‘California Day’ Aims to Increase State’s Influence in Washington

Watch out, Texas. Back off, Florida. California, the distracted giant, may be starting to focus.

That’s the message that emerged from a congregation of California officials who gathered Tuesday in Washington and ran the gamut of officeholders--small-town mayors, county supervisors, state legislators, Gov. Pete Wilson and the state’s huge, but often fractious, congressional delegation.

In what organizers called “California Day,” the scores of local, state and federal officials checked their party affiliations at the door for a daylong Capitol Hill strategy session aimed at increasing the state’s clout in the nation’s capital.

On one point, they were in perfect agreement: For too long, California has lost out to its more cohesive rivals when it comes to presenting a united front on federal issues.

“Some of the other states have cleaned our clock because partisan politics stops at their state borders,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who canceled Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting so all five members could attend the session. “We have to identify California issues and work together to pursue them. This is long overdue.”

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) stopped by, noting that he was in the middle of talks on the federal budget but did not dare strike this meeting from his schedule. Although he announced no new initiatives for California, he looked around at the roomful of lawmakers and assured them: “You’re never very far from our thoughts.”

Merely rounding up so many Californians in one room made the day a success for meeting organizers. But they also offered some hard evidence of newfound state solidarity, revealing that 42 of the state’s 52 House members recently got together for what Reps. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) called the delegation’s largest meeting in decades. The topic was electric utility deregulation, and the discussion led to the entire delegation’s signing a letter seeking to ensure that federal law did not overturn California’s own deregulation plan.

The joint letter, a rare occurrence, was just the beginning. Two more missives will go out soon to Gingrich and President Clinton offering official state positions on proposed changes to the formula for distributing Medicaid--called Medi-Cal in California--money and the way the federal government handles the costs of illegal immigration.

Most of the state’s lawmakers have signed those letters, which oppose a Medicaid funding scheme that the Californians say would shortchange the state and which seeks federal reimbursement for providing emergency medical care to illegal immigrants.

“We are the largest delegation, and if we channel those 52 votes in the right direction, we can be a tremendous force,” said Roybal-Allard, who with Lewis organized Tuesday’s session.

For all the harmony, however, some lawmakers acknowledged that this political equivalent of a group hug has its limits.

Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) said it is no one’s goal to have Californians “march together in lock-step,” ignoring the sometimes divisive issues that crop up.

“We have not only tremendous geographic diversity, but we have philosophical diversity,” Dreier noted.