Will Wedge Issues Save the GOP From Disaster in Down-Ballot Defeat?

When early California polls pointed to a possible Bill Clinton blowout, state Republicans got nervous. They worried that Bob Dole, as George Bush did in 1992, would cede the state’s 54 electoral votes to the president. Not only did Clinton win the state four years ago, the Democrats also swept the U.S. Senate races and delayed the impact of a GOP-friendly reapportionment. Dole’s latest “new strategy” aims to avoid this history. He is, after all, the consummate legislator, loyal to the institution that shaped him, Congress, and the party that gave him power.

Democrats are similarly interested in Clinton’s potential to develop coattails, especially in light of a recent state poll that indicates voters are more inclined to favor a congressional candidate who supports the president than one who doesn’t. Clinton’s post-debate stumping and fund-raising for various legislative and congressional candidates were geared to realize this potential.

But do the habits of California voters justify talk of coattails, whether they be presidential or otherwise?

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson trounced Sen. Barry Goldwater (59.1% to 40.8%), but Republican George Murphy defeated Democrat Pierre Salinger in the Senate race, and Proposition 14, which repealed the Rumford Fair Housing Act, passed overwhelmingly. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan whomped Walter Mondale (58% to 41%). But Mondale’s quixotic decision to contest Reagan in his home state paid dividends. Republicans gained only one state Senate seat and picked off but one Democratic congressional incumbent, and Assembly Democrats staved off an aggressive challenge.

Well, if presidential candidates lack coattails, can they benefit from somebody’s else’s?

Assembly GOP Speaker Curt Pringle is crusading to preserve his party’s slim control of the Assembly, unleashing all the money and organizational clout that traditionally accrues to the majority party to accomplish this goal. Senate GOP Minority Leader Rob Hurtt has similar ambitions, eyeing a Republican majority in his chamber for reapportionment in 2000. It’s not impossible that Dole, the GOP presidential candidate, could reap some benefits from these down-ballot races.

Dole’s renewed focus on wedge issues is certainly calculated to not only boost his vote tally in the state but also to give Republican candidates for legislative and congressional posts a better shot at winning. He and California Republicans are betting that recharging issues like affirmative action and immigration will bring out the Republican faithful. Toward that end, Dole, in speeches and during the debate, drew voter attention to Clinton’s failure to implement Proposition 187, the anti-immigration measure, and to his support for the California Civil Rights Initiative, which would dismantle state affirmative-action programs.

But Dole’s may be a risky bet. Polls show that CCRI does move white male voters to the Republican column. Women and minorities, however, are a different story. Data from the Field poll indicate that opposition to CCRI may be the stronger reason to go to the polls. San Francisco Bay residents, urban dwellers, Democrats, African Americans and women are so motivated, according to the poll. A GOP emphasis on this wedge issue could backfire.

The impact of Proposition 187, clearly felt during the 1994 statewide elections, hasn’t ended, and Dole is counting on it to cut into Clinton’s lead. But like the affirmative-action issue, it has a downside. A recent study by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute estimates that Latinos could account for about 10% of the California vote next month, a 26% increase over their participation in the ’92 presidential election. The potentially bad news for Dole is that most of them are Democrats. Harry Pachon, the institute’s president, says that “Latinos used to be up for grabs, [but] you’re now looking at a Democratic constituency.” This “conversion” to the Democratic column is directly traceable to Latinos’ perceptions that the GOP’s welfare and immigration reforms bash immigrants. If Latino voting continues to increase and Democrats continue to be the beneficiaries, Republican control of the Assembly and the GOP congressional majority are clearly at risk.

To recapture control of the Assembly, Democrats must retake districts lost two years ago. One of them is the 28th Assembly District, which is priority No 1 for the Assembly’s Latino caucus. Some analysts say that the outcome of this race will determine who controls the lower house. The contest pits Lily Cervantes against first-term GOP incumbent Peter Fruscetta, in a district where Democratic registration surpasses Republican by 18 percentage points and Latinos make up about 23% of the registered voters.

Latinos are well-positioned in key congressional races as well. In 1994, Republican Brian Bilbray narrowly wrested San Diego’s 49th Congressional District away from Democratic freshman Lynn Schenk. This year, Democrats see Bilbray as vulnerable to challenger Peter Navarro because of Clinton’s coattails, the impact of liberal-leaning, independent voters and Bilbray’s stands on Medicare and the environment.

In 1968, Democratic Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh, numbed by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, sat out the presidential election. So did California Democrats who were cool to Hubert H. Humphrey’s presidential candidacy and were embittered by their party’s policy on the Vietnam war. Humphrey lost the state; the Democrats lost the Legislature. Two years later, Unruh geared up to challenge Gov. Ronald Reagan. Democratic get-out-the-vote operations cut Reagan’s plurality in half, helped John Tunney defeat incumbent GOP Sen. Murphy and returned the Legislature to Democratic control.

The Democrats, said Unruh, had “cut Ronald Reagan’s coattails off at the lapels.” By sharpening his electoral scissors, Dole could do the same to Bill Clinton.