State GOP Courting Political Disaster

Not since Gov. Earl Warren led the Republican sweep of 1946 has one party swept all partisan offices in California. After 56 years, that may be about to happen again, if a current Field Poll is to be believed.

Since the March 5 primary, Gov. Gray Davis has gone from a two-point deficit against his GOP challenger, Bill Simon, to a 14-point lead. If the election for governor were held today among Field Poll voters who have made up their minds, Davis would be reelected by a margin of 60% to 40%, roughly the same as his landslide election in 1998. He would probably carry the entire Democratic ticket with him.

What’s more, Democrats would probably pick up a few more seats in the Legislature, bringing themselves close to a two-thirds margin in the Assembly and Senate, at which point Republicans would become completely irrelevant in Sacramento.

A Davis landslide would have major implications for the 2004 presidential election. It would mean Democrats could probably count on California’s 55 electoral votes as secure for the Democratic presidential nominee and spend their money in other states, complicating President Bush’s reelection. It would also make the reelection of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) much easier at a time when winning the Boxer seat could be crucial to Republicans regaining control of the U.S. Senate.

With Davis so unpopular--the Field Poll that shows him 14 points ahead of Simon also finds half the voters disapproving of his job performance in office--it is remarkable that Republicans could be on the brink of a total wipeout. But Republicans have failed to acknowledge and to deal with the fundamental changes that have occurred in the California electorate, and now they may be about to pay the ultimate price.

Simon ran as the “conservative Republican” in the primary, a strategy that appealed to the small Republican primary electorate but makes victory in the much larger general-election electorate all but impossible. Simon’s handlers seemed unaware that their primary strategy virtually predestined defeat in November.

That is the clear message of the latest Field Poll. At the time of the March primary, Simon led the unloved Davis 44% to 42%. Davis’ numbers have not changed since; he is at 43% in the latest poll. But Simon has fallen a whopping 15 points; he has lost one-third of his potential support since the primary. Davis is holding 92% of Democrats who have made up their minds and is currently pulling nearly one-fifth of Republicans who have decided. Almost a quarter of Republicans have moved to the undecided camp.

GOP moderates now see Simon as a hard-core conservative and, accordingly, have moved away from him. They will most likely stay home, as many did in 1998 and 2000, thus sinking the entire Republican ticket. In addition, Simon is getting few crossover Democrats, and nonpartisan voters are breaking heavily for Davis. This is a virtual repeat of the general-election vote in 1998 and 2000, in which Republican candidates attracted the party base but little else.

All this has occurred in the two months since the primary without Davis having spent a dollar of his enormous war chest. Voters have simply caught up with Simon’s “conservative Republican” primary campaign.

It has been four election cycles now and Republicans still refuse to admit reality: The conservative Reagan era is over; there are no more conservative-swing Democrats, and many nonpartisan voters are actually to the left of Democrats. The unpleasant reality is that a conservative Republican cannot win statewide in California any more than a liberal Democrat can win in Idaho, Wyoming or Texas. One has to wonder why Simon ever let himself be so defined.

The White House seemed to comprehend this when it chose former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as its candidate for governor. But it failed to appreciate the nuances of the GOP electorate. Bush’s politicos should have cleared the field in the closed Republican primary to ensure that there was no right-wing crusade against the moderate-to-liberal Riordan, and they should have assured that Riordan had professional management.

The model for California Republicans should be the Massachusetts Republican Party, which has controlled the governorship there for 12 years by running social libertarians who emphasize sound fiscal management and staying clear of the issues favored by conservative Republican activists. This has allowed Republicans to occupy the political middle in liberal Massachusetts.

California is now nearly as liberal as Massachusetts, and conservative positions on such issues as abortion rights and gun control are far outside the political mainstream. California Republicans, on the other hand, act as though the changes brought about by the enlarged Latino electorate, the GOP collapse in the suburbs and the flight of wealthy women from Republican ranks are mere inconveniences, rather than fundamental political problems.

Simon could still turn the race around; it is six months until November. But that would require him to repudiate many of the conservative social positions he took in the primary. That has happened before, and Simon seems to have had no position on social issues before he decided to run for governor.

But the GOP challenger’s approach has been to pretend that his conservative stands on social issues do not matter, so he won’t talk about them. That’s not going to work. Davis has just launched a “Simon Says” Web site to highlight the candidate’s “proud” conservative views by quoting Simon’s primary-election statements.

So, Simon has no choice on issues like a woman’s right to choose and gun control but to reshape his positions along the lines of the mainstream, or await a merciless pounding from the Davis campaign machine, which will paint him so far to the right that the April Field Poll results will become the November reality.

The issue in the November election is not only can Simon win, but also can Republicans survive as a viable political party. It has been 56 years since one party was totally shut out of statewide office in California. Could this be the year it happens again?