Yet even grousing citizens are so fascinated by ballot propositions that politicians are linking their pursuit of statewide office in 1990 to initiatives--a tactic politicians elsewhere are expected to imitate.

This high-intensity focus makes California a “populist” barometer, and the trends of the last few years reveal a move away from the conservative era characterized by Proposition 13 and public-spending limitations. Key initiative successes of 1988, by contrast, increased taxes on cigarettes, set up a far-reaching program for consumer disclosure of alleged carcinogens and mandated a 20% rollback on auto insurance rates. Here, too, other states are watching. Economic, environmental and consumer populism may be replacing the tax revolt and social-issue conservatism variety.

Not unrelated to this changing populist dynamic is the widening division between rich and poor--more noticeable in California than in the country as a whole. Labor analysts are already identifying Los Angeles as a center of re-emerging sweatshops as well as soaring housing prices--1988’s median cost of a new home in suburban Orange County topped $231,000. One recent survey located five of the nation’s 15 poorest “suburbs” in greater Los Angeles--Cudahy and Bell Gardens ranked second and third nationally--only a few miles from the “Platinum Triangle” of Bel Air, Holmby Hills and Beverly Hills, where lots with $2-million houses become “tear-downs” so the nouveau riche can build tasteless palazzi with motorized chandeliers, petting zoos and heliports.

Pricey real estate has put California in the forefront of the homelessness debate. Tent cities have become issues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley and Sacramento, along with activist groups enjoying such names as Food Not Bombs. A statewide homelessness-related initiative was narrowly defeated in 1988, and 1989 California polls have shown rising public concern. Last month, national survey data compiled by Richard Wirthlin, pollster for Ronald Reagan, found poverty, hunger and homelessness emerging as the No. 2 national problem.

Still another California focus is rising U.S. economic nationalism. That’s because the great debate no longer involves closed Appalachian steel mills--already monuments to an economic past. The new front lines of the trade and foreign investment battles pass right through California--through the embattled semiconductor companies of Silicon Valley, through the rice fields of the Sacramento Delta and even through Hollywood, where giant studios are being gobbled up by Japanese and Australians even as the European Community threatens to restrict U.S. entertainment products. The large U.S. municipality where foreigners own half the big downtown buildings isn’t Pittsburgh, it’s the City of the Angels; and California is the place where Japan owns almost 30% of the local bank assets.

For many Californians, this is a plus. With the Pacific Century only a decade away, California’s seeming emergence as Asia’s principal staging ground on the U.S mainland should guarantee state pre-eminence over Texas, Florida or New York. But California has huge numbers of potential losers as well as winners.

All this isn’t the stuff of revitalized Sun Belt conservatism. California’s right-tilting identification harks back to 1960s trends evident in Barry M. Goldwater’s 1964 GOP presidential nomination--after a critical victory in California’s primary--and Reagan’s election as governor in 1966. Suburban Orange County became a national stereotype of little old ladies in tennis shoes circulating “Impeach Earl Warren” petitions. Conservatism got a booster shot in 1978-81, when California launched the tax revolt movement and Reagan moved into the White House.

California trends were predictive back in the 1960s, when the state was from 1-3 points more Republican than the rest of the country in three straight presidential elections--1960, 1964 and 1968. Yet in the last contests for the White House, California has turned around, less Republican by 1 point in 1984 and 2 points in 1988. Could Michael S. Dukakis’ ability almost to carry the state despite one of the century’s most inept campaigns be telling us something?

So the realignment in the Sun Belt isn’t necessarily the conservative phenomenon so many expect. Forty percent of the electoral votes shifting in 1991 will come to California alone, while the state could be moving into a more “progressive” mode as new issues bite during the 1990s. Moreover, California’s Democratic Party is re-emerging with a technological vengeance under the chairmanship of former governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.--Gov. Moonbeam has become Gen. Blitzkrieg. Besides teaming top candidates with ballot initiatives, party leaders have begun mobilizing huge numbers of absentee ballots through tailored appeals. In one recent special congressional election, where Democrats won a 57% landside in a marginal district, a stunning 40% of their votes came from absentees.

California could be gearing up to play a new national part in 1992 or 1996--possibly through an earlier presidential primary. Support is growing to advance California’s 1992 primary from June to March. Squeezing the early Iowa and New Hampshire contests out of the limelight in 1992 would spotlight California issues--something Republicans believe would give the national Democratic Party exactly the Hollywood, Malibu and Marin County rope it needs to hang itself. Conversely, though, California could be moving toward a new influence in presidential selection--just when some of its themes could also be nationally successful.

So surfboards and sports clothes, even tax revolts and judge-bashing, are yesterday’s trendsetting. The starring role California will play in the 1990s should be new, different--and the biggest yet.