Candidates Are All Heading Down the Middle of the Road

When a leading state politician this week proposed $1 billion more spending on education and about $500 million more on the environment--using funds from the $4.4-billion budget surplus--Californians could have been forgiven for assuming that the plan came from one of the Democrats running for governor.

But it came from Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, whose proposal for handling the surplus sounded, with its mix of social spending and tax cuts, remarkably similar to ones handed down by Democrats Gray Davis and Jane Harman. The lieutenant governor and the congresswoman, of course, want Wilson’s job.

It was an acute reminder that in California this year, the most popular lane on the political highway runs down the middle of the road.

Gone, at least for now, are most contentious issue splits, with candidates standing across vast chasms easily identifiable by voters. Now, at least much of the time, they try hard to inhabit the same narrow strip they believe they share with the vast majority of Californians.

To wit:

In the 1994 race for governor, Wilson and Democrat Kathleen Brown had starkly different positions on capital punishment--he for it, she against.

This year, all the major candidates for governor support the death penalty. The candidate with the most brazen--if constitutionally dubious--intent to broaden its reach is a Democrat, businessman Al Checchi.

In the last gubernatorial campaign, and in the 1990 contest between Wilson and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the candidates split on two high-profile initiatives. In 1994, Brown opposed a measure to cut state services to illegal immigrants, and Wilson favored it. Four years before, Feinstein opposed a term limits initiative, and Wilson favored it.

This year, all the major candidates have lined up against Proposition 227, the initiative that would essentially outlaw bilingual education and one that seemed to hold the most potential for conflict.

To be sure, there are some disputes. The Democrats oppose Proposition 226, which would sharply cut the power of labor unions to fund political campaigns. Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, the sole major Republican running for governor, supports it. Lungren alone opposes abortion rights. He also favors tax-supported vouchers to allow students to attend the private school of their choice; the Democrats are opposed.

But on other matters, the convergence continues. Saturday, Lungren joined Checchi in opposing another education-related ballot measure, Proposition 223. The so-called 95-5 initiative would require that 95% of all public education dollars be spent in the classroom, capping administrative and other costs at 5%.

Addressing a meeting of about 200 Asian American GOP activists in downtown Los Angeles, Lungren called the 95-5 proposal “a great concept.” But he expressed concern that the one-size-fits-all formula could penalize smaller school districts, particularly those in far-flung rural areas with added costs for transportation and the like.

“It’s a good idea that has been corrupted by the way it was written,” Lungren said of the ballot measure. “We need to be fair to all.”

The two other major candidates for governor, Democrats Harman and Davis, are neutral on Proposition 223--not that the issue has stirred a whole lot of public interest.

The fact is, few issue disputes have reached the radar screen in this long, drawn-out primary season. Political scientist Gary Jacobson of UC San Diego suggests that many of the state’s most contentious issues have been settled by voters, and the rest have been tempered by the state’s booming economy.

“There seems to be a strong public consensus, and no politician wants to be on the wrong side of it,” Jacobson said. “You don’t find Democrats opposing the death penalty or three strikes, and you don’t have Republicans opposing giving money to education. You have a situation where the argument is how we distribute pleasure instead of pain. That makes for a less divisive politics.”

Indeed, voter uncertainty over the state’s then-precarious economic position helped fuel the outrage over illegal immigrants that dominated the 1994 state elections and the 1996 contest over affirmative action as well. With the current financial windfall has come moderation.

“When you have Pete Wilson wanting to use the surplus to buy up old-growth forests, what are the Democrats going to say? ‘Don’t’?” asked Jacobson.

The lack of any broad, defining issue has colored the race for governor, particularly among Democrats. Much of it, therefore, has centered on style: Harman plays heavily on her gender, Davis on his experience and Checchi on his business background.

“I don’t think, to the typical voter, that there are policy differences [among] the three candidates that matter,” said Garry South, who is running Davis’ campaign. “These candidates, ideologically and philosophically, are a blur to voters.”

With little more than two weeks to go before the election, ending that murkiness has taken on a sense of urgency. And it has provoked attacks between candidates, not all of them evident in their wall-to-wall TV ads.

Lately, Checchi has been slamming Davis in his campaign mailers. “No plan, no vision, no leadership,” one snipes.

On the airwaves, Davis continues his drumbeat of commercials, touting a flattering version of his record. Harman is running an anti-HMO advertisement, prompting the Davis campaign to point out that Harman voted in Congress in 1995 for a bill that would have limited state authority over HMOs. Harman’s campaign had no comment.

On the stump, Harman has repeatedly touted her plan for boosting education spending and rebating a portion of the state budget surplus, a proposal that threads very directly down the middle of the road.

Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak contributed to this story.