GOP Hope: a Push From Bush in ’04

SACRAMENTO —  The political divide in America runs right through California like an earthquake fault. Coastal California is now perhaps the most Democratic geography in the nation. The Republican Party has largely ceased to exist in most of Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area. But from San Bernardino County eastward, it is hard to find any place Democrats did well in the 2002 election -- until you get to Chicago.

Gov. Gray Davis and the Democrats carried every state office for the first time since 1882, but they carried few counties not touching the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately for Republicans, the vast majority of Californians live in counties that border the ocean. So overwhelming is the Democratic edge in coastal California, that one has to ask: Is California still a two-party state?

That question will be answered in 2004. If Republicans cannot reverse the tide of the last four election cycles, it is hard to see them surviving at all. And it is hard to imagine a successful Republican push without the Bush White House doing what it did in so many states this cycle: finding and funding the right candidates.

Will the president’s team make California a high-profile state in his reelection? Practical considerations argue against a special strategy for California. If President Bush wins a 49-state landslide like presidents Nixon and Reagan in their reelections, California will go with the tide.

But if Bush must struggle to put together an electoral college majority, he will certainly focus first on those states he narrowly lost in 2000. A shift of just 17,000 votes in Oregon, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Iowa combined would have moved those states -- and their 29 electoral votes -- to the Bush column.

The president needed to overcome a deficit of fewer than 200,000 votes to pick up Washington and Minnesota and their 21 electoral votes. So a shift of 217,000 votes would have given him an additional 50 electoral votes. He would have to overcome a deficit of 1.3 million votes to win California’s 54 electoral votes. Bush will do just fine in inland California, as he did in inland Oregon and Washington. But the eastern portions of our neighboring coastal states are sufficient to offset the coastal Democratic strength in Portland and Seattle; they are not in California.

Coastal California is about the only region west of the Mississippi River where the wealthy suburbs favor the Democrats. This is because America also divides culturally along California’s San Andreas Fault. Upper-income coastal Californians favor abortion rights and gun control and oppose offshore drilling more than wealthy suburbanites in cities like Sacramento and San Bernardino.

The architects of the modern Republican Party have combined social conservatism, which appeals to lower- and middle-income white voters, with economic conservatism, which appeals to white-collar and upper-income voters. The most salient failure of the Democratic Party this election cycle was with white voters of all economic levels: The bubbas and the bankers voted Republican.

Except in California. Here again, we are the great exception. The last dozen years strongly suggest no one will win at the top of the ticket in California who opposes abortion rights and the assault weapons ban and favors offshore oil drilling. These are not issues where Bush is on the California side. Yet, these also are not issues the administration needs to stress. There is no imperative to force oil drilling off the California coast. He gave his brother in Florida a pass; he can do the same here. Democrats are loath to raise the gun-control issue that cost them dearly in rural states in 2000. And abortion will be fought in the courts.

What’s more, Bush has proved a genius at disarming his critics; he is no fire-breathing ideologue, nor is he the kind of Republican who turned off California voters in the past. And none of the prospective Democratic candidates has a base with California voters. There is no guarantee the next Democrat will have the feel for California that former President Clinton had, and this state generally turns down preachy New England moralists (remember Gov. Michael Dukakis), which could prove a problem for either Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut or Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Two tests will show the seriousness of the Bush White House toward California. First is an appeal to California’s Latino voters, who are with Bush on many cultural and social issues, if not economic ones. The White House’s fine-tuned political antennae will not have missed the fact that the Latino turnout was one-third less in 2002, some 400,000 fewer voters, than in the 1998 governor’s race. Many Latino Democrats stayed home in 2002. Republican Bill Simon, who ran probably the worst campaign ever for governor, still got a quarter of the Latino vote, a Los Angeles Times Poll found. If a bad campaign did that well, how much better might a good campaign do?

Although liberal Latino activists will argue the point, there is a growing Latino vote up for grabs in California, especially with the rapid suburbanization of the Latino electorate and the growth of Latino small-business owners who have less reason to feel comfortable with liberal Democratic orthodoxy.

The second test will be the Barbara Boxer Senate seat that is up in 2004. While Republicans have made much noise about going after the supposedly vulnerable senator, the fact is a serious challenge to Boxer comes with a $30-million price tag, and state Republicans are so broke they can barely rub two nickels together. Just a little funding might have given them a statewide win or two in 2002, but the money was never there.

The White House came up with a brilliant strategy for Senate races in 2002: picking the strongest candidate based on the demographics of the state and then clearing the Republican field for that candidate. That’s how Norm Coleman in Minnesota and Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina ended up as the nominees and eventual winners. That’s necessary for California. If the White House does not pick the candidate and clear the field, the Republicans’ electorate in a closed GOP primary will nominate a garden-variety right-winger who cannot raise money and who cannot win, as they proved for governor in 2002.

The new great hope for the Republican future seems to be actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, now mulling a race for governor in 2006. But Californians like governors with political experience: Every governor but one in the last 60 years already held statewide office. The exception, Ronald Reagan, had years of experience in the political arena, and faced an unpopular governor seeking a third term. Whatever else can be said about Davis’ popularity, he won’t be running for a third term.

Schwarzenegger might be a more attractive Senate candidate against Boxer, as he fits coastal California on social issues. Californians like to experiment with their senators; another actor, George Murphy, and folk hero S.I. Hayakawa won Senate seats their first time out, as did Boxer, an obscure congresswoman before her “Year of the Woman” win in 1992.

Will the White House pick and fund Schwarzenegger or someone like him for 2004? The answer boils down to a simple question: Does the White House believe America ends at the San Bernardino-Los Angeles County line, or will it test the president’s popularity all the way to the Pacific’s lapping waves?