Tricky Currents for Clinton in the Suburbs

When Gov. Bill Clinton speaks in the San Gabriel Valley today, he’ll encounter many of the tricky currents that will determine whether he carries California.

Racially, the state has no greater ethnic mixing bowl, with Latinos, Anglos, blacks and Asians living in suburbs that extend from East Los Angeles to Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Economically, these suburbs mirror the state’s troubles. The end of the Cold War, combined with the long recession, has resulted in huge cutbacks in the aerospace and defense industries employing valley residents.

I suppose that a poll of the area would show Clinton ahead, as he is elsewhere in the state. But history reminds us of the uncertainty of the outcome.

For in these suburbs, Clinton will find two kinds of Californians highly dangerous to his presidential campaign.

One are Republicans whose loyalty to their candidates--no matter how weak--is legendary. The other are Democrats well known for their disloyalty to party candidates. These are the Reagan Democrats, swing voters, men and women who move back and forth between the parties, driven by a variety of issues--social and economic--that affect them, their families and their homes.

The Republicans will be the hardest to persuade.

In fact, if I were Clinton, I’d forget it. There are parts of the San Gabriel Valley and its environs where Republicanism is as deep in the soil as the toxic waste that pollutes the valley underground water supply.

In another era, this was called Nixon country. Richard M. Nixon emerged from Whittier, just southeast of the valley, and he counted on the area in many campaigns. Even today, you’ll find valley old-timers who swear he was framed or railroaded.

In the political geography of the San Gabriel Valley, the Republicans tend to live high in the hills and the Democrats down below.

The results of the 1988 presidential campaign illustrate the split. In a precinct toward the top of a pleasant hillside subdivision in Montebello, President Bush beat Democrat Michael S. Dukakis 308 to 163. In humbler neighborhoods in Montebello’s flatlands, Dukakis won 2 to 1.

The real battleground is in the neighborhoods in the middle, where the Reagan Democrats live. The 1988 election reflected their ambivalence toward their party. In one such Montebello precinct, Dukakis won 193 to 135. In another, he also barely edged Bush.

Since the late ‘60s, areas such as these have been the Democrats’ greatest challenge.

It was when Ronald Reagan was running for governor in 1966. As he campaigned through Southern California’s working-class areas, large crowds of working people in solidly Democratic areas cheered his attacks on welfare and student demonstrators, and then voted for him. Social issues had overtaken their New Deal concerns.

In the ‘60s, these Democrats were predominantly white. Today, they’re a racial mix, although heavily Latino in the San Gabriel Valley. Most important, Democratic campaigners say hard times are turning their concerns away from social issues and returning to those of an earlier generation.

“Latinos, blacks, Anglos, Asians, they’re all going to look for the same thing,” said Henry Lozano, chief aide to Democratic Rep. Ed Roybal. “They’re all just as concerned about taxes, health care, education and jobs.”

The Reagan Democrats will be among Clinton’s targets when he discusses the economy with small business owners and community leaders in San Gabriel.

He outlined his economic plans Thursday in a speech to the World Affairs Council in downtown Los Angeles while talking about his vision of the post-Cold War world.

Californians, he said, “would not be in the fix you’re in” if Bush had a plan to convert defense industries to peacetime work. Clinton would have aerospace firms working on environmental technology to clean up industry. He’d invest in mass transit, roads and bridges.

Taxes increases for corporations and families earning more than $200,000 a year would pay for this, along with defense cuts. But there’d be enough for the defense to keep some of the valley industry alive.

Clinton got three big standing ovations from the World Affairs Council elite and their guests, packed into the Westin Bonaventure’s big banquet room to hear a discourse on foreign affairs.

But the middle-class Reagan Democrats of the San Gabriel Valley, and the other suburbs on the edge of urban California, are in a different world. They moved to the valley for a secure suburban life. Now the recession threatens their families, homes and the quality of education in their public schools. Clinton will have to persuade them that his plan will bring economic security to their world.