THE MEDIA : Hosts Say Talk Radio Tunes In to Voters’ Mood

Between Sig Alerts and ads for Breath Asure, Californians are picking a Republican presidential candidate.

While a handful of state insiders long have been discussing the nomination race among themselves, far more voters are just beginning to shunt aside O.J., school uniforms and other conversational tidbits to discuss Patrick J. Buchanan, Bob Dole and Steve Forbes in their preferred forum: talk radio.

Believers in this upstart medium say its round-the-clock debate is the best barometer of what will likely occur in California’s March 26 primary.

But political oddsmakers take note: The radio rap remains a free-for-all, with boisterous Buchananites and Forbes’ more moderate fans vying for attention with those who long for another choice--and they don’t mean Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.

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“A lot of people are gritting their teeth and hoping someone else will come along,” said Jeff Katz, who hosts a morning drive show on Sacramento station KSTE.

Former San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock, who now hosts the No. 1 talk show in that metropolis, says the pollsters and pundits who saw Dole wrapping up the race immediately should have listened to his callers, who gave clear advance warning that Buchanan and Forbes would defy conventional wisdom with strong showings in the early rounds.

“Republicans are yearning for and voting for competing visions of the future,” Hedgecock said. And his callers, he says, don’t think that Dole offers one.

Ray Appleton, whose three-hour afternoon show beams across the Central Valley from Fresno, gets a similar reading from listeners in such far-flung locales as Bakersfield, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz and Taft.

“Throw the bums out” is his callers’ slogan, he says, and that means backing anyone seen as an outsider to Beltway business as usual.

‘They have two huge favorites, Forbes and Buchanan,” he said. “Dole is nonexistent. . . . “

But it’s early, he adds, and attitudes could change if Dole puts together a string of victories. “Everybody is fickle,” he said.

Michael Harrison, editor of the trade publication Talkers Magazine, says his latest weekly survey suggests that the nation’s 1,200 talk-radio stations are hearing the same clamor as California’s hosts. There is, he says, strong backing for Buchanan, but also a strong backlash against him. And a tentative surge of support for Forbes is evident.

Other than that, he finds two basic types of callers: those who want to reelect President Clinton and think the contentious GOP primary process will help that effort, and those who long to beat Clinton and don’t think any Republican in the running is up to the task.

Indeed, so unsettled are the chattering masses at the moment that even some loyalists of Rush Limbaugh, talk radio’s most influential star, are casting out the ditto in “Dittohead” and rejecting his party line.

On Tuesday, Limbaugh--who refuses to endorse in primaries--said Forbes’ policies most closely match his idea of those that the GOP candidate should propose. But dissident callers, particularly Buchanan backers, are hammering him for his views.

Likewise, KABC’s Larry Elder, a libertarian-leaning Forbes supporter, has sounded like a startled lion tamer, trying to hold back snarling Buchanan backers.

“What Buchanan is proposing is nuts! It’s suicidal!” Elder, a devotee of Reaganomics, shouted on Tuesday.

But Rick from Culver City barked back, “A lot of the things Reagan said, Pat wrote.”

“Buchanan supporters are just burning up the airwaves,” said Jane Chastain, who hosts a nationally syndicated show and a local program on Christian radio station KBRT.

“I’m as surprised as anyone that he has risen to the top here,” she said, after callers from Orange County and San Diego called in to support Buchanan’s social conservatism and to blast Dole for being “right in there with Clinton,” on such matters as sending troops to Bosnia.

Blanquita Cullum, who hosts a talk show syndicated in 21 states, says that CNN and other television networks increasingly call on her to gauge the nation’s political mood.

“Talk radio has changed,” she said. “People are turning to it as an alternative form of news, news without liberal bias.” And because it is a more intimate forum than television, she says, talk radio is less likely to focus on the horse-race aspects of the nominating process.

“Listeners want to know how it’s going to affect their lives, their pocketbooks, their civil liberties--they analyze the candidates more closely than the mainstream media gives them credit for.”

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Of course, not everyone in the business buys the notion that talk radio is a good bellwether of voting patterns.

“I don’t think what you hear on talk radio is representative of America,” said Alan Colmes, a liberal host whose nationally syndicated show is heard in Palm Springs, Santa Rosa and Santa Barbara. “It’s mainly conservatives preaching to the choir. And the most impassioned conservatives are the ones who pick up the phone.”

But Harrison of Talkers Magazine disagrees. “For radio to succeed--talk radio or music radio--it has to be an immediate reflection of grass-roots tastes.”

It is still much too early to call the California primary, Hedgecock says, but his GOP callers do seem uniformly excited about one thing.

They know, he says, that with the primaries turned tumultuous and California’s voting date moved forward, they will likely play a key role for the first time in several elections--which means that until March 26 they will have plenty to talk about.