POLITICAL JOURNAL : As Modoc County Goes, So Goes California

On the map, this Modoc County seat is nearer to Seattle than it is to Los Angeles. Life here in 1991 seems to have less in common with modern California than with the pioneer days, as recalled by one rancher: “There was nothing up there but suffering and raising kids.”

Still, for reasons that continue to baffle local officials, Modoc County remains California’s political bellwether by virtue of voting for every gubernatorial and California presidential winner since 1912--with one notable exception.

The exception was the election of Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. as governor in 1974 and his reelection in 1978. If anything unifies voters in this remote northeastern corner of the state, it is aversion to the name Jerry Brown. He remains as unpopular as the northern spotted owl in a region where the endangered bird is blamed in part for the vanishing logging industry.

In the last four statewide elections, Modoc reaffirmed its bellwether record. Former Gov. George Deukmejian won resounding majorities here in 1982 and 1986 as did President Bush in 1988. In November, voters cast 2,115 ballots for Republican Pete Wilson for governor and 1,320 for Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

Modoc’s role as a bellwether has perplexed political junkies since University of California political scientist Eugene Lee noted the phenomenon in 1964 but could offer no reasonable explanation. “There is no apparent reason why Modoc County should compile this unusual record,” Lee said.

There still isn’t, Modoc County Clerk Maxine Madison said recently.

“I can’t figure it out,” she said.

The string has been maintained through swings of voter registration from heavily Republican to heavily Democratic and cycles of economic health from good to bad.

Through the middle part of the century, Democrats bolstered their numbers with the growth of railroad and logging jobs. Republicans have been making a comeback in the last two decades, as they have in many parts of the state. Going into last November’s general election, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by only 2,495 to 2,395.

But Modoc voters have expressed their independence over the years by ignoring voter registration. In 1974, Democrats held a 745-voter margin over Republicans, but the county favored Republican gubernatorial candidate Houston I. Flournoy over Brown. Four years later, the GOP candidate was then-Atty. Gen. Evelle J. Younger and Brown was the incumbent. Modoc voted against Brown by an even larger margin.

In the 1962 governor’s race, Modoc went for Brown’s father, Edmund G. (Pat) Brown Sr., over Richard M. Nixon. But in 1966, with Democrats still holding a hefty registration margin, the county switched and supported Ronald Reagan for governor over Pat Brown by nearly 800 votes. In 1968, Nixon carried the county in his presidential bid over Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey.

As a practical matter, being California’s bellwether gets Modoc nothing but a little attention now and then from a stray political reporter. Because Modoc’s polls are open the same hours as those in the state’s other 57 counties, a vote here means nothing more than a vote cast in any other county.

But Modoc County is so remote from the rest of California, and so unlike it, that the bellwether status has become a source of political intrigue and speculation.

Modoc always has been something of a California anomaly. The first pioneers believed variously that they were settling in what then was called the state of Deseret (Utah Territory) or Nevada or Oregon. Modoc County was detached from Siskiyou County two decades after statehood and named for the local Indian tribe that had fought a bitter, costly and losing war with the U.S. Army.

Summers are hot and dry. Winters are harsh: down to 33 below zero one morning last winter. With the logging mill closed and the railroad shops moved to Klamath Falls, unemployment hovers around 20%.

“People here think $6 an hour is a good job,” said James Gordon, vice president of California Rural Business Ventures, a firm working with local officials in hopes of resuscitating the Alturas economy.

Isolated by mountain ranges and often alienated by decisions emanating from Sacramento (farther than Nevada’s Carson City), the 9,678 residents of Connecticut-size Modoc County live in a plateau world of their own. The nearest major airport is 179 miles south in Reno. To drive from Los Angeles to Alturas is the equivalent of traveling the East Coast from Jacksonville, Fla., to Wilmington, Del.

Almost any place of note “nearby” is in another state. The recent increase in the California sales tax is expected to drive even more shopping business 53 miles to Lakeview and 107 miles to Klamath Falls, both in Oregon, where there is no levy on purchases.

At heart, Modoc is bedrock conservative and usually votes Republican unless given some reason not to.

But there is one political fact that may help explain why Modoc votes so closely to the California norm, sometimes in spite of its partisan instincts: Voters will tend to support candidates who pay some personal attention to them and listen to their concerns. Because candidates do not often get to Modoc County, any such effort is noticed and appreciated.

A recent visit to Alturas by U.S. Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, provided something of an object lesson. Boxer was escorted around town by Patricia Malberg, a Democrat from near Sacramento who ran a vigorous race in 1990 for the open 14th District congressional seat against conservative Republican state Sen. John Doolittle of Rocklin.

Logically, Malberg, an outspoken liberal, should have had no chance. The GOP has had a lock on the 14th District for a dozen years and Doolittle outspent her 2 to 1. Still, Malberg won 49% of the vote and even carried Modoc, 1,920 votes to 1,724. It was a stunning performance, especially by a woman in a community where heroes have always been cowboys and lumbermen.

But Malberg visited the more rural northeast portions of the 10-county district, including Modoc and Lassen counties, more often than Doolittle. While Doolittle’s political ideology is more in tune with the area, local officials said Malberg is better-liked personally.

Encouraged by Malberg’s example, Boxer stood before an all-white, all-male meeting of the Rotary Club and argued that Malberg did so well because she was willing to spend some time with Modoc voters who thought approvingly that “she’d shake things up.” Boxer wants to do the same.

“Have you ever looked at the United State Senate?” Boxer asked. “Let me tell you, it looks pretty much like this room.”

The boys of Alturas and Modoc County laughed and applauded.

“Just so it’s not Jerry Brown!” one Rotarian yelled.

A County to Count On Modoc County, located closer to Seattle than to Los Angeles in about as different from the rest of California as possible. Still, Modoc remains California’s political bellweather, voting with the state in every gubernatorial and presidential election since 1912, except Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s two elections as governor.