Democrats’ Convention to Stress Unity, End to Strife

California Democrats informally launch the stretch drive to their June 2 primary today with a state convention programmed by party leaders to emphasize unity and mute internal strife.

To that end, convention organizers scheduled presidential contenders to speak today and Senate hopefuls on Sunday at the Westin-Bonaventure here, but made no provision for candidate-to-candidate debates or endorsements by the party membership.

“We need to go out of here with the clear understanding that George Bush is the enemy,” state party Chairman Phil Angelides of Sacramento said at a news conference Friday. “Let’s have a spirited convention, but keep the eye on the prize.”

That will not likely prevent some bitter fights in the seven weeks before the primary election. Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton will compete in the presidential primary. There are six major contend ers for the Democratic nominations for two U. S. Senate seats.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, will not be here. He had been scheduled to speak today, but his doctor insisted that he rest this weekend to get over a case of laryngitis. Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles will fill in for Clinton today.

Brown is scheduled to appear, but there was no word from his camp on what tone the Brown presidential effort would take today after his third-place finish in New York on Tuesday.

Angelides was asked how he could expect Brown to be quiet, or not to criticize Clinton.

That may not be possible, Angelides said, but Democrats need to concentrate on taking “the things that Jerry Brown is saying, the things that have energized people . . . and blend that into our fall campaign.”

Mickey Kantor, a Los Angeles lawyer and national campaign chairman for Clinton, said that Clinton would open his California drive on Wednesday.

“It’s beginning to really fall into place here for Bill,” he said.

Kantor added that Clinton would begin looking to the fall campaign and running against Bush.

“I think the next President of the United States will win California,” Kantor said.

For decades, California political parties were banned by law from taking sides in Democratic primary campaigns, but the law was overturned by the courts in 1989.

The Democratic state convention two years ago narrowly endorsed then-Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp over former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein for governor after booing Feinstein for expressing her support for the death penalty. Feinstein won the primary, but lost to Pete Wilson by a narrow margin in November.

Feinstein said a major reason for her loss was that her campaign was depleted of energy and money at the end of the exhausting primary fight.

At the June 2 presidential primary, California Democrats will allocate 404 delegates and 404 alternates to the Democratic National Convention in New York in July. In November, the state will cast a record 54 electoral votes, one-fifth of the number needed in the Electoral College to choose a President.