Governor Has Tough Task in Ousting Foes

From a shopping mall in Stockton to a Cheesecake Factory restaurant in San Diego, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been touring some of California’s contested legislative districts, urging voters to “terminate” legislators who defy him.

The outcome of the November elections could prove critical to his stated goal of reshaping California’s finances and political culture. Yet political experts say that wresting control of the Legislature from the Democrats this fall is a tall, if not improbable, order even for a politician with Schwarzenegger’s popularity.

Most lawmakers represent districts they intentionally designed for easy reelection. Although 100 of California’s 120 legislative seats are on the November ballot, only a handful are competitive races.

“I can’t imagine circumstances where Republicans could take over either chamber,” said veteran GOP consultant Dan Schnur.

In the state Senate, where Democrats control 25 of 40 seats, Mike Machado of Linden, in the Central Valley, is the only incumbent Democrat considered vulnerable. The GOP has its eyes on a Senate seat in San Diego that Democrat Dede Alpert is vacating because of term limits. But Democrats hope to pick up the seat now held by Republican Bruce McPherson of Santa Cruz, who is termed out.

Given this logic, which is endorsed by analysts in both parties, the Republicans at best could pick up two seats, shrinking the Democratic majority but still leaving them with a 23-17 advantage in the Senate.

In the 80-member Assembly, where Democrats occupy 48 slots, the GOP has designs on six seats that are now held by Democrats who can’t or aren’t seeking reelection. The party also hopes to topple four Democratic incumbents: Nichole Parra of Hanford, Gloria Negrete McLeod of Chino, Barbara Matthews of Tracy and Carol Liu of La Canada Flintridge. But two Republican incumbents -- Shirley Horton of Chula Vista and Bonnie Garcia of Cathedral City -- also are considered vulnerable.

No one in either party, however, is predicting a GOP sweep in the Assembly, which has been in uninterrupted Democratic hands for the last decade.

“Short of an absolute total and complete calamity, the worst case is a loss of three or four seats, which would put us at 44 or 45,” said Darry Sragow, a consultant who oversaw the Assembly’s Democratic campaigns last year.

So far, Schwarzenegger has made only tepid forays into the general election, mostly to aid incumbent Republicans. He endorsed three people in primaries this spring, all of whom won. He has headlined fund-raisers for a half-dozen GOP candidates. Even as he campaigns in public to rally support for his budget in many of those districts, he has refrained from attacking local Democratic lawmakers by name.

Advisors say those trips have been intentional warnings that he might, to quote one of his favorite movie lines, “be back” closer to the election.

On the surface, Schwarzenegger would appear to be in a strong position to influence the composition of the Legislature.

In October’s recall vote, he and a rival, state Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican, together won a majority of votes in 18 of the 48 state Assembly districts and nine of the 25 Senate districts where the incumbent was a Democrat, according to an analysis by Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, which tracks legislative races.

But while Schwarzenegger has proven that he can marshal support for ballot initiatives, such as the debt measures Propositions 57 and 58 approved by voters this spring, political experts say he has yet to show how effective he is in transferring his clout to other politicians, particularly in local races.

“The unknown question is, if he is so inclined, can the governor persuade those Democrats and independents who voted for him to vote for a Republican for the state Legislature?” Hoffenblum said. “There has to be some kind of contrast in reason for someone who might very well vote for John Kerry for president to cross over and vote for a Republican.”

Democrats and a number of independent analysts doubt he can succeed in that task.

“His popularity is fairly unique to him, his base is unique to him, and I think the sense on the Democratic side is that, while he cannot be taken lightly, there’s no fear that he’s going to eat the minds of the voters,” Sragow said. “A lot of the people who find him so attractive are not our voters anyway, and even before the tarnish that he will emerge with in the budget fight, it was our sense that we can win these races.”

Mark Baldassare, research director for the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan group, also doubted his ability to influence many of those elections.

“This governor knows how to run a statewide campaign and change voters’ opinion,” he said. “Getting in there in the district level and having the time and the resources to convince people to vote for this candidate against another candidate, I think that’s a whole other challenge.”

The presidential race may also make it harder for Schwarzenegger to dominate the local elections, some analysts believe. The strong antipathy toward President Bush among many Democrats is expected to lead to a far heavier turnout of California’s political majority than if it were just a local election year.

For these reasons, many strategists and Schwarzenegger aides believe that, if the governor wants to reduce the power of the Democratic Legislature, his best bet may be to take on the institution itself through ballot initiatives to rewrite California’s Constitution.

The governor has already publicly suggested returning the Legislature to a part-time body in a vote perhaps as early as next spring. Aides and GOP strategists are contemplating more far-reaching changes. Top among them is the idea of stripping the Legislature of the power to draw its own districts, and allowing a nonpartisan group -- perhaps a panel of judges -- to draw those lines.

Another idea being bandied about would make the state budget cover a two-year period to cut in half the “summer slam-fests” Schwarzenegger has decried.

“There are a lot of reform possibilities that, once the budget is behind him, the governor is going to look very closely at,” said Marty Wilson, one of Schwarzenegger’s political advisors. “My guess is he will decide on two or three and make those part and parcel of his agenda for the period beginning as early as this fall.”

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Budget watch

26 days late

Sunday: No apparent progress.

Today: State Controller Steve Westly is expected to outline the payments that local schools, community colleges and vendors will miss starting Wednesday if no budget is passed. He is prohibited by law from making certain payments without a budget in place.

Quote: “If Democrats were ready to give up their reckless spending, we’d have passed a budget by now.”

-- Assembly Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield