Gore Making California His 2000 ‘Fortress’

Brick by brick, trip by trip, one heaping stack of federal dollars after another, Vice President Al Gore is building a political firewall on the Pacific.

California, once an oversized afterthought in presidential primaries, has emerged as a cornerstone of Gore’s 2000 strategy, first to win the Democratic nomination by spring, then capture the White House in the fall.

In dozens of visits--an average of more than one a month in the past year--Gore has courted vital Democratic constituencies with connect-the-dots precision. Labor. Hollywood. Blacks. Environmentalists. Each trip, he sprinkles tens of millions of dollars around the state; last week it was a Sacramento stop to announce $43 million for California crime victims.

The strategy is hardly new. Vice presidents Walter Mondale and George Bush, to name two of Gore’s recent predecessors, followed precisely the same pork-and-circumstance formula to woo supporters and fortify their position in key states. Each went on to claim their respective party nominations, with Bush winning the White House.

What is different this time is the emphasis on California, where Gore hopes he could offset any earlier setbacks, and the intensive ground-level campaigning, more typically done in pocket-size places like Iowa and New Hampshire, that he has applied to this most mega- of mega-states.

“I don’t think you could possibly do any more in terms of retail politicking,” said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick, a Los Angeles-based veteran of presidential campaigns. “It’ll be hard for anyone to catch up.”

Former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, Gore’s sole announced rival for the Democratic nomination, is working to dispel that perception. Last week Bradley paid his third and fourth visits to California since announcing his candidacy in December. Two fund-raisers, one each in the north and south, are coming up.

“As a candidate, as a person, with his background and the issues he cares about, we think he’s a pretty natural fit for California,” said Eric Hauser, a Bradley spokesman, citing in particular the former senator’s involvement in federal water policy and urban renewal issues.

California “is of the utmost importance to us,” Hauser added, “both for its size and its timing, and we intend to put a major focus on it.”

That sort of attention is precisely what state Sen. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and others had in mind when they pushed California’s presidential primary up from June to March 7, 2000. It is far too soon to judge the success of that move. Other than Gore, no candidate of either major party has done much beyond early prospecting.

And California’s “blanket” primary allowing voters to cast a ballot for any candidate, regardless of party, violates national Democratic and Republican Party rules for choosing delegates to their nominating conventions. But party leaders are working with state officials to solve the problem so California voters won’t be sidelined next year.

In the meantime, the vice president’s blandishments have almost single-handedly wiped out California’s historic trade deficit between exported campaign cash and imported candidate dollars.

“You can question the motivation, whether it’s public policy or politics,” said Costa, who worked for years to establish an early California primary. Regardless, the vice president’s focus--not to mention the planeloads of money he brings--are welcome. “We’ll take it,” Costa said with a laugh. “Absolutely.”

Gore’s efforts are, in good part, an extension of President Clinton’s well-known California compulsion. Clinton has visited the state innumerable times since being elected in November 1992. The president has vacationed here, raised funds here, given major policy speeches here and delivered relief from fire, floods, frost and all other manner of natural disaster.

Now, Gore is working to build on that foundation in characteristically deliberative, low-key fashion.

Most crucially, the vice president has cultivated support in California’s political establishment, starting with Gov. Gray Davis, who is all but certain to endorse Gore, sooner rather than later. Art Torres, chairman of the state Democratic Party, is openly supporting the vice president, and last fall Gore collected IOUs by campaigning for all eight Democrats on the statewide ticket, six of them winners.

In repeated visits, Gore stumped for several California congressional members and even appeared on behalf of some Assembly candidates, a rare down-ticket foray for a sitting vice president.

Gore has been so ubiquitous that some insiders are taking his presence for granted. One Sacramento lawmaker recently snubbed Gore’s invitation to an event in his hometown, telling an aide, “The guy’s around so much, it’s not like there won’t be another opportunity.”

At the same time, Gore has reached out to leaders of two of California’s most important emerging political blocs, Latinos and the high-tech community. The vice president has deftly combined small touches--an intimate dinner, a happy-birthday phone call to Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles)--with a series of high-profile initiatives. In his last swing, it was a $400-million satellite-technology plan and a $1.3-billion proposal to restore benefits to legal migrants.

“The mere fact you don’t see Al Gore flying out here and staying at the Malibu beach house of some movie star or jogging on the beach with a studio mogul doesn’t mean that Al Gore is not working the hell out of California,” one prominent Democrat said. “He’s just doing it in a quieter, somewhat different way.”

Indeed, apart from Clinton, the vice president boasts many of his own California ties, some predating the administration. For instance, although Gore has forged a close working relationship with Davis--their staffers talk virtually every day--the vice president actually goes back further with Sharon Davis, the governor’s wife, who supported Gore’s ill-fated 1988 presidential bid.

Similarly, in Hollywood, “a lot of the relationships that are commonly viewed as being with the president in some cases originally began as relationships with then-[Tennessee] Sen. Gore,” said Andy Spahn, head of corporate affairs at DreamWorks SKG and a longtime Democratic activist. “Many of us knew Al Gore before we knew Bill Clinton, and had more of a relationship with Gore.”

Although California support was vital to Clinton’s election victories, the Fortress California strategy is uniquely Gore’s, reflecting an effort to turn to his advantage the speeded-up 2000 timetable and the prohibitive costs of campaigning.

Under the firewall scenario, if the front-running Gore suffers a setback in either of the two leadoff states, Iowa or New Hampshire, he could contain any damage--and effectively wrap up the nomination--by bouncing back and winning New York and, more important, California a week later. The thinking is that any surging rival will lack the time and money to surpass the support Gore has accrued.

Looking past the primaries, the vice president hopes to show such formidable strength in California that any GOP opponent will have to think twice about seriously competing here in the fall of 2000, given the time and money it might drain from the decisive middle Western states. “I don’t think they’ll ever walk away from California again,” said one Gore strategist, citing Bush’s 1992 blunder, which badly hurt GOP candidates throughout the state. “But under the best-case scenario, we could make Republicans face an incredibly uphill battle and require a vast amount of resources to compete.”

Vice President Al Gore seems to be under a lucky star lately, Times political writer Mark Z. Barabak says in an audio reporter’s notebook on The Times’ Web site. Hear his remarks at:

https://www.latimes.com/gore

* GEPHARDT OUT OF RACE: Richard Gephardt will not challenge Gore in 2000; he’ll focus on speaker’s post. A5