State Democrats Give Clinton Their Support : Politics: President, hailed as California’s ‘best friend,’ calls attention to his accomplishments.

President Clinton enjoyed a rare moment in California politics Saturday: to be feted as “California’s best friend” by a state Democratic Party that is prepared to grant him its unified support for reelection in the coming year.

For the first time in at least three decades, a sitting Democratic President came to California without having to fear the state as a quagmire of internecine party warfare that could deal mortal blows to reelection hopes.

Although the official party organization is dominated by activists who normally are more liberal than Clinton, an estimated 3,500 delegates and guests at the annual Democratic State Convention in Sacramento greeted the President with applause, cheers and a chant of “four more years.”

“Thank you for the wonderful, wonderful welcome,” Clinton said following the showing of a film that chronicled many of the President’s visits to the state in the past two years, often to work and sympathize with Californians in the aftermath of natural disaster.

“It’s nice to see the record out there in a compelling way,” he said.

Clinton’s remarks came during a weekend swing through California. He flew to Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon and spoke to a meeting sponsored by the National Education Assn. that was dedicated to the issue of violence in schools.

He pointed to figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that show 105 violent “school-associated” deaths occurred in a two-year period ending last year. These comprised 81 homicides, 19 suicides and five unintentional firearm deaths, the study said.

Schoolyard fights have been around as long as schoolyards, Clinton told the gathering at the Century Plaza Hotel, but today “there are guns on the playground, guns in the classroom and guns on the bus. And the result is terror, serious injury and death for our children.”

“If young people are not free to learn in safety, they are not free to learn at all,” he said. The national crisis of violence “requires a national response,” he said, criticizing Republican proposals to eliminate the Department of Education.

Clinton also referred to children earlier Saturday, saying he would not sign the welfare reform bill passed by the House last month because it is too harsh on youngsters and did not include an enforceable requirement that welfare recipients find work.

“We simply shouldn’t punish babies and children for their parents’ mistakes,” Clinton said in his weekly radio address.

He added: “Before I’ll sign it into law, it’s got to have a stronger worker requirement.” Following the schools meeting, Clinton golfed at Hillcrest Country Club with Mayor Richard Riordan; Stuart Boxer, the husband of California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Amy Alcott, a former professional golfer.

Saturday night was dedicated to fund raising among the Hollywood elite. Producer-director Steven Spielberg and his wife, actress Kate Capshaw, hosted the President and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at their Pacific Palisades estate.

Among the attendees at the $50,000-a-couple dinner were Barbra Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg, Rob Reiner and Spielberg’s new movie-studio partners, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Entertainment was provided by comic Robin Williams and singer k.d. lang.

The event was expected to net more than $2 million. Fund-raising events in Dallas and Sacramento on Friday yielded another $1 million.

This morning, Clinton is to attend a Palm Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Vibiana in Downtown Los Angeles. He then speaks to a Jewish Federation luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel before returning to Washington tonight.

In his Sacramento remarks, Clinton spent more than an hour chronicling the achievements of his Administration and comparing them to the goals of the Republican congressional majority and its “contract with America.”

Democrats might ask, Clinton said, if his Administration is doing so well, “how come we lost the 1994 elections?”

“One reason,” he said, “is we spent too much time working and too little time talking about it. And they’ve been talking while we’ve been working.”

But this trip appeared to signal a sharpening of White House tactics as its reelection campaign gears up: to more pointedly attack the GOP programs and to more vigorously promote the Administration’s achievements.

As Clinton noted, he was the first Democratic presidential nominee to carry California since Lyndon B. Johnson won a full term in 1964. The Democrats’ losses were not always just the Republicans’ fault.

While Johnson prepared to seek another term in 1968, the anti-war movement erupted within the California Democratic Party and grew into the formal opposition that ultimately led Johnson to his decision to withdraw from the campaign.

State Democrats also were in the forefront of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s effort to deny a second term to Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Carter lost the California primary to the Massachusetts lawmaker by 45% to 38%. Running against Ronald Reagan in November, Carter got only 36% of the state’s vote.

Clinton won the 1992 California primary, but only by 47% to 40% over former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. Later, during the general election, the independent candidacy of Ross Perot presumably worked to keep Republican President George Bush’s vote to 33%, the lowest for any presidential candidate since 1932.

Another reason Clinton was able to win California in 1992, said veteran California pollster Mervin Field, was Bush’s neglect of California and failure to recognize that his reelection campaign was in deep trouble in a state with 54 electoral votes.

At this point, there is no indication that Clinton will face any substantial opposition to his renomination at the 1996 Democratic National Convention.

Still, Clinton has considerable work to do in order to carry California in 1996, which most experts agree he must do if he is to win reelection, Field said.

“But Clinton and his aides know he’s in trouble, and being fully aware of the trouble may turn out to be a blessing,” Field said. “In 1991, Bush was in trouble and he and his staff were not aware of the trouble they were in. They were still basking in the afterglow of the Gulf War.”

Californians are quick to punish Presidents who they think are neglecting the state, political experts have noted. But Clinton has given California special attention from the day he took office. His trip this weekend was his 19th to the state as President, state party Chairman Bill Press said Saturday.

In a radio interview from Air Force One en route to Los Angeles, Clinton said he is paying special attention to California partly because of the severity of the recession in the state and the impact of military base closures.

But he added: “I’m not doing this simply for the people of California. Our country cannot do well unless California does well.”

Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this story.