Anger Yields to Hope for Many Voters

High in the cab of a yellow Caterpillar road grader, Stu Miller sat at the intersection of old and new California.

A rugged 54-year-old who grew up on a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, Miller was gazing in the direction of old U.S. Route 66 as it cut through San Bernardino County. Behind him was a hillside terraced with brand-new homes, the sort of instant suburb that has transformed this arid patch of Southern California in recent years.

But the intersection Miller was thinking about, as sun caught the gold in his tousled blond hair, was a purely symbolic one: the one captured Tuesday by the California recall election.

The state that Miller loves had been going straight downhill, as far as he was concerned. He ticked off the familiar causes: Out-of-control workers’ compensation costs. Lost jobs. The energy debacle. And one more thing, he added: Californians have gotten lazy. They expect too much from government. They don’t want to take responsibility.

“The people have to start doing some of the work themselves,” he said.

Now, like many Californians in the broad swath that voted overwhelmingly to recall Gov. Gray Davis and to elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, Miller is full of hope. At last, he believes, California has a governor who can get something done.

“He seems like the right guy for the job,” he said, shouting over the noise of heavy machinery as he took a break from grading a vacant lot that would soon be a sales yard for pumpkins. Miller runs a chain of lots that sells pumpkins before Halloween and Christmas trees before Christmas.

Can Schwarzenegger turn things around, he was asked -- end the discontent that has chafed at his fellow Californians, steer the country’s biggest state economy in the right direction?

“I think with the right people behind him, he can turn this state around,” Miller said. “But it’s going to take some work. Some serious work.”

In the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, USA Today published a map of the United States that defined a moment in time. It showed all the counties that had voted for Democrat Al Gore in blue; those that had voted for Republican George W. Bush in red. The vast breadth of the nation’s midsection was almost all red; the East and West coasts almost entirely blue.

A shorthand was instantly born to describe the country’s cultural and political divide: red and blue America.

After the California recall election, CNN produced a map that showed the anti-recall counties in Democratic blue and the pro-recall counties in Republican red. Practically the entire state was red, with the exceptions of a thin band of contiguous coastal counties stretching from Monterey County in the south to Humboldt County in the north, and encompassing the entire San Francisco Bay area, and a lone county in the south: Los Angeles.

Red and blue California.

Stu Miller lives in red California. A third-generation Californian, a Republican who makes his home in Thousand Oaks, he knew all along that he would vote for the recall and for Schwarzenegger.

Jozlyn Aubrey lives in blue California. A 26-year-old training administrator from San Leandro in Alameda County, Aubrey was among 70% of Alameda County voters to oppose the recall -- and among 80% of African American women to do so.

“I’m proud of the way the Bay Area voted, and while we’re at it, I’d be up for splitting California into two states,” she said one day last week as she strolled through Oakland’s waterfront Jack London Square with a friend from Hawaii. “There was a lot of anger on my end when I saw the results and I saw who voted how.”

Aubrey had few compliments for Davis. But “I didn’t feel he did anything egregious enough to warrant a recall. Yeah, he didn’t handle the energy crisis very well, but you can’t blame him for it or for the tech implosion,” she said. “Let’s face it: The whole nation is not faring so well.”

There has been a lot of anger on both sides of the blue-red divide.

Schwarzenegger supporters directed theirs at Davis -- and, in many cases, at The Times, which reported allegations of past sexual harassment on the part of the candidate. Recall opponents aimed theirs at the Republican Party, at Schwarzenegger -- and sometimes, in the aftermath of the vote, at the rest of the state.

“I don’t want to live in California anymore,” said a Democratic Party activist in San Francisco, Rebecca Reynolds-Silverberg, as the results became clear on election night. “We’re totally surrounded by idiots.”

On some issues, exit polls showed that the divisions reflected differences in perceptions of the state. Those who voted for the recall and for Schwarzenegger were overwhelmingly likely to harbor fears about the economy. Those who voted against the recall -- for the status quo -- were much less likely to be worried.

Throughout the state, however, there are some common themes. There is widespread anger about the tripling of the state’s vehicle license fee -- the notorious “car tax.” There is disquiet about illegal immigration, even if there is nothing approaching consensus on what to do about it. And there is a common feeling that, for all its many and serious faults, California remains a great place to live.

“I like it right here. Never plan to move away,” said Conrad Castro, a maintenance man for Calvary Chapel, a large nondenominational church in Redlands.

Castro grew up in Los Angeles and has lived in Redlands for 25 years. A wiry, genial man with salt-and-pepper hair and a zebra-striped goatee, he looks younger than his 67 years. Although he is a registered Democrat, he voted for the recall and for state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), mainly because McClintock’s conservative views on social issues dovetail with Castro’s. “I don’t believe in killing babies,” he said.

There is no anger evident in Castro, but he was disappointed in Davis for presiding over a record budget deficit and for raising the car tax. He doesn’t understand where all the state’s money could be going. More of it should be getting through to schools and to fixing deteriorating roads, he said.

Calvary Chapel is housed in an old citrus packinghouse. From where Castro stood in the wood-paneled lobby, he could look through the front windows and see a vestigial orange grove across the street and a row of tall palm trees swaying in the afternoon breeze. But that vision of California is in many ways an illusion, and Castro wonders what any governor can do to bring back what was lost.

“I don’t think anything could get any better as far as jobs are concerned,” he said. “Because if you go into the store, it doesn’t matter what you look for; your appliances, your clothes, your shoes -- they’re all made in China.”

Steve Pimentel, 36, a Democrat since he first voted 18 years ago, was so disgusted with Davis that he voted to oust him -- and embraced Schwarzenegger. In the Silicon Valley’s high-tech pressure cooker, plenty of people get canned for poor performance, Pimentel said, and sometimes for no reason at all. Why not Davis?

“With democracy, I think you don’t really get do-overs, but in this case he was so extraordinarily incompetent. If you perform that way as the head of a company, people have the right to remove you,” the computer software engineer said on a lunch break from his Mountain View office. “It was really hard for me, because I’m a Democrat. But I felt like we really needed a shake-up.”

That, of course, was the ultimate verdict statewide. Democratic Party leaders were left to figure out what they had done wrong.

“You know, we didn’t connect with them, did we?” said Mark Shepherd, a member of the San Bernardino County Democratic Central Committee and an aide to Rep. Joe Baca (D-San Bernardino). “We didn’t connect with the guy with a lunch pail. The guy with the lunch pail thinks we’re big government and we’re coming after his gun or something.”

Schwarzenegger’s most overwhelming support came in a cluster of heavily Republican agricultural counties in the Sacramento Valley, north of the capital.

If there was a tipping point, geographically speaking, it was probably the one-two-three punch of Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties, which gave more than 70% support to the recall and more than 60% support for Schwarzenegger.

In percentage terms, that area lagged behind the northern agricultural counties -- Sutter, Colusa, Yuba, Lassen, Glenn -- where the recall was approved by more than 75% of voters. But in sheer numbers of votes, it was the three southern counties, that sent Davis home and put Schwarzenegger over the top.

Expectations of what the new governor will do run high in this area, and in pockets throughout the state.

“I’m excited; I really am,” said Monique Lackey. “I’m hoping that the state of California turns around. And I think with Arnold Schwarzenegger not being a politician -- we’re way better off.”

Lackey, 35, was standing outside a kick-boxing studio in Rancho Cucamonga while her two children attended a class inside. A part-time instructional aide at a local school, she worries about what’s going to happen in California. Rising home prices have kept her and her husband from moving up to a bigger home.

She’s very worried about the car tax -- not only does her family own two cars and a mobile home, but her husband is an independent trucker whose bread and butter is hauling new cars. If car sales drop, so does his business.

But she is absolutely convinced that Schwarzenegger will come to the rescue. “With his strength and his personality,” she said, “I’m not worried.”

Schwarzenegger’s credentials are precisely his lack of credentials, as far as many people are concerned. And in surprising places, there are people rooting for him to succeed.

“I think he’s got such a great record of meeting all his goals,” said Nona Mock Wyman. “He’ll probably do the best job just because of his big ego.”

Wyman, 70, voted for Green Party candidate Peter Camejo and now was sitting in her Walnut Creek family store -- Ming Quong Unique Jewelry & Gifts -- contemplating the future. A book titled “What Would the Buddha Do?” was propped nearby. Wyman grew up in a Chinese orphanage in nearby Los Gatos, and has seen plenty of politicians come and go. She didn’t vote for this new governor, but she was willing to give him a chance.

“He’s got that positiveness about him,” she said. “I admire someone who sets a goal and meets it.”

Schwarzenegger faces enormous obstacles, and plenty of people believe he will fail. “He might surprise me,” said Rene Wuthrich, a 40-year-old business owner from the Bay Area city of Mountain View and the father of a newborn. “But I’d be surprised if he can get anything through the Legislature. He might be pro-business, but I don’t think he’s going to be able to do anything about it. He’s trying to reach out to everybody -- but what politician doesn’t?”

But for every Rene Wuthrich, there seems to be at least one Michele Garcia.

On a lonely stretch of Foothill Boulevard in Fontana, Garcia is standing, late at night, in a shower of light beneath a tent awning in front of Club Azteca, a lively if somewhat rundown nightclub. Ranchera music spills out the front door of the club, as do hungry patrons lining up for the tacos Garcia assembles from steamed tortillas and bubbling pots of finely chopped meat.

A 19-year-old with a 7-month-old daughter, Garcia voted Tuesday for the first time. She cast her vote against the recall and for “the Mexican guy -- what’s his name?” Prompted, she says that, yes, it was Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

She thinks Davis did a fine job. She said people should “stick to what you know.” What Schwarzenegger knows, she said, is acting.

Still, there is that car tax hike, which she is dreading. And if Schwarzenegger can lower it, even she is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I’ll be all right,” she said with a big smile, as the steam and the fragrance of fresh tacos swirled about her in the night. “I’ll take back everything I said.”