Democrats Wrap Up Convention Politely : Politics: The weekend meeting adjourns without bickering among the candidates in the two U.S. Senate races and without endorsements.

Hungry for statewide victory and weary of decades of infighting, California Democrats ended their election year convention Sunday with a rare absence of bickering and with a candid admission that they share blame for an American crisis of drift and decay.

The six Democrats waging spirited campaigns for two U. S. Senate nominations in the June 2 primary refrained from personal attacks on each other during speeches to the 2,300 delegates at a downtown Los Angeles hotel Sunday.

There was no endorsement by the convention of any candidates in the primary, reversing a policy of two years ago. Endorsements do little to help the contenders and create schisms within the party, officials said.

“We didn’t give you the dogfights and the catfights that you’ve come to expect from the Democratic Party,” Chairman Phil Angelides told reporters after adjournment of the three-day meeting well ahead of schedule--also a rarity. “I think it’s a landmark for this party.”

Angelides, a Sacramento developer who took over the party leadership from former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. a year ago, added: “We came in with the goal of setting the stage for the November election, and we were inordinately successful at doing it.”

This will not prevent the Senate candidates from attacking each other in the final seven weeks of the primary campaign as they vie for voter attention, mostly through television commercials. But the candidates are in relative agreement on major issues.

The preamble to the unusual platform document opens by calling this “an odd and surprisingly fearful moment in our history.”

“Our party has contributed to the crisis,” the statement of principles said, adding that the difference is that the Republicans refuse to recognize their responsibility for the nation’s problems.

The platform also said Democrats have failed to respond to popular concerns and to adapt to change.

Democrats must become the party of economic strategy, the document said. Other portions emphasize fiscal responsibility and the use of the defense budget savings to revive the California economy and to train displaced defense and aerospace workers for new jobs.

Notably absent were proposals for new taxes, other than a call for restoring the progressive elements of the income tax to help middle-income families. The platform is a 28-page statement of principles rather than the interminable documents of past years that created intraparty divisions by advocating costly and controversial programs in minute detail.

There is only passing mention of the death penalty, in a section calling for the elimination of race as a factor in death sentences. The platform includes a tough-on-crime plank, assistance for victims of crimes, and mandatory drug-testing as a condition of employment, but only when the safety of the worker or others might be affected.

The tone of the convention, Angelides said, “says something about the hunger for changing this country, coupled with the recognition that if we’re going to win, we’ve got to do some things fundamentally different.”

Disputes over the Vietnam War bitterly split the Democratic Party in the mid-1960s. During the 1970s, minority groups demanded a greater role in party affairs. There was a proliferation of official caucuses representing an array of special interests, each with its set of demands to which party leaders usually acceded to avoid conflict or to spare themselves of accusations of insensitivity.

These developments helped drive white, middle-class Californians from the party and into the embrace of Ronald Reagan in his elections for governor and President, party officials said.

The 1992 platform refocuses party attention on working men and women who, the Democratic leaders say, have been squeezed by Republican tax and economic policies the past 12 years and who have lost jobs or are fearful of being out of work.

Although Democrats did well in contests for the Legislature and for lesser state offices, they have elected only one new governor and one new U. S. senator since 1970. No Democratic presidential nominee has carried California since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

This year offers unprecedented opportunity because both U.S. Senate seats are at stake in the same election for the first time since statehood. California’s expanded 54-vote clout in the Electoral College makes it almost essential that Democrats carry the state if they are to win the presidency.

Democrats are encouraged that Michael S. Dukakis lost the state to George Bush by only 3% of the vote in 1988 and that former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein fell just 3.5% short of Republican Pete Wilson for governor in 1990.

The Sunday speeches of the six Democratic candidates for the Senate reflected the desire of party leaders that they should concentrate their rhetoric on defeating Republicans in the fall campaign rather than attacking fellow Democrats, at least under the umbrella of an official party meeting.

Indeed, both Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and Rep. Mel Levine passed up an opportunity to attack Rep. Barbara Boxer on the issue of bad checks written on the defunct House of Representatives bank. The three are seeking the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat held since 1969 by Democrat Alan Cranston, who is retiring.

Nor did state Controller Gray Davis or San Francisco lawyer Joseph M. Alioto mention the state Fair Political Practices Commission’s recent lawsuit against Feinstein alleging that her campaign for governor improperly reported more than $8 million of its contributions and expenditures. They are running for the final two years of the term Wilson won in 1988 and resigned to take office as governor. Wilson appointed former state Sen. John Seymour of Orange County to the Senate seat. Seymour, a Republican, also is seeking the final two years of the term.

Feinstein was representative of the group when she said: “Most people today say we’re going in the wrong direction. It’s even worse than that. We’re not going anywhere at all while the world is passing us by.”

There were a few scattered boos when Levine noted that he broke with the Democratic leadership in Congress to support Bush’s attack on Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War.

The only dispute to reach the convention floor was a resolution concerning proposed American loan guarantees to Israel. The convention voted to support the loans without conditions regarding settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River.