Facing a Year of Choices in State Politics

Facing war and recession, California enters this election year a bundle of contradictions: anxious yet optimistic, eager for stability and yet open to change.

Voters will make dozens of choices, for governor, the Legislature, Congress and seven statewide offices. Yet many of the races will be devoid of true competition, thanks to the political line-drawing of incumbent lawmakers.

Candidates and issue advocates will spend tens of millions of dollars on radio and TV advertising. And yet if recent patterns hold, roughly half of the state’s registered voters will sit the election out.

But if there is one thing that can be said with near certainty, it is that something will happen in 2002 to alter today’s political expectations--and probably something else will happen to scramble them again.

“We’ve already had one unprecedented development in the energy crisis,” said Gale Kaufman, a Democratic strategist in Sacramento. “Then we had Sept. 11, with absolutely no precedent for that. So we’re really heading into territory no one’s ever seen.”

At the top of the ticket, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis is seeking a second four-year term with a rich endowment but considerable doubts about his leadership skills. He may find solace in the facts that no California governor has been denied a second term in 60 years and no incumbent has lost since 1966.

Three Republicans, buoyed by Davis’ sagging poll numbers, are vying in the March 5 primary for the right to face the incumbent in November.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan is the front-runner against businessman Bill Simon Jr. and Secretary of State Bill Jones. But few are ready to declare the Republican race over, given Riordan’s penchant for gaffes and his refusal to cater to the party’s conservative wing.

“The race is Riordan’s to lose,” said Ken Khachigian, a veteran GOP strategist who is sitting out the party fight. “And he could lose it.”

The March primary will also bring yet another change in the way Californians cast their ballots.

Gone is the “blanket primary” of 2000, in which any registered voter could cast a ballot for any party, regardless of affiliation. Instead, the state will conduct its first-ever “semi-open” primary, allowing roughly 2.2 million decline-to-state voters to participate by requesting a partisan ballot.

But Democrats, Republicans and others registered with a political party will not be allowed to vote in any other party’s primary.

As far as the initiative process, the March ballot will be fairly tame by recent California standards. The six measures to be decided involve issues such as legislative term limits, the state gas tax and environmental protection--serious matters, but hardly as polarizing as initiatives during the 1990s that touched on issues such as race and immigration.

“We’ve got some pretty tough public policy questions,” Democratic strategist Bill Carrick said. “But nothing that’s going to alter the overall voter turnout in some disproportionate way.”

Mood Is Different From 4 Years Ago

The mood in California is far different from four years ago, when times were prosperous and Davis won a landslide victory by promising to improve the state’s schools and otherwise keep things on an even keel.

The state survived last year’s electricity crisis without the apocalypse many forecast--but not before it battered Davis’ reputation and tore a multibillion-dollar hole in the state budget, forcing painful choices on the governor. “Tough decisions will have to be made,” said Paul Maslin, Davis’ pollster, alluding to inevitable budget cutbacks in this election year.

The state’s budget shortfall has been compounded by the recession, the first in a decade, which has hit Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area particularly hard. At the same time, the travel tremors afflicting many after Sept. 11 have battered the state’s vital tourism industry, compounding the economic woes.

Strangely enough, however, polls suggest Californians are relatively upbeat despite their anxieties over the economy and the prospect of further terrorist attacks. And whatever their concerns, most aren’t taking it out on their elected leaders, the way they have previously in unsettled times.

Some voter sentiments seem flatly contradictory. More than half--56%--of those surveyed last month by the Public Policy Institute of California said they expected the state to face bad times financially in the next year. And yet 58% said they believed the state was heading in the right direction.

Bruce Cain, director of Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, sees two competing forces at work.

“You’ve got the war on terrorism plus the suspension of normal politics, which pushes up people’s estimation of institutions and incumbents,” Cain said. “At the same time, you’ve got economic conditions which generally lead to public dissatisfaction and a desire for change.

“The question is, how rapidly does our concern about terror deteriorate and how much longer does our concern about the economy persist?”

Already there are signs that terrorism is receding as an issue; in the Public Policy Institute’s survey, Californians ranked the economy, electricity and education as their foremost concerns, with security and related issues in fourth place.

And there are indications that the worst of the recession may have passed, although perception tends to lag behind reality, often to the detriment of incumbents. The economy was well into recovery, for instance, in 1992 when President George Bush fell victim to the last downturn and was defeated by Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

For that reason, partisans on both sides predict a hard-fought and nasty gubernatorial contest, reflecting how little things have changed politically since Sept. 11.

“If you thought you couldn’t attack, if you thought you can’t be negative, every election since Sept. 11 has shown you can,” said Democratic strategist Kaufman, alluding to bitter fall contests in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City.

But the governor’s race may prove an exception in a campaign year that offers plenty of contests but little true competition.

Republicans had to scramble to put up candidates for the seven statewide offices on the ballot this year, four of them open seats: controller, secretary of state, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public instruction. The three Democratic incumbents, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer and Treasurer Phil Angelides, are all strong favorites for reelection.

Voters will also fill four places on the State Board of Equalization, the tax oversight agency, including vacancies in Northern and Central California.

The state’s 52 House members are up for reelection, although few face serious competition thanks to the incumbent-protection plan that passed the Legislature as part of the once-a-decade reapportionment process.

The most vulnerable incumbent is the scandal-scarred Gary Condit, who faces a stiff primary challenge in the Central Valley from Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza of Merced, a fellow Democrat.

Two incumbents have drawn potentially serious challenges: Republican Rep. John Doolittle of Roseville is facing Auburn physician Bill Kirby, who contends Doolittle is too conservative for the heavily rural district. In the wine country, Santa Rosa Mayor Mike Martini is challenging Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey, claiming she is too liberal.

Two new House seats have been carved out as a result of population shifts: one in the Central Valley and the other in southeast Los Angeles County. A Republican is expected to pick up the Central Valley seat and a Democrat the one in Southern California, the latter created in part by carving up the district of retiring Rep. Steve Horn (R-Long Beach). That would mean a net Democratic gain of one seat, giving them 33 House seats from California to the Republicans’ 20.

A Dearth of Competition

There is a similar dearth of competition in most legislative contests, with just a handful of serious contests around the state among the 80 Assembly and 20 state Senate seats on the ballot.

“The politicians have basically figured out a way to abolish elections,” said Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the Target Book, a handicappers guide to state elections. “Through the adroit use of the gerrymander, we have politicians picking the people [they choose to represent] rather than the people picking the politicians.”