For Women on Ballot, Magic Moment Is Past

In her hard-fought and ultimately unsuccessful race for governor in 1990, Dianne Feinstein was fond of pointedly describing the contest as one between the “suits” and the “skirt.” At nearly every appearance, the Democratic candidate issued a challenge to history, daring voters to elect the first woman governor of California. And women, even some Republican women, seemed captivated.

Eight years later, Jane Harman has tried to recapture the magic. With blunt gender references, she derides “macho” leadership. At her formal announcement in March, the Torrance congresswoman surrounded herself with prominent women; since then she has spoken openly and often about her role as a mother.

Yet the woman now reaching for history’s mantle, the proud recipient of Feinstein’s endorsement and her campaign team, has found 1990 a hard act to follow. And she is not alone.

Nationally, analysts say, women running for office this year are finding that the successes of the past have cut into the efforts of the present. Women are expected to increase their presence marginally, but not dramatically, in 1998.

The halcyon days of the early 1990s, when women were sweeping to victory nearly everywhere, are most decidedly over. Analysts across the country are hard-pressed to cite any race in which gender is proving the asset it was in 1990 or 1992, the biggest electoral year for women. In California, only Harman among the major women candidates is even bothering to overtly play the gender card.

“There’s a different kind of acceptance for women,” said Ellen Malcolm, founder of Emily’s List, the fund-raising organization that helped propel many women into office in recent years. “There isn’t the novelty there used to be.”

Strangely, the single beneficiary of gender in California’s non-gubernatorial races appears to be Republican Assembly member and state treasurer candidate Jan Goldsmith of Poway, who is running well among GOP women. There’s only one catch: Goldsmith is a man, though his advertisements make that difficult to discern.

Going into Tuesday’s election as an underdog, Harman is struggling hard to muster backing even among Democratic women, the very group that showered support on Feinstein and the 1994 Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Kathleen Brown.

Harman said she believes women voters will swing in her direction in the final days before the election because polls show women tend to decide later than men. Yet as a recipient of the pro-women sentiment in 1992, when she was first elected to Congress, she concedes that womanhood was a bigger asset then.

She and others contend that a “maturing” of the women’s movement has left women more inclined to look at the entire political field, not just at female candidates.

“The set of concerns that generated the 1992 elections, the year of the woman, doesn’t exist anymore,” Harman said in a recent interview.

No Galvanizing Issue Exists

The environment is not necessarily anti-woman, according to analysts. Indeed, in one of the most-watched recent primaries, former Arkansas Rep. Blanche Lambert Lincoln won a place in a U.S. Senate runoff, despite criticism of her decision to run while her children were young.

In special elections earlier this year, both Democrat Lois Capps and Republican Mary Bono won their late husbands’ congressional seats over male candidates--in Bono’s case also despite criticism that she was abandoning her children to run.

Women are also running strongly in upcoming races. For example, California’s Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, another of the 1992 gender beneficiaries, remains the front-runner for reelection in November.

In many ways, the environment for women has changed not because of what happened but because of what did not. In 1990, candidacies of women such as Feinstein and Texas Gov. Ann Richards were nourished by a 1989 Supreme Court decision limiting abortion rights. Democratic women, in particular, felt threatened, and female candidates took advantage of the sentiment.

Two years later, in 1991, came the firestorm over Anita Faye Hill’s assertion that she had been harassed by then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas--and her subsequent grilling by the all-white-male Senate Judiciary Committee.

“There was a collective click around the country: They don’t get it and there are no women there,” said Debbie Walsh, acting director of the Center for the American Woman and Politics at New Jersey’s Rutgers University.

Women swept into Congress and state offices, many using Hill’s experience as fuel. But that, at least for Harman, has been part of the problem: It is far more difficult to stand out when you are part of a rising tide and not a symbolic, relatively isolated figure like Feinstein was in 1990.

The numbers tell the story.

In a Los Angeles Times poll taken in late May 1990, Feinstein commanded 41% of the Democratic women considered likely to vote. By election day, she had boosted her standing to 55% of Democratic women. Similarly, in late May 1994, Kathleen Brown held 46% of the votes of Democratic women who were likely to vote, a percentage that jumped to 51% by election day.

Harman’s support this year is much thinner. In a Los Angeles Times poll released last week, she won 22% of registered Democratic women, much lower than Feinstein’s percentage. Among likely Democratic women voters, she drew 34%, again lower than Brown. Ten percent of likely Democratic women voters said they were siding with Republican Dan Lungren--an option open to them this year because of the new blanket primary system.

Additionally, Feinstein and Brown led their male competitors among women voters, both in the May polls and on election day. Harman lags far behind her fellow Democrat, Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who in May led her 32% to 22% among registered Democratic women, and 38% to 34% among likely Democratic women voters.

“She has some tremendous advantages; she has the personal resources that most candidates don’t have,” said Walsh of Harman, who along with her multimillionaire husband has financed much of her campaign. “But she doesn’t have the kind of name recognition and voter familiarity that Boxer had, that Feinstein had or even Kathleen Brown, who had the whole family legacy.”

Some fault Harman’s campaign for exacerbating her difficulties. She entered the contest for governor about four months before election day, whereas candidates normally spend years preparing for the race. And she gained a reputation for vagueness in her campaign’s early days. Charles Cook, who publishes a national political newsletter from Washington, said that strategically Harman erred by not demonstrating that she was “heavier,” issue-wise, than her male counterparts.

“If I were to say what Jane Harman’s biggest mistake was, that was one of them--to not come loaded for bear with details,” he said.

Instead, Harman has played heavily on her gender. In a May 13 debate at which she shared the dais with three men, she opened and closed her remarks with shots at “macho” politicians.

The next day, she denied that her terminology was loaded.

“There are other ways to describe it--stubborn, egotistical,” she said. “This term fit the moment, and I don’t regret using it.”

Few Emphasize Their Gender in Campaigns

None of the other California candidates for whom gender is part of the equation is playing it quite so bluntly. Former U.S. Rep. Lynn Schenk of San Diego, who is running for the Democratic nomination for attorney general, is lambasting opponent Bill Lockyer, but does not emphasize her gender. Part of the reason is probably a lingering concern about whether voters will endorse a woman as the state’s top crime fighter.

Goldsmith, the male treasurer candidate who may be benefiting from voter confusion over his name, uses no gender pronouns in his television advertising; the only indication that he is male is a postage-stamp-size picture that flashes on the screen at the end of his ads.

His campaign manager, Mark Roepke, pointed out that Goldsmith’s picture is printed in the official state voter guide, and his gender has been obvious to editorial boards and groups that have endorsed him. He attributed Goldsmith’s 19%-7% margin over fellow Republican Assemblyman Curt Pringle in a recent Times poll to voter resistance to Pringle’s conservatism. Goldsmith led 32% to 8% among registered Republican women.

“I really don’t know,” Roepke said, when asked if voters think Goldsmith is a woman. “Obviously, we are right on a lot of issues that California women take a look at.”

Among Republican women, overt gender appeals have always been tricky; the party has, after all, fought affirmative action. Noel Irwin Hentschel, a Los Angeles businesswoman running for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor, says that she believes voters are more inclined this year to judge candidates irrespective of gender.

“There are certainly going to be exceptions,” she added with a laugh. “I want every vote. So if being a woman happens to be an asset, I’ll take it.”

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* HOME STRETCH

Candidates work hard on last Sunday before the election. A3

* GEORGE SKELTON

Rep. Jane Harman has failed to find the gender gap. A3