Judicial Edict on Partisan Endorsements Ends a California Tradition : Politics: California’s law on nonpartisan endorsements falls, but it means neither a clean government Armageddon nor a strong party millennium.

Hiram W. Johnson, California’s 23rd governor, succeeded in banning political party endorsements in nonpartisan races--a prohibition that stood for nearly eight decades, until the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Aug. 14 that the ban “illegally restricts political speech” in violation of the First and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Critics say the decision leaves the door open for “Eastern-style,” “boss-type” politics to sully California’s local and judicial elections. Said one city official, “If there are strong parties, is the spoils system right behind?”

Supporters rhapsodize over the coming renaissance of political parties in the state. Democratic Party Chairman and former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. said, “The role of political parties has been dramatically enhanced.”

Hardly. In fact, nothing much is going to change. The decision means neither Armageddon for clean government nor the millennium for strong parties. California’s political culture won’t abide either extreme.

“Nonpartisan” elections--that is, elections, usually for local and judicial offices, in which the names of the parties are excluded from the ballot--have been in place in California the early years of the century. They were part of the response by Gov. Johnson and his Progressives to corruption in government. The Progressive reforms--including nonpartisanship and a ban on party endorsements in partisan primaries--were designed to weaken the state’s party structures and to end their domination and corruption by powerful special interests--most infamously, the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Look around. Those reforms did what they were supposed to do. The formal party apparatus--state Central committees, county committees and the like, were rendered impotent. Special interests learned to cultivate individual politicians with whom they could deal and who could win office and stay there.

The political malaise that grips California today is rooted in the weak-party, candidate-oriented electoral system that became Johnson’s legacy. But it’s going to take more than a judicial edict to cure it.

There were predictions of a rejuvenated party leadership last year, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down California’s law prohibiting parties from endorsing candidates in partisan primaries. That decision, said Chairman Jerry Brown, “gives the party the power to build itself into an institution that can . . . act effectively in each community of the state.”

Democratic Party registration promptly dropped to a 56-year low, at 49.9%. In June’s Democratic primary, John Van de Kamp and Bill Press, the party-endorsed candidates for governor and insurance commissioner, lost decisively.

And what can you say about a Republican Party that can’t mobilize its own loyalists to vote on the life-or-death issue of reapportionment reform?

If the parties are so weak, why all the fuss over injecting them into local and judicial elections? All the court did was give legal sanction to the reality that California has not had “pure” nonpartisan elections for a very long time.

What does that mean?

Party labels are supposed to provide “voting cues” that help voters identify candidates. “Democrat” and “Republican” are shorthand for differing sets of ideological perspectives and political values. That’s the ideal. Never mind that the major-party candidates for California governor are having a hard time staking out substantial differences between them. Whether or not “voting cues” mean really anything, they have already found their way into nonpartisan campaigns. “Unofficial” slate mailings target Democrats or Republicans for all manner and levels of elected office. They assume particular importance for local candidates, who can’t effectively reach voters by media or other more expensive means.

For example, the Democratic firm of Berman and D’Agostino Campaigns (“BAD” to both friends and detractors) publishes the Democratic Voter Guide, which endorses in both partisan and nonpartisan races.

Alan Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant, puts together a slate for the Nonpartisan Candidate Evaluation Council, a group “of active and responsible conservative Republicans.”

How much do you want to bet that, in the “nonpartisan” races for Los Angeles County supervisor, conservative incumbent Mike Antonovich doesn’t make it onto the BAD slate, and liberal Supervisor Ed Edelman never sees the council’s endorsement?

If slates don’t make party affiliation--or at least affinity--clear, the candidates themselves often do. Legislators running in local elections--such as Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina in Los Angeles--bring their party identifications with them.

Pete Wilson, when he was a member of the Assembly, captured the office of mayor of San Diego without hiding his partisan affiliation.

And sitting local officials have long tried--some successfully, some not--to make the jump into partisan office, showing their party banners. Who doesn’t know the party registration of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley? (The fact that he was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1982 and 1986 should give you a hint.)

The current partisan deadlock in the state Legislature owes something to the dominance of party activists (more liberal than the rank and file in the Democratic Party and more conservative in the case of the Republicans) in choosing their party’s nominees. Rigid ideologues, as we have seen time and time again, make it more difficult to compromise and move policy. Might that happen on the local level? Maybe.

The ideological battle over redistricting that is tearing apart Los Angeles County’s “nonpartisan” Board of Supervisors proves that partisan divisions are already taking a toll in the local arena.

There is special concern for judicial elections. But the judicial process is political. Remember the adage: “The definition of a judge is ‘a lawyer with a friend who is a politician.’ ”

If you think of judicial elections as apolitical, ask former Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and her colleagues who were victims of a highly partisan ballot war. Ask the judicial candidates who sought places on “unofficial” party slates, long before the courts allowed party endorsements.

Political scientists see a direct correlation between party identification and political participation. Yet even when voting becomes more and more accessible--by relaxing absentee-ballot rules or opening polling places weeks before election day, turnout continues to decline.

Voter participation is low, at every level of the electoral process. But anyone who thinks the court’s ruling on party endorsements will reverse this disturbing trend is doomed to bitter disappointment. It’s just more tinkering around the edges. It won’t clean the streets or solve this state’s deep-seated problems. It probably won’t affect them at all.

Maybe the recent court decision helps most by combating electoral fraud--the fraud that nonpartisanship is alive and well and works in communities whose problems reach beyond local boundaries and require tough political solutions.