California Elections / NEWS ANALYSIS : GOP Poised to Seize Control of Statehouse in ’96

After suffering electoral meltdown just two years ago, California Republicans not only achieved a remarkable turnaround Tuesday, but they may have set the stage for seizing full control of state government in 1996 for the first time in more than a generation.

That occurrence, if it happens, might finally fulfill the destiny of the Ronald Reagan conservative revolution of 1966, steeped in voter anger over high taxes, wasteful government, social spending and student riots. That torch has been carried on in the passage of Proposition 13 tax cuts in 1978, term limits in 1990, and now into the crime and illegal immigration debates of 1994, state political experts agreed.

If Republicans can build on their 1994 victory and avoid the sort of internal warfare that led to self-destruction in the past, the state party could emerge in 1996 with a GOP governor and solid control of both houses of the Legislature, several Sacramento observers said.

As of Wednesday, Democrats retained narrow control of the state Senate and appeared headed toward a 40-40 deadlock in the Assembly. Regardless of the final numbers, Republican Assembly Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga noted, “You are going to see a much more conservative Legislature and are going to see Democrats who are more willing to cross over and work with us.”

That also means that the Legislature would be more likely to support the programs of Gov. Pete Wilson, who rode conservative issues into a 15-point second term victory over Democrat Kathleen Brown after having been declared on political life support just a year ago.

When Reagan was governor, he enjoyed razor-thin Republican control of both houses of the Legislature for only one year, 1971. Even then, Reagan could not always count on solid GOP support because there were far more Republican moderates in the Assembly then, and the Senate operated on a bipartisan, club-like basis.

Tuesday’s election was the first in which the state GOP began reaping major benefits of the termlimits ballot initiative and the 1991 redistricting of legislative and congressional districts to greatly favor Republican candidates in many regions.

The full impact of term limits will hit in the 1996 legislative elections. Because Democrats have dominated both houses of the Legislature for more than two decades, they have more to lose when those seats are vacated.

Moreover, Republicans emerged Wednesday with an asset that they have not possessed for decades: a well-stocked bench of up-and-coming elected officials who can position themselves to run credible campaigns for governor, senator or the U.S. House over the next two decades.

“This is a glorious day to be a Republican,” said state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who has been assumed to be the natural party successor to Wilson for the governorship in 1998, when Wilson cannot run again.

Until Tuesday, Wilson and Lungren were the only Republicans among the seven statewide officeholders. That 5-2 Democratic margin has been reversed--in January, there will be five Republicans and only two Democrats.

Among the new GOP faces will be Bill Jones as secretary of state, Matt Fong as treasurer and Charles W. Quackenbush as insurance commissioner. As a high-visibility Assembly leader, Brulte also must be counted among the Republicans’ potential statewide stars.

UC Berkeley political science professor Bruce Cain said Wednesday that most of the secondary statewide offices are essentially irrelevant from a policy standpoint and should not be elective.

But he added, “The real significance is they will have statewide visibility and name recognition.”

Cain said the new officials will join--and compete with--Lungren and state Sen. Tom Campbell, a 1992 GOP Senate candidate, in the front ranks of future GOP leaders.

State Democratic Party official Bob Mulholland said, “This gives them a much stronger bench.”

Tuesday’s election reaffirmed the more conservative ideological profile of the California electorate of the past 10 to 15 years--with the exception of 1992, when Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer won U.S. Senate seats and state Treasurer Kathleen Brown was being virtually anointed as the likely winner over Wilson in 1994.

“That profile is fiscally conservative, very wary of taxes, pro-death penalty, in favor of tougher prison sentencing . . . moderately pro-environmental and somewhat secular about the Christian Right agenda,” Cain said.

The anomaly of the more liberal 1992 electorate also tended to cloak the impact of the 1991 reapportionment plan, which was drawn by the courts after Wilson vetoed plans passed by Democrats in the Legislature, Cain said. The effect should have been more pronounced two years ago, but some Democrats managed to win seats in districts that really had been transformed into relative Republican strongholds. Several of those Democrats lost Tuesday.

Los Angeles Times Poll Director John Brennan attributed part of Tuesday’s Republican victory to the national GOP tide.

There are no more Republican voters in California than before, and they remain in the minority. But Brennan said, “We see more Republicans voting. That’s a drastic reversal from 1992. . . . ’92 had a very strong Democratic tail wind and the economy dominated the issue agenda.”

In the intervening period, Brennan said, Californians reasserted their normal, more conservative political proclivities. Crime and illegal immigration eclipsed the economy as driving issues. Wilson, who ran for governor in 1990 as a relative moderate--he called himself a “compassionate conservative”--tailored his campaign to the shift in mood and reached accommodation with the more conservative wing of the California Republican Party by putting aside differences over volatile social issues such as abortion rights and gay rights.

Tuesday’s electorate was far more conservative than in 1992. Brennan said 37% of the voters identified themselves as conservative and 17% as liberals. Two years ago, 27% called themselves conservative and 22% liberal.

Wilson won majority support of those voters who said that they were worse off than four years ago and that California was on the wrong track, even though Wilson was governor while things went wrong.

“That is the genius, the shrewdness of Wilson’s strategy,” Brennan said of the governor’s ability to channel anger and frustration away from his own performance and into the issues of crime and immigration.