Democrats Searching for New Strategy

Nearly a month after Arnold Schwarzenegger took power as governor, Democrats are struggling to find a coherent strategy to confront the Republican who now dominates California politics.

Democrats in the Legislature are muting dissent: They heeded Schwarzenegger’s call for bipartisanship and raced to cut a quick budget deal with him. Other Democrats are combative: State Treasurer Phil Angelides has pounded the governor for his “wrongheaded” plan to borrow billions of dollars to cover the state’s cash shortfall.

The Democrats’ disjointed response to Schwarzenegger is a sign of their difficulty in adapting to the radical changes wrought by the October recall election.

For a state party that crushed its Republican opposition in 2002, the voter revolt against Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was a jarring reversal. Stripped of their main source of power, Democrats are “stuck in a situation where they’re basically responding to the governor,” said John Emerson, who oversaw California political operations for former President Clinton.

“It’s inherently difficult to come up with a unified position,” he said. “It’s a little like herding cats.”

The party was knocked further off balance last week by the strong showing of a Green candidate for mayor in the ancestral home of California Democrats, San Francisco. The race offered a fresh display of the Green Party’s erosion of the Democrats’ liberal base in the Bay Area.

“The bottom line for us as a party is, we’re in flux right now,” said state Democratic Chairman Art Torres.

Nationally, too, Democrats are engaged in conflict over their direction -- whether to follow the more moderate course steered by Clinton or to embrace the more liberal coloration of the party’s leading presidential candidate, Howard Dean.

In Sacramento, Democrats remain a potent force because of their large majorities in both houses of the Legislature. Their numbers prodded Schwarzenegger to retreat Thursday from the permanent cap he had sought to put on state spending.

Nonetheless, the deal the Democrats struck with him on budget measures for the March ballot enabled Schwarzenegger to declare victory. He commended lawmakers for “approving my California recovery plan.”

The question now for California Democrats is whether the unsteadiness of the moment portends more trouble ahead at the polls. They still outnumber Republican voters, 6.7 million to 5.4 million. But Schwarzenegger’s victory reaffirmed the viability of moderate Republicans in statewide races, especially candidates with strong personal appeal.

Next November, Democrats are counting on California to be the vanguard of their campaign to oust President Bush. They also hope to reelect Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, strengthen their control of the state’s House delegation and gain a few seats in the Legislature. In 2006, they will try to win back the governorship.

In the meantime, however, term limits will force the Democrats’ leading players in Sacramento to step aside, leaving less-seasoned lawmakers to guide the opposition to Schwarzenegger. Among those who must leave office next year is the Legislature’s top Democrat, Senate President Pro Tem John Burton of San Francisco, a skilled deal-maker with a four-decade history in state politics. His successor is undetermined.

Also on his way out is Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson (D-Culver City), whose replacement will be a 36-year-old freshman lawmaker, Assemblyman Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles). By contrast, the last time Democrats were forced to do business with a Republican governor, their Assembly speaker was Willie Brown, a political powerhouse in his own right.

Republican lawmakers face their own leadership shuffle, thanks to term limits. But the GOP minority is newly empowered by its alliance with Schwarzenegger. Tension in that alliance surfaced Friday as conservative lawmakers balked at his budget deal with Democrats, but the new governor has proved nonetheless to be a blessing to Republicans. He has drawn a surge of new donations to the previously cash-starved party for its 2004 campaigns. He has also put a moderate face on a state GOP that has often leaned to the right of most California voters.

In responding to Schwarzenegger, Democrats have tried a variety of tacks.

Days after the recall election, Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer stunned fellow Democrats by revealing that he had voted for Schwarzenegger, a move that could haunt his potential bid for governor in 2006. But Lockyer then touched off a spat with Schwarzenegger by disclosing that he had privately urged the governor to pursue an investigation of accusations that Schwarzenegger had groped women. Since the flap died down, Lockyer has avoided public remarks on Schwarzenegger.

Angelides has taken a more consistently aggressive approach. The little-known treasurer has tried to seize the role of Schwarzenegger’s chief antagonist, raising his visibility as he, too, prepares to run for governor.

At stops before news cameras in San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento and the Bay Area, Angelides has cast Schwarzenegger’s $15-billion debt proposal as an “irresponsible scheme.” He has also produced and aired a television ad bashing the plan. So far, the tactics have won applause from party loyalists.

“Angelides has had the courage to essentially tell the emperor he had no clothes,” said Monterey County Democratic Chairman Carl Pohlhammer.

On Friday, Angelides said he had not decided whether to campaign against the scaled-back borrowing proposal that Schwarzenegger and lawmakers had agreed to put on the March ballot.

In the Legislature, Democrats have struck a friendlier tone toward Schwarzenegger. Five of them even showed up at Schwarzenegger rallies to drum up support for his fiscal agenda. Their motive was clear: Many political strategists say the recall showed that -- just as Schwarzenegger had argued -- voters were fed up with the partisan sniping that had blocked solutions to the state fiscal crisis.

“Democrats have a responsibility to oppose him when they think he’s wrong, and if he’s doing things that are more bipartisan, more in the middle of the ideological spectrum, they have a responsibility to work with him,” said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick.

If Democratic lawmakers defy Schwarzenegger, he stands little chance of ousting many of them at the polls; they drew their district boundaries in a way that safeguards their majority in the Legislature. But Schwarzenegger aides have hinted that he might back a ballot measure to make the Legislature part time and cut lawmakers’ pay.

“That’s the strongest card he has, and it may be a real threat,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

The next big test for Democrats is their response to the budget that Schwarzenegger will propose in January, a plan that is sure to draw a storm of opposition from labor and other key parts of the party’s base.

But so far, Democrats’ adjustment to the Schwarzenegger era has appeared “fractured and disorganized,” said political strategist Garry South, who ran statewide campaigns for Davis. The party, he said, needs “a very astute strategy to state its case.”

“We don’t have that,” he said. “There isn’t any center of gravity at the moment in the state Democratic Party.”