Democratic State Convention Vows Unity, Victory in November

Attempting to rebound from their worst election drubbing in decades, California Democrats gathered in Los Angeles on Friday for an election year state convention designed to energize party workers behind President Clinton’s reelection campaign.

On the same day, chosen to coincide with income tax time, California Republicans began airing their first anti-Clinton television ad.

By any measure, California’s 54 electoral votes are crucial to Clinton’s prospects in the fall against the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Kansas Sen. Bob Dole. Democratic strategists believe that Clinton must carry California to collect the 270 electoral votes needed to win in November.

Going into the annual meeting of the California Democratic Party, Acting Chairman Art Torres predicted victory on Nov. 5.

“We’re very excited,” said Torres, a former state legislator from Los Angeles who took over party leadership when former Chairman Bill Press resigned in February to take a broadcasting job in Washington.

Torres was expected to be formally elected today to the chairmanship for the balance of Press’ term ending next year.

Torres’ confidence appears to be bolstered by state opinion polls that have given Clinton leads over Dole of up to 20 points this spring. However, that margin is expected to narrow considerably after Dole is officially nominated at the Republican National Convention in San Diego in August and the campaign really begins.

The California Republican Party took an early shot at Clinton this weekend by running a television ad in selected congressional districts attacking the president for vetoing GOP-sponsored tax cut legislation.

The ad, timed for Monday’s deadline for filing income tax returns, features a husband and wife deploring the size of their tax bill.

“Anything we didn’t deduct?” she asks.

“What about the $1,000 tax credit for the two kids?” he asks.

“Clinton vetoed that,” the wife responds. “Between the two of us, what I make goes just to support the government.”

State Republican Chairman John Herrington said in a statement, “Bill Clinton campaigned in 1992 on a middle-class tax cut. He broke that promise in 1993, 1994, a few times in 1995 and several times again in 1996.”

California Democrats have aired television commercials from time to time this spring extolling the president’s record since his election in 1992, when the Democratic ticket carried California for the first time in 28 years.

The Democrats’ election feast of 1992, which included two U.S. senators, turned to virtual famine in 1994 when the GOP scored a sweeping victory in the state elections.

“The party got a real reality check in 1994,” said Torres.

Previous Democratic conventions have often been bloody battlegrounds as factions battled over divisive issues such as the Vietnam War and the ideological purity of party positions on a variety of liberal issues.

But nothing forges party unity like defeat, such as in 1994, when Republicans won the governorship and most other statewide offices, won a numerical majority in the state Assembly for the first time in 25 years and came close to upsetting Democrats’ control of the state Senate.

This weekend’s meeting is designed to put a happy face on the Democratic Party in California. “This is about Clinton’s success,” said Bob Mulholland, state party campaign advisor.

Reminded that control of the state Legislature and the 52-member California delegation to the U.S. House are also at stake this year, Mulholland said, “If Clinton’s boat rises, all boats rise.”

Thus, the 1,500 or so official delegates are expected to give routine approval to a state party platform that essentially echoes the Clinton-Gore agenda.

Guests and other political functionaries at the meeting will swell total attendance to an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 for the three-day convention at the Westin Bonaventure hotel, Mulholland said.