GOP Beaten at Own Game in State’s Top 2 Contests

In a surge that confirms a broad political realignment in California, Democrats were sweeping to victory Tuesday in the two major contests by redefining issues traditionally owned by Republicans and by peeling off a substantial chunk of the voters who have fueled past GOP success here.

A Times survey of voters leaving polling places showed that governor-elect Gray Davis’ resounding victory over Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren was dictated in part by overwhelming voter confidence that the Democrat was best able to handle the state’s foundering educational system. Overall, voters ranked education as their most important issue Tuesday.

But the lieutenant governor also beat Lungren on the issue of crime by turning that traditionally Republican issue into a referendum on the prevalence of assault weapons. And voters split over who would do the best job on taxes--in effect, meaning that Davis turned back another important issue always controlled by the Republican candidate.

Davis was not alone in his success at charging across ground typically fertile for Republicans. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who won her second term after being behind for much of the campaign to Republican nominee Matt Fong, also triumphed among voters concerned about education and crime, the latter largely on the strength of television advertising that slammed Fong’s more permissive position on measures to ban assault weapons.

Democrats were strongly aided by the absence of a defining, Republican-led issue on the ballot, the role that illegal immigration served in Republican Pete Wilson’s reelection in 1994. But more important were the Democrats’ aggressive moves to control, or at least blunt the impact of, the traditionally Republican issues.

Moreover, both Democrats made strong inroads among the moderate and independent voters who dictate success or failure in California elections.

Davis pulled about two-thirds of self-defined moderates and registered independents, more than a third of moderate Republicans and nearly 3 in 10 conservatives. Boxer succeeded among two-thirds of moderates, more than half of independents and about 3 in 10 Republican moderates.

A Big Night for Democrats

The exit poll also indicated strong showings by Democrats in other statewide races, with Bill Lockyer leading Republican Dave Stirling in the race for attorney general, and Cruz Bustamante cruising ahead of GOP nominee Tim Leslie for the lieutenant governorship.

According to the poll, the election was not dramatically influenced by the controversy over President Clinton’s affair with a former White House intern and the subsequent decision of the House Judiciary Committee to hold impeachment hearings against him.

Six in 10 voters said the Washington goings-on had no impact on their decision to vote. The percentages of those who said they were casting protest votes against the Republicans, and those who were protesting Clinton’s behavior, roughly canceled each other out.

Overall, it appeared to be a year when the issues simply went to the Democrats.

“The Democrats succeeded in setting the agenda for voters,” said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus. “And the Republicans could not keep their constituents.”

The Times poll interviewed 3,693 voters in 60 key precincts across the state.

On the heels of past victories in California by President Clinton and by Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, both of whom won by emphasizing centrist positions, the results confirmed the worst fears among Republican strategists here that the influential voters who inhabit the ideological middle ground are increasingly disenchanted with Republican candidates.

The two losses left Wilson as the only California Republican to win a gubernatorial or U.S. Senate election--he won two of each--since 1987. Wilson’s successes, dependent as they were on attracting the moderate voters who are now turning to Democrats, largely papered over the party’s weaknesses until now.

Lungren’s loss in particular stood in stark contrast to the success of Republicans in other politically influential states such as Florida and Texas, where Republican brothers Jeb and George W. Bush won convincing victories.

Both Bushes, the sons of the former president, ran campaigns that softened the party’s more rigid edges and made overt appeals to minority voters.

Lungren, in comparison, strongly leaned throughout the campaign on the issue of crime to the exclusion of much else, at least in his television advertising, the chief means by which California voters get to know the candidates. And he defined it in archaic terms, politically speaking, by spending weeks arguing about who was the stronger advocate of the death penalty and three-strikes legislation.

Many Republican strategists sent open signals to the Lungren campaign to broaden its discussion of the issues and to sharpen the distinctions between the candidates on education. They were largely unsuccessful.

“Crime can’t be a stand-alone issue,” said one GOP strategist, predicting defeat weeks ago. “You have to use other issues.”

Lungren also had problems not of his own making among minority voters, who seemed to be exacting revenge for their distaste of Wilson. While Lungren spent far more time than a typical Republican campaigning in minority communities, he earned a far smaller percentage of Latino votes than he had in 1990, when he ran for attorney general, the exit poll showed.

Overall, Davis carried about three-quarters of minority voters. And Davis won among white voters, a dependable Republican base in past elections, according to the exit poll.

Boxer, like Davis, swept across most demographic groups. She defeated Fong among white voters, splitting white men but enjoying a gender gap among women. She also fought Fong to a draw among Asian voters, whom he had counted on to cut into her support.

Boxer, like Davis, won those with all levels of education, from high school to postgraduate and all income groups.

When it came to the issues, however, the exit poll showed clearly how successful Democrats had been at controlling the political discussion this year.

In both the governor and Senate races, education ranked as the top issue to voters, and Democratic leads among those voters were striking. Of the half of the voters in the governor’s race who accented education, 73% sided with Davis and only 25% with Lungren. Of the 38% who gave education the nod in the Senate race, 69% backed Boxer and only 29% backed Fong.

The Democratic bent of that issue was not entirely surprising, given its historic place in the Democratic issues firmament and the dearth of specific education reforms proposed by the Republican candidates in their television ads this year.

More stunning was the finding on crime, as Republicans lost what has been their bread-and-butter issue in past elections. Democratic strategists had based their election calculations on the belief that, with crime levels dropping, voters were likely to define crime in different terms this year.

Both Boxer and Davis, mindful of the success that Feinstein has had with the issue, harshly criticized their opponents for refusing to back efforts to ban assault weapons. And it appeared voters were listening.

Of the 19% who declared crime their most important issue in deciding their vote for governor, 70% went to Davis and 28% to Lungren. In 1994, when he won his second election as governor, Wilson carried the crime issue by a whopping 65%-33%.

In the Senate race, Boxer carried the crime issue 2-1 over Fong. Her campaign had leaped from behind in the last month in part because of a hard-hitting ad that accused Fong of being an extremist on assault weapons.

The tax issue has traditionally favored Republicans as well--Wilson won it 67%-29%--but it proved not to be beneficial to the GOP this year. Davis split with Lungren on the tax issue, a dramatic turn given the amount of time Lungren spent trying to convince voters that Davis was the shadow of his former boss, former Gov. Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., and all the liberal spending that the comparison was meant to suggest.

Inside Voter Strategies

In the Senate race, just as surprisingly, Boxer lost the tax issue to Fong, but only slightly, with a 54%-44% margin. And that after Fong castigated Boxer from one end of the state to the other as a lopsidedly liberal incumbent.

Issues were not the only reason that voters chose the candidates they did, at least in the Senate race. Forty-three percent of Fong’s voters said their vote was influenced by their objections to Boxer’s liberal views--meaning that they weren’t voting for him as much as voting against her.

In contrast, only 19% of Boxer’s voters said they were rejecting Fong because he was too conservative.

The millions of dollars spent by the candidates in pursuit of election had a definitive impact on voters, and predictably, the apparent winners came off better in the electorate’s mind.

Davis, who spent much of the primary campaign trying to attract support within his own party, could bask Tuesday night in the embrace of most of the voters in the state.

Asked their impressions of the candidates, 68% said they felt favorably about Davis, while only 32% felt otherwise. Lungren, as could be expected of a candidate who was losing big, was looked on unfavorably 56%-44%.

As she coursed to victory after a difficult endurance contest, Boxer could revel in her most positive impression ratings ever. Fifty-eight percent of voters said they felt favorably toward her, while 42% disagreed.

And Fong, who enjoyed positive ratings from voters through most of the campaign, saw his standing slip precipitously. By election day, only 50% felt positively about him, and 50% disapproved of him.

Much of the election year was tumultuous because of questions about the impact of the Clinton scandals. But the Times exit poll showed that at the end, the election was driven as much by the force first seen a year ago--the state’s positive economic climate.

Asked whether the state was headed in the right direction or on the wrong track, 70% said things were going in the right direction. While that number was probably skewed by the fact that voters are generally more upscale and economically optimistic, it was the strongest finding the Times poll has recorded since 1991, when it began asking the question.

As well, 39% of voters said that they believed the economy would be better in the next six months, while only 12% said that things would be worse.

Times Poll Associate Director Sharon Pinkerton contributed to this report.