POLITICAL JOURNAL : Democrats Warm Up for 1992 Senate Race

The contests are a political lifetime away--20 months hence--and Democrats have more on their minds these days than California’s dual 1992 Senate races, particularly with all the hand-wringing over the impact of the Persian Gulf War on their elective fortunes.

But at the weekend convention of California Democrats here, the early styles and strategies of half a dozen candidates emerged crisply.

There was U.S. Rep. Barbara Boxer of Greenbrae, clearly the crowd favorite, demonstrating a buoyant charisma that she hopes will translate into popular support.

There was Robert Matsui, her congressional colleague from Sacramento, selling himself with a sober recitation of the demographic changes he hopes will fuel his candidacy.

There were Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and state controller Gray Davis, offering buttoned-down appeals reminiscent of every Democratic campaign for the last 20 years.

There were Dianne Feinstein and Edmund G. Brown Jr., the class iconoclasts, each thumbing their noses at the gathered crowd like ungrateful party guests bent on offending their hosts.

Feinstein’s approach was direct and fashioned to play into the news of the moment. She upbraided Democrats for not displaying their patriotism on their lapels, lamenting the absence of yellow ribbons and bunting that have decorated America these last few weeks.

Her remarks clearly were not calculated to endear her to convention delegates, a liberal lot who have never warmed to the moderate Feinstein. As she publicly praised President Bush at a Sunday breakfast, a hissing rose from the crowd.

“She just lost my vote,” declared one irked delegate.

It was another display of the Feinstein who aggravated the Democratic Establishment in 1990 as she ran for governor by concentrating on the center of the electorate, rather than the Democratic left. A recent Los Angeles Times Poll showed that the ground she plowed Sunday is potentially fertile: Unlike the convention delegates, 75% of rank-and-file Democrats said they approved of Bush’s handling of the Gulf War.

Feinstein also returned to some of the chords she struck during the campaign, highlighting education as a hot issue for 1992 and contending that all Californians deserve “a home and a job and a good, stable, healthy life on this planet.”

As Feinstein was striking out at the party delegates on the heated issue of the Gulf War, Brown was lashing at what he called the “alarming” state of politics. It was a slice of what voters can expect to hear more regularly as Brown tries to define himself as a political outsider--despite his two terms as governor and previous Senate and presidential campaigns.

“Our political process continues to decay,” Brown declared in a podium-thumping address to the delegates.

He sharply criticized unnamed Democrats who he said had sided with Republicans in a decade of soak-the-poor policies that have strained the country’s social ties. He railed against the “tyrannical manipulation of campaign technology” that he said had replaced sober debate among politicians.

“It is time for the Democratic party to become the party of opposition, not accommodation, and to become the party of principle, never a party of complicity,” Brown said.

Brown said he was moving ahead with a campaign stressing “honesty and economic populism” even if some of his current positions were exactly opposite of what they had been before.

“Is it a record without contradictions and hypocrisy? No, it isn’t,” he said.

The Brown who was dismissed as “flaky” and out of the mainstream when he left elective politics in 1982 tried to phrase his remarks thoughtfully, but the old Brown was still much in evidence.

“I don’t intend to back off my opposition to capital punishment,” he said. “I don’t intend to back off my support for peace.”

Boxer, who has been actively campaigning for the Senate for months, drew more enthusiastic applause than the other candidates, most likely because she appealed to the ideology of the delegates and to their desire for a charismatic nominee.

Boxer made two distinct appeals.

To the overall crowd, she returned often to the theme “it’s time for America.” It served to shift debate from her congressional vote against the use of force in the Gulf, which is certain to be a campaign issue. She peppered her speech with symbols of excess, including one-time billionaire Donald Trump and investment banker Michael Milken.

“They had their turn. It’s time for Americans who live off their job income, not their interest income,” she said.

There was also a well-defined audience to whom Boxer issued another call. To women, gathered at a convention breakfast, she vowed to press for increased research into breast cancer, for access to the so-called abortion drug RU 486, and for increased emphasis on crimes against women.

In contrast to Boxer, whose issues drew on emotion, Matsui’s appeal was an almost clinical dissection of Republican victories. It served to remind Democrats how fragile their hold is on California voters--a theme he will echo throughout the Senate race.

“In order to win statewide elections, it is essential that we regain the support of Democratic families in the growing regions of California, the suburban and rural areas of the state,” He said.

“Self-professed liberals do not necessarily command the loyalty of African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans. If we hope to retain our influence with them, we will have to re-earn their respect and support.”

Without saying so, Matsui offered himself as a living symbol of the increasing minority face of California. A Japanese-American, he also hopes to find support in Central California, and often describes himself as the “only candidate who comes from the inland counties.”

McCarthy, who has announced his candidacy, and Davis, who is expected to run, stayed on traditional Democratic turf, with only slight stylistic differences.

With the war still front and center in Americans’ minds, Davis emphasized his service in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War and empathized with this generation’s war veterans.

“I still remember my law school roommate going home in a body bag,” he said. “When I left Vietnam some 21 years ago, I felt very fortunate to be alive.”

Like Boxer, he decried the excesses of the 1980s, which he declared to be “the era of Robin Leach”, the host of television’s “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.”

“Let’s finally put the ‘80s behind us,” he said. “We cannot countenance urban dropout rates of 40% that condemn our young people to lives of reduced opportunities. We cannot countenance infant mortality rates that steal the breath of children before they take their first steps.”

McCarthy, in sharper terms than most of the candidates, scored President Bush for his handling of domestic affairs and listed the recession, environment and equal rights as his campaign issues.

He also offered magnanimous praise of his Democratic colleagues and an insult to the two declared Republican Senate candidates, incumbent John Seymour and U.S. Rep. William Dannemeyer of Fullerton.

“Any of them would be an improvement over John Seymour,” he said. “Any of them would be better than William Dannemeyer.”