Democrats Bask in Their Triumphs, Look to 2000

Swaggering and a bit swell-headed, state Democratic activists gathered on a radiant Saturday to celebrate recent triumphs and a hopeful future, their mood undimmed by the absence of a president detained by war.

Hearing from a Democratic governor for the first time in more than 16 years, the spirits of roughly 2,000 state convention delegates matched the lustrous day outside, despite warnings that their political good times may not last.

“It’s a short-term lease,” Gov. Gray Davis said of Democrats’ dual hold on the governorship and Legislature. “And it is subject to revocation if we do not perform responsibly.”

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown cautioned: “If we fall asleep in the year 2000, on the thought that 1998 was a high-water mark, then we are doomed to the experience we had in [the GOP landslide of] 1994.”

Those admonitions failed, however, to deflate the near-giddy atmosphere that pervaded the first state party gathering since Democrats’ huge triumph in November. The hard-core roared at jabs against Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the early GOP presidential front-runner, and fairly dared any Republican to take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

With President Clinton a last-minute scrub because of the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia, Tipper Gore came bearing the administration banner, touting the accomplishments of the president and, not incidentally, “my husband”--the vice president and White House hopeful, Al Gore.

The only discord was sounded over Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration initiative. A federal court judge has struck down key portions of the initiative, and Davis must decide whether to appeal that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) and other Latino activists pressed Davis to abandon the appeal, despite the governor’s repeatedly stated desire to respect the will of the voters.

“Because it was so divisive and polarizing . . . what we should say is that we’re not going to spend one penny of government money to appeal,” said Villaraigosa, who warned of “a great deal of antipathy within the Latino community” if Davis proceeds.

Such pressure group politicking, however, was more typical of conventions past than Saturday’s mostly harmonious gathering, which reflected the profound change that has shaped the Democratic Party in the 1990s under Clinton’s more centrist direction.

Eight years ago, peace activists hissed from the convention floor when Feinstein, then a candidate for the Senate, lauded President George Bush’s handling of the Persian Gulf War. On Saturday, delegates respectfully applauded each mention of the U.S.-led military action in the Balkans, and many stood in ovation when Davis offered his prayers.

More broadly, the governor used his first major political speech to signal his intent to hew closely to a middle path. Speaking of God, accountability and a “love of flag and country,” he delivered a keynote address that might have played well at a gathering of moderate Republicans--and drew mostly tepid applause from the Democratic delegates at hand.

“My friends, our fellow citizens are sick and tired of extremism in the defense of ideology,” Davis said. “They want us to stand at once for principle and practicality. That is what it means to be a Democrat at the dawn of the 21st century.”

Even so, there was no absence of partisan fist-shaking.

One speaker after another lambasted the GOP presidential candidates and “those crazy Republicans in Congress,” with particular venom aimed at the House members who prosecuted Clinton’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

“They say an elephant never forgets, and this time we won’t forget,” Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, fresh off a surprisingly strong reelection victory, told cheering delegates. Addressing Republican Rep. James E. Rogan, one of the House managers and a potential Feinstein foe in next year’s Senate race, Boxer taunted, “Go for it. It’s your quickest way to a quiet [retirement] in Pasadena.”

For her part, Feinstein delivered a policy-oriented address that focused on education, gun control and the monumental growth projected for California over the next 25 years. “When there aren’t enough jobs, when there isn’t enough transportation, when schools are too crowded, people look around for who to blame and often it’s the newcomer,” the incumbent Democrat said.