Time for a Woman? : ‘Double Death’ Democrat, Double Jeopardy for GOP : Elections: Tuesday’s vote was a defeat for conventional wisdom. Dianne Feinstein’s win and the gas-tax increase proved voters can beat the odds.

Being a woman is a disadvantage in politics. California voters are outraged over the way reapportionment is handled. The people will never vote to raise taxes. And Californians will never in a million years vote to increase salaries for public officials.

All that is conventional wisdom. And in every case, conventional wisdom was upset in Tuesday’s California primary.

According to conventional wisdom, former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein won the Democratic primary for governor despite her gender. Not so. She won because she is a woman. According to The Los Angeles Times exit poll, 58% of the Democrats who voted Tuesday agreed with the statement, “It’s time we had a woman governor.” Those who agreed voted almost 3-1 for Feinstein.

It wasn’t the gender gap that put Feinstein over. She carried both men and women--though she did somewhat better among women. What her gender did was make Feinstein a more interesting candidate. She was the choice of Democrats who said they wanted a candidate who was “capable,” “dynamic,” “has strong qualities of leadership” and “cares about people like me.”

Her opponent, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, was the choice of Democrats who said they were looking for “experience”--a male advantage--and those who said they were voting for “the lesser of two evils.” In other words, another boring white male.

Feinstein’s “double-death” strategy--abortion rights and capital punishment--worked, in large part, because she is a woman. She advertised her support for the death penalty, something liberal women politicians rarely do. She got booed for it at the state Democratic Convention in April. In that crowd of activists, the death penalty is not the politically correct position. So she lost the party endorsement.

Van de Kamp not only got the party’s endorsement. He also got the endorsement of Ralph Nader, the patron saint of liberals, and Norma McKorvey, “Jane Roe” in the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade case that legalized abortion rights. Like Michael S. Dukakis, Van de Kamp was so politically correct he was boring.

The abortion issue worked for Feinstein because she is a woman. After all, Van de Kamp was committed to upholding abortion rights, even though he said he was personally opposed to abortion. Feinstein argued that only a woman could be trusted to protect abortion rights. The voters apparently believed her.

Will abortion rights and capital punishment work for Feinstein in the fall? Her opponent, Sen. Pete Wilson, supports the death penalty and abortion rights, too. But Wilson is not only a man. He is also a Republican, and the GOP officially opposes abortion rights. That makes him doubly unreliable.

Republicans have a normal advantage of about 300,000 votes in California elections these days. A Democrat will never overcome this disadvantage just by being a liberal. The Democrat has to offer something else.

One way Democrats win California is by capturing the imagination of the voters. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. did it with his unconventional anti-government liberalism. Now Feinstein has to sustain her appeal as an interesting and unconventional liberal.

Being a woman helps. Thirty percent of the Republicans who voted on Tuesday agreed, “It’s time we had a woman governor.” One-third of Republican women expressed a favorable opinion of Feinstein. There’s some potential there for Feinstein to go after GOP votes.

After all, she has already beaten one boring white man. All she has to do now is beat another.

Wilson has amassed a huge campaign treasury, and he is going to get a lot more money. That’s because California voters rejected two propositions that would have curtailed the power of the Democratic majority in the state Legislature to control the redistricting process.

The voters were still supposed to be angry because the Democrats manipulated reapportionment to their own advantage 10 years ago. But they weren’t angry. Just confused. After all, redistricting is not a matter of vital concern to most voters. It’s just another way politicians steal from each other.

Democrats stole the last reapportionment fair and square. On Tuesday, Democratic voters got the message that Propositions 118 and 119 were GOP tricks to steal the next reapportionment. So Democrats voted 4-1 against the measures, while bewildered Republicans split.

Since Republicans have no hope of winning the Legislature, the only way they can protect their interests is to elect Wilson governor. California Republicans would not just be protecting their own interests. Republicans nationwide have a dream of someday gaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The only way they can do it is by picking up more seats in California.

California voters also defied expectations by passing measures that allow pay raises for public officials--one statewide, the other in Los Angeles. How in the world did those measures pass?

One explanation is that the pay raises were packaged as political reforms. They were part of ethics measures that limit politicians’ outside income. Thus, ironically, the pay raises may have been expressions of anti -politician sentiment.

There is another, equally plausible explanation for the pay-raise votes. California voters may have had no idea what they were voting for.

They certainly knew what they were voting for when they passed Proposition 111, however. That was the measure that will double the California gasoline tax in order to finance improvements in the state’s transportation system. Twelve years after Proposition 13, Californians finally voted to raise taxes--reluctantly, grudgingly and narrowly.

The big surprise was not that the measure passed but that the vote was so close. The entire political Establishment supported Prop. 111, including Republican Gov. George Deukmejian. And the measure had no organized opposition. Nevertheless, 48% of Californians voted against it.

Proposition 111 may send a false-positive signal about taxes. The message of Prop. 111 is not that it is safe for politicians to talk about taxes and spending. The message is that it is possible to talk about taxes and spending. But several conditions have to be met:

--There has to be an urgent need, like the transportation gridlock in California.

--The voters have to know exactly what the money will be used for--preferably local projects voters need and want.

--And the voters have to give their permission. Politicians can’t just go out and raise taxes. They have to ask.

None of these conditions are being met by the current budget deficit negotiations in Washington. The voters are not aware of any crisis. There is no guarantee that a tax increase would be used to reduce the deficit. And deals are being made in secret.

California was not the only state that defied the conventional wisdom last Tuesday. Black candidates are not supposed to win Southern runoffs against whites. But one did. Harvey Gantt won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate from North Carolina. The GOP candidate is none other than Sen. Jesse Helms, the liberal version of Count Dracula.

Does Gantt have a prayer of beating Helms? It doesn’t look good. White turnout in the runoff was quite low. On the other hand, Helms has never won with more than 54.5% of the vote. And he has always run in good Republicans years (1972, 1978, 1984). Last week, a Helms organizer responded to Gantt’s nomination with: “What you have opposing Helms is another coalition of homosexuals and artists and pacifists and every other left-wing group.”

This is not just ignorance. It is militant ignorance, and North Carolina voters may be getting tired of it. Gantt’s job is to make sure Jesse Helms, not Jesse Jackson, is the issue in North Carolina. If a black candidate ends up beating Helms this year, even secular humanists will start believing in God.

Never underestimate the excitement factor in politics. There is excitement about Gantt, and there is excitement about Feinstein. The excitement helps make up for their opponents’ enormous lead in fund-raising.

Here is a prediction: If Feinstein is elected governor of California this year, she will immediately become the Democratic Party’s leading candidate for President in 1992. The California presidential primary date will be advanced to March, and Feinstein will lock up a huge delegate lead early in the race.

Remember that Ronald Reagan first ran for President in 1968, two years after he became governor of California. And Brown ran in 1976, two years after he won the California governorship.

How’s this for a 1992 Democratic ticket: a woman governor of California for President, and a Southern black for vice president--either Gov. L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia or Gantt of North Carolina.

Could it happen? Of course not. It would defy the conventional wisdom.

MEMO TO PETE: Democrats don’t have a gender gap--they all love Dianne. It’s the GOP gap Wilson has to worry about, says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe. M5