State Democrats Meet Feinstein in Middle

When Dianne Feinstein made her debut seven years ago as a headliner at the state Democratic convention, she offered an object lesson in good politics and bad manners.

As San Francisco mayor, Feinstein had restricted her political orbit almost exclusively to a pocket-sized patch of California between the anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge to the north and the box seats at Candlestick Park to the south. When she launched her 1990 gubernatorial campaign upon leaving office, the joke was that Feinstein needed a Thomas Guide to find her way across the bay to Oakland and reconnaissance photos to pinpoint Los Angeles on a California map.

But if Feinstein had little use for statewide politics, much less state party activists, those feelings were pretty much reciprocated once she decided to run for governor. When Feinstein showed up to address the state Democratic convention in April 1990, it was a perfect chance to reach out and extend a hand of goodwill and fellowship to a group of less-than-friendly strangers.

Instead, Feinstein balled up her fist and busted them square in the chops.

“Yes, I support the death penalty,” Feinstein fairly taunted, drawing a cascade of boos that roiled around her a full 30 seconds, as a film crew captured the scene and her media guru clasped his hands in prayerful gratitude. For all its obvious theatricality, the resulting TV spot dramatically underscored Feinstein’s claims to be a different kind of Democrat--back before that claim was fashionable--and helped her romp past state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp to easily capture the party’s gubernatorial nomination. She then lost a close race to Republican Pete Wilson in the fall.

All that made Feinstein’s reception at this month’s state Democratic convention all the more striking.

Treated like a visiting duchess, attended by reporters who trailed like courtiers, she was besieged by fawning delegates who beseeched her to please, please try another run for governor in 1998. If any rose petals were handy, they might have been strewn in her path.

*

So what happened in the last seven years to transform Feinstein from party pariah to doyenne of the California Democrats? (Or, at least, a heroine to that substantial portion of party activists who view her as their best hope to end 16 years of Republican rule in Sacramento, should she deign to run.)

The answer says as much about changes in the California Democratic Party--and, for that matter, about Democrats nationwide--as it does about Feinstein and her performance since being elected in 1992 to the U.S. Senate.

Success at the polls is a big part of it. After narrowly losing to Wilson in 1990, Feinstein efficiently dispatched his handpicked successor, interim U.S. Sen. John Seymour, two years later. She really proved her political mettle two years after that, withstanding a record-shattering, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink onslaught from megamillionaire Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Montecito). Winning may not be everything in life, but in politics it’s about the only thing that counts.

Once in the Senate, Feinstein overcame ferocious opposition from the National Rifle Association to help pass a ban on assault-type weapons and also pushed through a landmark desert protection bill--the latter something U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, a party hero in his pre-Keating Five days, never managed.

There is, as well, no small element of self-interest in the current Feinstein frenzy. Many fellow Democrats are willing to overlook the senator’s peevish personality, interminable indecision and deviation from party orthodoxy because of the heightened political stakes in 1998.

With the next governor presiding over reapportionment, the once-a-decade redrawing of the state’s political boundaries, the effort to coax Feinstein into the race parallels the Republicans’ recruitment of then-Sen. Wilson back in 1990, when he seemed the strongest candidate the GOP had to replace incumbent Gov. George Deukmejian. Many conservatives had to swallow hard to accept Wilson--and did so out of sheer calculation. (The GOP also managed to clear the field of primary opponents for Wilson, something the Democrats are unlikely to pull off should Feinstein run.)

But perhaps the biggest difference between now and 1990 is how the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has shifted. On the crime issue alone, the party of furloughs, Willie Horton and the ACLU has become the party of community policing, school uniforms and 100,000 new cops on the streets.

*

President Clinton, who, not incidentally, supports the death penalty, is the one most responsible for wrenching the Democrats away from the party’s old ideological moorings. “Clinton proved to a lot of people that you can’t be too far to the left and get elected or have the party too far to the left and have it survive,” said Bill Press, a former state Democratic Party chairman. “Thanks to Clinton, Democrats have become more pragmatic about their differences.”

But if Clinton helped move the party toward the middle, Feinstein was there waiting. “She was very early in the march to the center,” noted Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the Claremont Graduate School. Here again, for any who doubted the wisdom of Feinstein’s course, the proof is in the polling. “Even for individuals in the party who aren’t there in the middle, winning does focus their attention,” Jeffe said.

Times have certainly changed. Back in 1990, Feinstein had tremendous success bludgeoning Van de Kamp with the fact she was the only Democrat running for governor who favored capital punishment. This time, of the five major Democrats eyeing the race--Feinstein; businessman Al Checchi; state Controller Kathleen Connell; Lt. Gov. Gray Davis and ex-White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta--not a single one opposes the death penalty.