Political Pros Foresee More Bitter Races : Elections: Insiders of both major parties, gathered to dissect fall vote, predict continuing ethnic tension and warn Democrats to examine their relevance.

The innermost of California’s political insiders of both major parties gathered in a University of California conference room over the dark and stormy weekend to dissect the 1994 campaign, reading it for clues to the future. When they were done, the mood inside was about as gloomy and foreboding as the weather outside.

The message was that if you thought the 1994 campaign was unpredictable, nasty and ethnically and socially divisive, just wait until 1996, and perhaps beyond.

The warning notes were most often flashing before Democrats, who face a massive recovery operation after the 1994 election losses. But the entire California political fabric is being rent by realignment, division and polarization, some of the experts said, with results that are difficult to predict.

Dealing with the state’s ethnic diversity is the overwhelming challenge facing California leaders, state Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) said in a Saturday luncheon address.

Issues such as illegal immigration in 1994, and a prospective ballot measure in 1996 to wipe out all state affirmative action programs, exacerbate tensions among ethnic and racial groups, he noted.

“If we don’t figure that one out, this will be the worst state in the country,” Lockyer said. “If we figure that one out--how to capture the family values and work ethic of the new Asians and Latinos--it will be the best place on Earth.”

“If (the Democratic Party) can get to 2001, no problema, “ added Lockyer. “But whether we can get there and what kind of state we’re going to have when that happens, I’m not sure.”

The purpose of the weekend’s second quadrennial conference, sponsored by the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley, was to analyze in detail the campaign for governor, going back to the pre-primary maneuvering of early 1993. The comments from the 11 hours of sessions will be published as a book.

The 75 attendees included the campaign teams of Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democrats Kathleen Brown, John Garamendi and state Sen. Tom Hayden.

Other participants were the state’s leading public opinion pollsters, political scientists, business executives and political reporters. In sum, it was a roomful of political friends, enemies and neutralists who constitute the core of California political management, observation and analysis.

There were few revelations about the governor’s race, except that many conference participants had discerned by Saturday night that the Brown campaign was perhaps even more inept than was indicated by her 15-point loss to Wilson on Nov. 8.

The broader message was that Democrats in particular must examine their relevance to the new political landscape.

“There is no Democratic Party right now,” declared Darry Sragow, a Los Angeles consultant who ran Garamendi’s drive for the Democratic nomination for governor. “Let’s get real again.”

Democratic pollster Paul Maslin said, “Democrats have to start realizing that the world doesn’t end at Berkeley or West L.A.,” two traditional liberal strongholds.

Most foreboding, perhaps, were the comments of Lockyer, the first-term Senate leader who narrowly preserved his party’s majority in the upper house.

Speaking of the expected battle over a 1996 affirmative action initiative, Lockyer said, “It is so fundamentally destructive to core basic California values and history that it will do nothing but cause civil war and destruction in the state of California at a time when the most challenging issue for politicians, for leadership of any sort, is ethnic diversity.”

Lockyer also indicated that Democrats may counterattack on the initiative front in 1996.

He hinted that they could exploit some issues that already cleave the Republican ranks, “and those will be on the ballot,” Lockyer said without mentioning what issues they might be.

Bob Stern, a veteran of campaign finance reform efforts in California, disclosed that representatives of 25 public interest groups are putting together an initiative for 1996 that would impose a form of spending limits on candidates.

Also, Kam Kuwata, who managed Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) razor-thin victory over Republican Rep. Mike Huffington, said Feinstein is drafting legislation to limit the amount of money wealthy candidates may give to their own campaigns.

Huffington spent about $28 million of his personal fortune in an effort to unseat Feinstein in 1994 almost exclusively through television advertising. Feinstein, who is also wealthy, contributed several hundred thousand dollars to her own campaign.

Garamendi aide Sragow said that he believes the end of the nation’s traditional two-party system is near, and that four or five major parties could emerge.

The libertarian-inclined baby boom generation has become dominant in American politics, Sragow said, adding that “boomers hate big institutions, particularly big government.”

The party that adopts libertarian social and economic principles while the other remains static “will likely emerge as the majority party for the next several election cycles,” Sragow said. But each would be at risk of losing part of its traditional base.

Coming into the conference, a major question was how Clint Reilly would seek to interpret Brown’s loss of the governorship. Reilly, who has a reputation as a combative and strong-willed political pro, took over as manager of the Brown campaign in early 1994 when the Brown effort appeared to be aimless.

Under Reilly, Brown tried and discarded several different campaign themes and spent millions of dollars on television ads and slick literature. Nothing seemed to work against Wilson.

There was no sign that Reilly was attempting to blame the candidate herself for errors in campaign strategy or style.

Although many observers believed that Brown made a critical error in failing to define herself as a candidate and in not telling Californians why she wanted to be governor, the weekend conference focused far more intently on the mechanics of the campaigns rather than the candidates themselves.

This prompted Senate leader Lockyer, who sat through the entire conference, to remark late Saturday: “I think the experts have a particular ability to explain the coach and not the players. I saw an extraordinary candidate (and) human being in Kathleen Brown that I never saw get communicated (to the public).”

Lockyer said Brown went through so many campaign themes and teams “that the life got kind of squeezed out of her.”

“It probably would have been better to go with something bad than to keep changing it,” he said.