For Democrats, a Party Waiting to Happen

California Democrats haven’t had it this good in years, maybe 32 years, clear back to the LBJ landslide of 1964. It makes you wonder how they’re going to screw it up.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” notes veteran Democratic consultant Joe Cerrell. “But it would be a real work of art to mess up that badly and I don’t expect it to happen.”

The party is a fight waiting to happen, but it’s a fight for governor in 1998. Right now the party that loves to brawl is unified like few can remember.

President Clinton is unchallenged for renomination and one speaker after another gushed all over him at the state Democratic convention in Los Angeles this past weekend. He leads Sen. Bob Dole in California by 21 points, according to a recent Times poll. His job approval is a lofty 57%.

“It amazes me how much more popular Clinton is here than anywhere else,” says consultant Bill Carrick, who just signed on as a California Clinton strategist. “We do focus groups and people make jokes about the president. But then they’ll say, ‘You know, he’s really gotten into California.’ And they’ll start grading his trips. One guy will say, ‘Yeah, I thought that trip to McDonnell Douglas was pretty effective.’ And another will talk up the Long Beach shipyard visit. And I’m going ‘Whaaat!?’ ”

Clinton has been to California 23 times, a presidential record for non-vacation visits.

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State party leaders expect Clinton to attract back the 1.4 million California Democrats who sat out the 1994 election after voting in 1992. There’s always a voter drop-off between presidential and off-year elections, but Democrats lost more than three times the number that Republicans did in 1994. Blame the big Republican year nationally and an uninspiring gubernatorial campaign by Democrat Kathleen Brown.

Democrats lost control of the state Assembly, winning 39 seats to the GOP’s 41. But the difference between 39 and 41 was less than 1,000 total votes cast. Now, at least on paper, Democrats are in good position to recapture the Assembly. The Senate seems safely in Democratic hands, with 22 seats to the GOP’s 16.

Helping Democrats is Republican disarray. The Assembly GOP never has quite gotten it together and currently seems distracted by Orange County indictments stemming from special election shenanigans. The Senate Republican leadership is ineffective. And Gov. Pete Wilson, regardless of incessant photo ops and pronouncements, is a nonplayer in the Legislature and unpopular with voters.

Democrats this year also have fashioned what they regard as a strong magnet for low-income, young and union workers--a November ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 an hour to $5 next year and $5.75 in 1998. Sponsors will turn in the necessary voter signatures Wednesday.

“The Republican party is left with its pants down,” state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte), an initiative co-sponsor, told 300 cheering convention delegates at a labor caucus.

Solis says the GOP and business community “were taken off guard” by the initiative. “This is our wedge issue, our issue to get back the people who have left the Democratic threshold. It crosses all ethnic and economic lines because people will say, ‘Yeah, after eight years, these workers deserve a raise.’ ”

Roughly 1.2 million Californians earn less than $5 an hour, Solis says. And that’s a sizable voter pool.

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So how do California Democrats screw it up?

Some things are beyond their control--a foreign embarrassment, an economic downturn, a Clinton campaign decision to take the state for granted. But Democrats here can blow it on their own.

A few strategists privately winced when new state party Chairman Art Torres vowed at a news conference to “do everything I can to defeat” the so-called California civil rights initiative, which would end racial and gender preferences in public hiring, contracting and student admissions. These Democrats disputed Torres’ contention that women could be persuaded to oppose the popular measure.

The smart tactic, they say, would be to publicly oppose the measure, but not to spend much money or verbiage. “It would be money down a deep hole,” asserts one veteran strategist. “And we don’t want this election to become a referendum on affirmative action. That’s what Republicans want.”

Also, with Willie Brown gone, Assembly Democrats have splintered into competing factions jockeying for the next speakership. Meanwhile, their campaign fund-raising has suffered.

To not screw up, Democrats need to keep focused on November--and on their salable issues. These are jobs, wages, the economy, education, the environment, health care, abortion rights--not affirmative action or immigration.