COLUMN ONE : It’s Trendy to Resent California : Analysts say there’s a growing backlash in Congress against the Golden State. The tensions threaten to cost residents billions of dollars in federal benefits.

When congressional Democrats sought to fill a prized seat on the House Appropriations Committee in June, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) thought she’d give it a try.

The Appropriations panel, after all, is the best place in Congress to bring home the bacon for your own district. Pelosi seemed well-positioned: The seat had been held by another Westerner, in this case from Hawaii. And, even though five Californians already sat on the 57-member panel, the state was under-represented compared with its share of total House seats.

Even so, the coveted slot eventually went to Rep. Marcy Kaptur--and not just because the Ohio Democrat had more seniority and was making her fourth bid.

“People would say directly, ‘I think California has too much and I don’t want to vote for any more for California,’ ” Pelosi recalled. “The people who were having their own campaigns (for the seat) were also saying, ‘California has too much.’ ”

Pelosi’s experience is not unique. Although California traditionally has done well in slicing its share of the federal pie, analysts here say there is a growing anti-California backlash in Congress--based on resentment of the state’s size and clout--that threatens to cost California residents billions of dollars in potential benefits.

Golden State lawmakers have even coined a name for the phenomenon: They call it the ABC syndrome--Anywhere, Anything, Anybody But California.

“It’s inevitable that, when a state becomes as large and dominant and trend-setting as California, that you begin to see some resentment of the delegation in Congress,” said Thomas E. Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution. “It’s part of the normal pulling and tugging on benefits.”

California lawmakers and lobbyists say the ABC backlash already has made itself felt on several fronts. Last month, for example, lawmakers from other dairy states pushed through legislation to bar California from continuing its longtime practice of subsidizing the storage of excess milk as butter or cheese--a policy decision that for decades had been left up to the states.

Another example was in 1986, when the National Science Foundation decided to locate a $50-million earthquake research center in Buffalo, N.Y., despite California’s well-known experience as a living laboratory for temblors. And after Congress voted to approve a $3.45-billion emergency relief package for the Bay Area after last October’s San Francisco earthquake, Californians reported an undercurrent of resentment among colleagues who felt that the state had “soaked” the federal government.

There has also been tension between Californians and other lawmakers over clean air issues. California has repeatedly sought tougher tailpipe standards on automobiles, a stance that has pitted congressmen representing Midwestern auto-making districts against Los Angeles-area representatives. In addition, the Bush Administration clean air plan draws heavily on California’s experience, further fueling resentment in some quarters toward the state’s congressional delegation.

Analysts say this building resentment is likely to intensify when the state acquires an expected seven new congressional seats as a result of the redistricting that will be based on the 1990 census.

Power Grows

California’s 45-member House delegation already is the largest of any state, and its 30-million population is expected to continue to grow between now and the end of the decade. The 52 seats the state likely will hold in 1992 would be 12% of the votes in the House.

“A lot of people hate the Yankees, they hate Notre Dame, they hate USC, they hate successful, big operations,” Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) said. “So you’re going to get some of that naturally.”

To be sure, California isn’t the only state that has run into such a backlash. New York and Texas have experienced similar resentment. And, until the mid-1970s, Southern states virtually shut out those in other regions as locations for sizable new military installations; most of the senior members of the Appropriations and Armed Services committees in both chambers were Southerners.

And, admittedly, not all of California’s setbacks have been caused by outsiders’ resentment. Bitter political infighting between Republicans and Democrats has sometimes left the state congressional delegation unable to support California’s interests as a united front.

Pursuit of the $4.4-billion superconducting supercollider in 1987 was undermined by the belated and conflict-ridden lobbying effort of the state’s political Establishment. California did not even make the final round, and the massive project went to Texas.

Some Californians say they have already seen enough of the ABC syndrome--and the California delegation’s own penchant for bickering--to spur them to take action.

Brushing aside a decade of political sparring, lawmakers and lobbyists are working to establish a nonpartisan “research center” in Washington aimed at identifying California’s interests on specific projects, bills and issues and at mounting a campaign to enlist lawmakers, businessmen and labor leaders to go to bat for the state.

Spearheaded by Reps. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) and Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), the new California Institute--as it will be called--will focus on such meat-and-potatoes issues as funding formulas for transportation and social services, aid for refugees and immigrants, competition for major research and infrastructure projects and efforts to cushion the impact of defense cuts.

Backers have raised one-third of the institute’s projected $300,000 first-year budget from business and labor interests in the state. The effort is slated to be started this fall.

The institute won’t be the first such bipartisan lobbying group to serve state or regional interests in the nation’s capital. Illinois and Texas each have their own organizations. The Sun Belt Institute represents 16 Southern states. And the Northwest Policy Center serves five states in that region.

Political scientist Mann said that these organizations can make a difference “at the margins” by providing quality information and promoting a region’s case at critical junctures.

“It’s like an arms race,” he explained. “The more regions and states that do it, the less significant any one is. On the other hand, everyone feels obliged to get into the game for fear of losing out on something.”

Successful Venture

Perhaps the most successful such venture, the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a coalition of 36 senators and 100 House members from states stretching from Maine to Iowa, has been credited with helping steer a major military installation to Upstate New York and win placement of five defense technical assistance centers in its member states.

For Californians, at least at the start, the biggest challenge may be to find non-ideological statewide issues on which the delegation’s 28 Democrats and 17 Republicans--who include some the most conservative and most liberal members in the House--can agree.

Although the state’s Democratic and Republican congressional caucuses meet weekly, and members of the two parties sometimes work closely on specific issues, California has been hamstrung by a diverse delegation with such intense partisan hostilities that it is virtually impossible to get all its members in a single room.

Much of the bad blood stems from a bitter fight over redistricting waged through most of the 1980s--a battle that could be renewed when districts are redrawn following the 1990 census. Republicans contend that a blatantly gerrymandered Democratic reapportionment plan robbed them of numerous congressional seats.

Even now, some Republicans are concerned that the Democratic majority will find a way to circumvent the carefully crafted safeguards in the California Institute’s proposed by-laws and transform it into a partisan vehicle.

“Democrats, liberals understand how to get hold of political power,” said Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), who acknowledges some potential benefits from the institute but still opposes it. “They will use the tools that exist to perpetuate themselves in office.”

The significance of this split in the delegation is not lost on lawmakers from other states.

“The potential of this enormous delegation would be very different if it had either a partisan or an ideological cohesiveness,” Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N. J.) said.

Regional Antagonism

California’s prominence is more than merely a function of size. Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento) is the fifth-ranking member of the House Democratic leadership, and Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) is the third-ranking Republican leader. And the state’s Democrats head 31 committees and subcommittees, including the powerful Budget, Public Works and Transportation, and Education and Labor panels.

Some see the antagonism toward California as the outgrowth of a zero-sum game in which regions compete against one another for everything from defense contracts to public works projects. California, by dint of its size, is New York’s heir as the top target of smaller states, which feel compelled to unite to protect their interests in slicing up the federal pie.

“California gets everything,” is an oft-heard lament among lawmakers and aides from other states even though, overall, the Golden State appears to get little more than its due. California, which has 11.1% of the total U.S. population, receives about 11.7% of all federal dollars, according to spending figures for 1989.

Yet, at times, lawmakers from other regions have sought to capitalize on this perception.

In 1988, Rep. Martin Olav Sabo (D-Minn.) introduced a measure to cap the amount of money that any state may be awarded under an $85-million Department of Defense university research program.

California received the highest percentage of the funds, 22%. Minnesota got none.

The proposed 14% limit was based on the percentage of science and engineering doctorates nationwide that had been awarded by California universities the previous year. California lawmakers hit the roof, arguing that research grants should be distributed on the basis of merit in open competition.

“It was a direct attack on California,” said Pamela Barry, executive director of the California congressional delegation’s office. Lawmakers are concerned that this foreshadowed future such efforts, she added.

At the same time, too much can be made of the California-bashing, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) maintains. The phenomenon is inhibited, he said, by the very force that prompts it: California’s clout.

“Why would people want to engage us in pitched battle just based on our size when, on another day, they are going to want something and they will want the California delegation on their side?” Berman noted.