Changing the Tune : State Democrats Fill Centrist Vacuum

After voting for Republican presidential nominees in every election since 1964, and choosing Republican governors in five of the last seven contests, California became, for at least a day, a state of “yellow-dog” Democrats.

The election produced a top-of-the-ticket Democratic sweep, and the party more than held its own in the face of a reapportionment designed to break its stranglehold on the state Legislature and congressional delegation.

For California Republicans, no rosy scenario emerged to bind a party torn by internecine warfare and unable to define itself. Their legislative leadership was sideswiped, their governor flattened. On the morning after the election, one Republican consultant said, “Right now, Pete Wilson is not even a leader of a faction of the GOP.”

In California, as across the nation, cracks appeared in the GOP’s Reagan coalition. According to one exit poll, 50% of the Californians who identified themselves as Democrats voting for Ronald Reagan in 1984 backed liberal Democrat Barbara Boxer in her U.S. Senate race; 66% of them supported moderate Democrat Dianne Feinstein in her Senate contest.

Republican state Assembly losses were also exacerbated by defeats in newly created and supposedly GOP-friendly suburban districts. They included the 53rd and 56th Assembly Districts in the Los Angeles area and three San Diego-area seats, where moderate Democrats prevailed over far-right Republicans.

Exit poll data showed conservatives rallying around losing senatorial candidate Bruce Herschensohn, who won 82% of their vote, while George Bush garnered 64%. Moderate and liberal Republican women fled from a President and party that didn’t help them economically and repudiated their views on social issues. They also voted for Democrats in congressional and legislative races. This may have been a factor in the unexpected defeat of Assemblyman Gerald Felando by little-known Democrat Betty Karnette in the “safe Republican” 54th, as well as in the tight race between Republican state Sen. Bob Beverly and his Democratic challenger Brian Finander in the 27th.

Some moderate GOP women argue they can benefit from all the state Republican turmoil. They see themselves as a third force emerging between the hard-right and Wilson-moderate factions.

What has happened to the Republican Party in California cannot be explained merely as an anti-Bush, or even anti-Wilson, backlash. GOP candidates did not lose only because they lacked money and because there was no national campaign to back them up. Rather, California Republicans acted in no small measure like the Democrats of old, while Democrats waged the kind of well-organized, well-funded, united campaigns that Californians used to expect from Republicans.

Yes, the GOP suffered from voter frustration over the stagnant economy and from the unending warfare between conservatives and moderates. But the Republican Party lost because its loudest voice was out of tune with the needs and concerns of most Californians. That need not be a fatal affliction. But there’s little indication that the conservatives who now overwhelm the party machinery care. Or that the moderates can wrest control of the party’s agenda and its future from the right.

What does all this say about the future of the state Democratic Party? The Times’ exit poll indicated that Clinton won nationally by shoring up his traditional base rather than by reaching beyond it.

In California, the legislative and congressional calculus is different. There are districts in which traditional Democratic constituencies are underrepresented, but which must be won to block Republican control. Tuesday’s results suggest that state Democrats had some success in reaching out to the suburbs just as reapportionment increased their electoral importance. To secure these new constituencies, Democrats may have to give short shrift to the needs and problems of their traditional supporters--urban dwellers, liberals, minorities and the underrepresented.

Also, a K-Cal exit poll showed that 50% of California voters place a higher priority on encouraging economic growth than on protecting the environment. In this environmentally conscious state, that is a sign, indeed, of the hard economic times. It also sends an uncomfortable message to a party whose Senate and presidential candidates received a majority of pro-environment votes, but whose local candidates need to hold onto the significant inroads they made in districts where increased economic growth is most important.

In short, the future of California’s major parties may be linked to their ability to move toward the political center. From the 1992 election results, it appears that the Democrats have begun the move more successfully.

In “The Candidate,” Senate hopeful Bill McKay retreats from his followers after winning. Looking bewildered, he asks his campaign manager, “What do we do now?”

That is the question confronting Clinton and California’s Democrats. Their answer, or lack of one, will determine whether their fragile electoral gains will be short-lived.