Red Star Over Orange County

In conservative Orange County, where the well of good feeling toward Republicans runs deep, it’s small surprise that President Bush would enjoy higher-than-average approval ratings.

But a new Times Orange County Poll finds that Bush shares the local popularity limelight with an unlikely counterpart: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Bush and Gorbachev, in fact, polled identical favorable ratings in the 600-voter survey, each winning the approval of 77% of those interviewed.

A January, 1989, Times Orange County Poll also found that about seven out of 10 voters had favorable impressions of both leaders.

“A lot of what Gorbachev has done are things that are in the American populist tradition, shaking up the system,” said Mark Baldassare, the pollster who conducted the survey for The Times Orange County Edition. “He’s very strongly identified with political reform and hope for world peace.”

Gorbachev’s economic reforms, many of which are aimed at introducing elements of the free market into the highly centralized Soviet system, may find an especially receptive audience in conservative areas of the United States.

In fact, Gorbachev, who received the Nobel Peace Prize last week, racked up his highest ratings among Orange County’s richest residents. Two-thirds of voters who make less than $35,000 a year viewed the Soviet president favorably, but fully 86% of those making more than $75,000 held a positive impression.

What’s more, although Gorbachev is the best-known Communist Party member in the world, it doesn’t seem to hurt him in one of the United States’ most famously anti-Communist counties. Orange County Republicans actually like him more than Democrats do, and more than seven out of 10 members of both parties have a favorable opinion of the man who commands thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at American targets.

“He doesn’t face the partisan political problems that an American president does,” Baldassare said. “Bush can be happy about being as popular as Gorbachev.”