Candidates Shift Into Overdrive

Their senses flooded with last-minute pitches from frenetic candidates, more than 9 million Californians are expected to vote today, thus putting an exclamation mark to a political season jarred by presidential scandal and salved by a generally peaceable electorate.

On the last full day of campaigning, Republican and Democratic candidates barnstormed across California on Monday, each pleading with supporters to show up at the polls.

Seeking to become only the fourth Democrat elected governor this century, front-runner Lt. Gov. Gray Davis closed out his campaign where he began it, in San Francisco, and for the first time cast his candidacy in a larger perspective.

“If you do what the polls say you are going to do, you will have a great victory and we will send a message to America that in California, voters are not looking for rigid ideologues,” said Davis, crowded by more than 60 local and state politicians at the longshoremen’s union hall. “They’re looking for leaders to solve their problems.”

Republican nominee Dan Lungren, traveling to his hometown of Long Beach before a final, late-night stop in Redding, invoked the dangers faced in totalitarian states as he implored supporters to cast their ballots.

“Remember, we don’t have to fight and die,” the attorney general said. “We just have to fight and vote.”

As Monday drew to a close, the final multimillion-dollar barrage of campaign ads was aired, mailboxes were jammed full of last-day mailers and volunteers were jostling for phone lines and doorbells as candidates and political parties sought to drum up the vote.

Even with all that, only 62% of registered voters--and fewer than half of those actually eligible to vote--were expected to show up at their polling places today, according to Secretary of State Bill Jones.

The state’s major party candidates whirled around California by plane Monday, hitting the state’s major geographical areas in “flyarounds” choreographed by tradition.

Davis and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, along with the other members of the Democratic ticket, bounced from Sacramento to Los Angeles to San Francisco, reveling in their preelection leads.

The Republican ticket, led by Lungren and Senate challenger Matt Fong, hopscotched from Sacramento to Fresno to San Diego and finally to Long Beach. The others dropped off before Lungren traveled to Redding.

Lungren got backup appeals from the state’s last two governors, Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian, who joined the ticket at several stops.

The California elections drew national attention, and not just because of the usual curiosity about the state. The governor’s office is hotly desired by both Republicans and Democrats, since the next governor will preside over the redrawing of district lines for future legislators and members of Congress.

The governor also automatically vaults to the top ranks of national political figures, a positioning that the current incumbent, Pete Wilson, may hope to translate into another bid for the presidency in 2000.

As for the Senate race, the stakes there were high as well. Republican hopes for electing a veto-proof majority, while ebbing drastically as the election approached, hinged on beating incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer, among others. And Democrats were throwing millions at the race in hopes of salvaging Boxer’s reelection.

The initiatives on the ballot generated statewide heat, although none rose to the controversial level of past ballot measures, like 1978’s anti-tax Proposition 13 or 1994’s anti-illegal immigration Proposition 187. One measure, Proposition 5, which would give Indian tribes control over gambling on their lands, broke a national record for initiative spending with at least $90 million tallied by election day.

But today, the campaigns boil down to turnout. Republicans estimated that they placed 6 million phone calls, sent 18.5 million pieces of mail and had dispatched 90,400 volunteers to get out their vote. Democrats countered with 8 million phone calls, 7 million mailers, and the additional targeting of occasional Democratic voters, women and Latinos by 5,000 precinct walkers.

The campaign year opened beneficially for incumbents, given the state’s comparatively strong economy, and then it hurtled into the unknown amid the brouhaha over President Clinton’s affair with a former White House intern. As election day neared, however, Democrats appeared to have regained the momentum they had ridden earlier in the year, at least in California.

In preelection polling, only one Republican running for statewide office, Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush, held a substantial lead. Among Democratic activists, fingers were crossed for the biggest Democratic sweep since 1958, when the party won five of the six constitutional offices.

Upbeat Mood Among Democrats

That thinking buoyed the spirits of the Democratic ticket as it coursed through the state Monday. Even on the last day, with the adrenaline running, gubernatorial candidate Davis stuck with the issues that he has pressed unrelentingly for more than a year.

“What kind of governor would I be?” Davis asked rhetorically before 500 fevered partisans in Sacramento. “I would be tight with your tax dollars. I would be passionate about education. I would be committed to the environment. I would be death on violent crime. And I would bring us together as a people.”

Vice President Al Gore, appearing with the candidates in Sacramento, cast off his usually staid persona to throw out a few rhymes.

“We got the word, Nov. 3rd. We got the note, get out the vote. Let’s elect Democrats tomorrow,” Gore chanted.

Catching Gore’s rhyming fever was former Assembly speaker and current candidate for lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante, who provided one of campaign’s more offbeat moments as he touted Davis at a UCLA rally.

“Gray Davis has experience money can’t buy; Dan Lungren’s got a record make a working man cry,” Bustamante chanted, rapper-style, in his baritone.

“Democrats will focus on the things that matter; getting kids to college, makin’ paychecks fatter.”

Boxer, who is seeking her second term, hailed California’s rise from the recession of the early 1990s, crediting President Clinton’s policies with bringing 1.5 million new jobs and 100,000 new businesses into the state in the last six years.

“California is back and the country is back,” Boxer said. “We should be proud to be Democrats.”

Only Gore brought up the sex scandal that Democrats once feared would spell disaster for their party this year. The only thing that unites Republicans, Gore said to clamorous applause in Sacramento, is “their hatred of President Clinton and their fondness for personal attack.”

GOP Partisans Keep Pressure On

On the other side of the political aisle, the Republicans spent their day similarly, bashing their foes and begging their voters to turn out.

Starting with their morning Sacramento rally, Lungren, Fong and their partisans took after their Democratic opponents with last-day flair. Wilson, speaking on behalf of Fong, harked back to his two terms in the U.S. Senate to loft an insult at Boxer.

“I was in the U.S. Senate. I have friends in the U.S. Senate,” he said. “It’s embarrassing as hell for me to have Boxer in the Senate from California.”

Fong tried a little post-holiday rhetoric of his own as he sought to push forth the notion that Boxer is too extreme for the state’s largely moderate voters.

“Barbara, Halloween was over two days ago,” he told a delighted crowd. “Take that mask off! You’re scaring everybody!”

Lungren dominated his remarks at each stop with talk of crime, the issue he used to win two terms as attorney general.

“Gray Davis was surprised that Rose Bird was against the death penalty,” he said in Sacramento, referring to the chief justice appointed to the state Supreme Court in the 1970s by Davis’ then-boss, former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr.

“She did perform the ceremony at his wedding. If he can’t figure out people better than that, he has no right being in a position to put judges on the bench.”

Later, in San Diego, he noted that Davis was uncommitted when Bird ran for election to the court. The election took place a year after Bird performed Davis’ wedding, Lungren said.

“That’s a real profile in courage, the kind of leader you want in Sacramento,” Lungren said.

With all the fighter’s rhetoric, however, there was a clear underdog sensibility to Lungren’s effort Monday. Assemblyman Rico Oller of Cameron Park alluded to it when he told reporters to ignore polls that have Lungren several points behind Davis.

“Don’t you believe those phony-baloney polls,” Oller said, doing an impersonation of President Clinton’s finger-wagging declaration that he never had “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky. “I am going to tell you something, my friends: You cannot believe everything you see on the evening news.”

The candidates were all scheduled to cast ballots early today, and Lungren, campaigning to the end, had rallies planned through the early evening. Across California, polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Times political writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.

The Times’ Web site tonight will have live election returns, audio analyses from political reporters, exit polling results and video of candidates’ speeches: ttp://www.latimes.com/elect98

POLL WATCHERS: Polling place monitors will guard against intimidation. A3

* TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: Candidates await voters’ verdicts in tight races. A16

* RACES AT A GLANCE: A5

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Where to Vote

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. today for voting in the general election.

Your polling place should be printed on the back of the sample ballot mailed out by the county registrar. But if you need help to find your polling place or have other general voting questions, call the Los Angeles County registrar’s information line at (800) 815-2666.

Another way to find your polling place is to ask a neighbor who is a registered voter. Polling places will be marked with flags on election day.