California Politics, 1992: Welcome to the Dark Side of Rationality : Government: We live in a political reality that allows Wilson to advance a program, no matter how plausible, that is potentially divisive.

Last week, Gov. Pete Wilson introduced us to the realities and dangers of California politics, 1992-style.

Wilson is anxious about projections of a $20-billion budget deficit by the year 2000. A huge portion of this shortfall will be the result of welfare costs, which “are growing at the rate of almost 12% a year--four times the rate of even California’s relentless population growth,” according to the governor. Census figures indicate that the population growth stems largely from Latino and Asian immigrants.

“The Taxpayer Protection Act” is Wilson’s answer. The proposed ballot initiative would “contain runaway government spending” by reforming the state budget process and rolling back welfare costs.

The governor denies that his initiative targets newcomers to California. Rather, it simply reflects “the harsh reality” of the current budget crisis.

To be sure, California’s explosive population growth has put pressure on state services and revenues. And few deny that the welfare system needs reform. What’s dicey is the political rhetoric swirling around these issues.

“If we don’t keep California attractive to entrepreneurs and the middle class,” Wilson warned in a recent radio address, “California will become a welfare state for the poor, a state of leisure for the very rich and a state of siege for the dwindling middle class.”

This is not the politics of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, as some critics have charged. Duke’s politics evolved from a racist past. Wilson’s didn’t.

The politics of 1992 has more to do with class than with race. It has less to do with demagoguery than with cynicism. It is the politics of country-club Republicanism and civic boosterism.

It is also the politics of pragmatism. Wilson needs a record to run on, either for reelection or for higher office. To build one, he needs public opinion behind him, and that means reversing his low approval ratings.

Wilson, like every politician, has heard the angry messages of middle-class voters in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and, most recently, San Francisco, where incumbent Mayor Art Agnos lost decisively. Wilson has read the polls showing voter frustration throughout California. He knows that he has to address that frustration and redirect it--away from him and from the Republican Party.

Wilson also needs a cooperative Legislature. But nearly a year in office has taught him that such cooperation is not the divine right of governors. Thus Wilson’s preoccupation with reapportionment and his embrace of the initiative process and “ballot-box budgeting,” which he once decried as a reason for the state’s fiscal problems.

Wilson’s Taxpayers’ Protection Act would greatly augment his power over the budget process. And that translates into more power over policy and people. By using the initiative process, Wilson can make a politically popular end run around a recalcitrant Legislature. But there’s more.

The reapportionment plan recently unveiled by the Supreme Court’s special masters portends the election of more moderate lawmakers. Wilson needs centrists to break the grip of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, who have dominated legislative politics. Unhappily for Wilson, a more politically pliable cast of characters in the Legislature may not come soon enough.

So what’s a governor to do? He can give conservative Republicans an issue--like welfare cuts--to make them happy. He can create an initiative designed to appeal to moderate-to-conservative suburban and rural voters of both parties and place it on the General Election ballot.

This strategy is not lost on Democrats. Protests against Wilson’s Taxpayer Protection Act by Anglo Democratic legislators, many of whom were vocal defenders of Democratic constituencies most heavily affected by welfare cuts, have been scarce.

These Democratic politicians have also read the polls. They understand that, if the court approves the masters’ redistricting plan, available Democratic seats, minority districts aside, would probably be in more moderate and suburban areas. They are not about to alienate potential constituents whose hearts and votes may lie with taxpayer protection.

And they worry that Wilson’s initiative could become a litmus test for candidates up and down the line. Over the years, individual political fortunes have been tied to ballot issues, from “fair housing” regulation to property-tax reform.

But this being as uncertain a year as we have had in politics, Wilson’s initiative could mobilize the people most threatened by it. In Louisiana, when blacks were threatened by Duke, they turned out in droves to help defeat him. And in Bell Gardens, where Latino interests were not served by limits on growth, they recalled four Anglo city officials.

All of which underscores the most dangerous aspect of the emerging California politics: In a high-stakes election year, Wilson’s proposals play the politics of “the two Californias.”

Whether Wilson meant it or not, his initiative threatens the social fabric of a state already divided by political and economic interests. His welfare proposals pit, in his own terms, “taxpayers” against “tax recipients.” That’s a false distinction, at best. But in politics, it’s working.

Taxpayers make up the older, better-off, better-educated California, with little need of the state services that they pay for. Tax receivers represent the California that is largely minority, poor, less educated, more in need of the services that they do not pay for.

The first California votes; the second California tends not to vote. It is that political reality that allows Wilson to advance a program, no matter how plausible, that is so potentially divisive.

The perception in some quarters is that Wilson and other politicians who want to cut welfare are coldly playing racist politics. The reality is that California government can’t afford all who seek its help, and Wilson needs to build public support for a solution. It’s hard to fault him for doing what politicians do--playing to the electorate to accomplish their ends.

But in politics, perception is often reality. In the 1992 election season, leaders like Wilson may be unable to articulate and solve real problems, because the David Dukes have sullied the debate and tainted the debaters. For California, balkanization has already made it difficult to persuade the state’s many and diverse populations to share the burdens of growth and retrenchment, of promise sought and promise denied.

The politics of 1992 may make it impossible. As California loses its identity as a civic whole, the classes and communities that hold electoral power are telling their leaders that they don’t even want them to try.