Even Our Blue State Is Bitterly Divided

Six days to go, and it’s the Hatfields and McCoys out there.

A Times poll found -- big shock here -- that the more you go to church, the more likely you are to love the born-again President Bush. (We all know the Prince of Peace doesn’t mind the occasional preemptive war, but he draws the line at gay marriage.)

If you’re single, according to the poll, you’re much more likely to be a supporter of John Kerry. In which case, you’ll enjoy the one about the guy who’s still undecided: If Bush wins, he can’t decide whether to move to Canada or Mexico.

But who needs a poll to tell us we’re split along a gaping divide? The best evidence is right here in California. Even though we’re off the map on election night, partisan voters are filled with contempt. As evidence, I’ve got several dispatches from the battlefront.

Last week, I wrote about a Valley Christian High School student named Larina, whose Kerry bumper sticker was ripped off her Volkswagen and replaced with a Bush sticker. Larina made an elegant argument for thinking independently, even when it’s unpopular to do so in such a rabidly polarized society.

As if to help make her point, readers crucified me for featuring a pro-Kerry student.

“Pull your head out of your ‘blank’ and have a great day,” wrote one.

Tony Kost from Venice wrote to say the hammer swings both ways.

“I told my liberal friends at the Westminster Dog Park that I had a ‘Viva Bush’ bumper sticker and intended on putting it on my car. They responded that this was ill-advised because either they or their lib friends would destroy my car.”

Tony adds:

“Do I dare put a Bush sign on my lawn? I wish I had the guts.”

Thanks for the note, Tony.

You wimp.

A more courageous Bush supporter surfaced at Valley Christian High. I got a call from a teacher who said a student had confessed to the bumper sticker caper.

The student, S. Wendell, got on the phone and said, yeah, he was in on the deal. And he wanted to take issue with Larina’s suggestion that Bushie students were know-nothings who blindly aped their parents’ politics.

“Unfortunately, there is some truth to this,” S. Wendell later e-mailed me. But, he added, there are “a great deal of Bushies who keep up with politics and current national and world issues.”

S. said he likes the fact that Bush “turns to God for guidance.” In an apparent cut at Kerry, the student also said Bush knows exactly where he stands.

“He has proven that he is a man of action, courage and firmness. The unfortunate side effect to a ‘get it done’ attitude is an occasional wrong decision. I have never claimed President Bush to be without flaw, but he has displayed a strong character.”

We’re left with the question of why a good Christian boy was in on the bumper sticker shenanigans, but it was a spirited prank, and I’m going to give him a pass.

I’m not in so forgiving a mood, however, about what transpired last week in Long Beach. Not after hearing from a horrified mother who recounted a police crackdown on her son, who happens to be an unabashed Kerry supporter.

“Oh, where is the 1st Amendment?” asks Betty Weinell, 81, and here’s the story:

Betty’s boy Dan, 53, was going to pick up his son last Friday night around 9 o’clock. When he got to 2nd Street in Belmont Shore, Kerry supporters were on the side of the road, waving signs.

Dan, a junior high special-ed teacher, honked the horn of his Nissan Sentra in support.

“Two blocks later, I hear the ‘whoop-whoop’ and see the flashing lights,” Dan says. “I figure, ‘OK, do I have a taillight out or something?’”

Think again, Dan.

“There were two officers, and one stayed in the car. The other one came up and reached [toward his holster]. I don’t know if that’s standard procedure. He said he was basically giving me a ticket for improper use of my car horn.”

Weinell said words to the effect of, “You gotta be kidding me.”

Not at all, said Officer Crime Buster, who must have been gunning for Long Beach cop of the month. I’d give you his name, but the signature on the ticket was illegible, and the LBPD press office was no help.

“I was incredulous and asked the cop what was going on,” Weinell says. “He said they’d gotten some complaints from merchants or residents or something. I said I thought I had freedom of speech, and he said, ‘You do. Your horn doesn’t.’ ”

As the officer went to write a ticket that could run up to $130, Weinell fumed in his Sentra. “I think we’re living in one of the most dangerous times this country has ever been in,” he says, given the trampling of civil liberties in the name of Sept. 11.

When the cop returned with the ticket -- which Weinell intends to fight -- he couldn’t help but ask a question:

“Just out of curiosity, if that was a Bush rally, would you be giving me this ticket?”

The cop said yes, but Weinell wasn’t buying it. Not now, so close to election day, as common ground all but disappears under our feet.

Honk if you can’t wait till it’s over.