First Lady Rallies State’s Democrats at L.A. Meeting

“We just love California,” First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton declared Saturday to about 2,500 Democratic Party activists in a setting replete with symbols of the state’s ethnic diversity and the electoral clout of its women.

“You’re going to see a lot of us in the next few months,” she added, looking ahead to President Clinton’s effort to win the state’s critical 54 electoral votes in the November election.

The first lady is likely to be a target of GOP criticism for her activist role in the administration, but opinion polls indicate that she is quite popular in California. Party officials said her presence on the stump could help generate the sort of turnout in the state--particularly among females--that lifted Clinton to victory in California in 1992.

Of the top four state Democratic leaders on stage with her Saturday at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, three were female: U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer and state Controller Kathleen Connell, a potential candidate for governor in 1998.

Women in the crowd stood and applauded when the first lady talked about the president’s determined stand on issues of special importance to them: to protect abortion rights, to retain the ban on assault weapons, to bolster public education and to bring minority groups--including immigrants--into the mainstream of American life.

In an apparent reference to the rollback of affirmative action programs at the University of California, Mrs. Clinton said, “We must make sure that no American who is qualified for higher learning is denied that opportunity because of systemic or historic forms of discrimination.”

State party officials said they will appeal to women in an aggressive campaign attack on a broader anti-affirmative action measure, called the “California civil rights initiative,” that will be on the Nov. 5 election ballot. While some analysts see the initiative as a liability for Democrats--who have been the major supporters of affirmative action--state party Chairman Art Torres declared: “I think it’s going to be a tremendous plus for us.”

Democrats are focusing on Clause C in the proposal, reading: “Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.”

That provision, Torres said, effectively guts a California constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights to women.

“This initiative is an attempt by the right wing of the Republican Party and the Christian Coalition to do away with women’s rights in California,” Torres said.

Many of the delegates in the audience during Mrs. Clinton’s 45-minute speech, essentially a listing of the president’s achievements and his second-term goals, carried placards that declared: “Women Won’t Go Back.”

Below that, in smaller type, were the words: “Defeat Clause C.”

One party expert said a major reason California Democrats fared so poorly in the 1994 election was a sharp drop-off in voting by women from 1992, when Clinton, Feinstein and Boxer were on the ballot. Party consultant Bob Mulholland argued that the Clintons’ popularity and their focus on issues appealing to females will bring Democratic women back to the polls.

In a heavy turnout, 57% of voting Democrats in California are female, Mulholland said. But that figure dropped below 50% in 1994.

The three-day annual meeting of the California Democratic Party, which ends today, is essentially a pep rally designed to energize activists going into the general election campaign on behalf of Clinton.

One piece of party business conducted by the 1,325 officially credentialed delegates Saturday was notable for its rare lack of intraparty strife at such a gathering: Torres was elected chairman without opposition and by acclamation.

The 49-year-old Torres, of Los Angeles, is a former legislator, longtime activist in L.A.’s Latino community and a former aide to the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez. Torres is the first Latino to serve in the top party job and is symbolic of the growing political influence and electoral success of Latinos in California.

Torres was elected to serve the remaining year of the four-year term of Bill Press of Los Angeles, who resigned to take a broadcasting job in Washington.

Another factor in the Democrats’ beating in 1994 was their opposition to Proposition 187, the voter initiative that attempted to cut off state health, welfare and education benefits to illegal immigrants.

But on Saturday, the party made it symbolically clear--in addition to the speech rhetoric--that it is not shying away from support for ethnic and cultural minorities. Before Mrs. Clinton spoke, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans participated in patriotic readings, the music, the invocation and leading of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.