As election years go, 8 is a magic number

There’s something about these election years that end in 8. They tend to be historic, watershed elections in California or the nation. Or both.

Odds are in 2008 we’ll elect either the first female or the first African American president. If not, it’s likely to be the first Mormon or the oldest. (But not the first POW. That was Andrew Jackson.)

Glance back several decades.

The 1948 election marked arguably the greatest comeback victory of all time when “Give ‘em Hell” Harry Truman embarrassed the pollsters, the pundits and -- isn’t it fun to point out -- the Chicago Tribune. Not even the idolized California Gov. Earl Warren, Tom Dewey’s running mate, could carry this state for the GOP against the underrated Democratic incumbent.

The 1958 election was a California earthquake. Sacramento turned from almost centurylong Republican control to Democratic dominance. Pat Brown was elected the first Catholic governor. Both houses of the Legislature fell into Democratic hands for the first time since 1889. State government hasn’t been the same since.

The 1968 election we’ll get to shortly.

In 1978, California dramatically altered the balance of power between state and local governments when voters approved Proposition 13. While sharply cutting property taxes, voters forced local governments and schools to go hat-in-hand to Sacramento begging for money. The governor and Legislature consequently gained more control over decisions that historically had been made by local officials. It’s still all a mess.

In 1988, Californians tightly bound the hands of state budget writers by approving Proposition 98, which guarantees schools roughly 40% of the treasury. That crimping of flexibility started a wave of ballot-box budgeting that has caused Sacramento to borrow, steal and cheat to ostensibly make ends meet.

By comparison, the 1998 election wasn’t much. But it did elect the first California governor to be recalled.

These elections flashed back in my mind last week while I was browsing through former Times colleague Bill Boyarsky’s recent biography: “Big Daddy Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics.”

Full disclosure: I wrote a jacket blurb for Boyarsky’s book saying that it brings Assembly Speaker Unruh “alive in all his bullying bulk and commitment to progressive public policy” and “is a close-up look at California’s Capitol when it consistently worked, not always in a pretty way.

“Those politicians may have sinned, but they definitely succeeded in meeting the needs of a fast-growing state.”

No need to elaborate beyond that.

What I was looking for in my reread were details of Unruh’s substantial role in the tumultuous presidential election of 40 years ago. There hadn’t been anything quite like 1968 before and, fortunately, nothing has since come close. This year’s election is exciting and historic. That year’s was both of those, plus wrenching and bloody. It tore apart the Democratic Party, especially in California. And Unruh was smack in the middle.

Today, it may be difficult to comprehend the power and prestige of an Assembly speaker, a Texas sharecropper’s homely kid who rose to be one of the most powerful California politicians of the 20th century. He wouldn’t have gotten there under term limits. Start with that.

But even before Unruh seized the speakership in 1961, he had become John Kennedy’s “man in California.” Kennedy grew so disenchanted with the political vacillation of Gov. Brown that he increasingly turned to the fast-rising Inglewood lawmaker for action and advice, entrusting him with his Southern California campaign. After Kennedy’s election, he and Unruh stayed close.

Jump ahead to 1968. America was fracturing over the Vietnam War, which ultimately would kill more than 58,000 U.S. military personnel. By comparison, 3,931 Americans, at last count, have died in Iraq. Back then, students were rioting over the war and the draft. These days, presidents avoid protests by using an all-volunteer military.

Boyarsky details how in a series of secret meetings and telephone calls, Unruh urged the assassinated president’s brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, to run against President Johnson in 1968. It was potential political suicide, however, for an ambitious state politician to be plotting against a president. Johnson invited Unruh to the White House and tried to pressure him, in essence, to knock off this nonsense and run for the U.S. Senate with the hefty backing of LBJ’s California bankrollers.

But at that meeting, Boyarsky writes, “Johnson was constantly interrupted with telephone reports on the worsening situation in Vietnam.” Unruh was so “shaken by his glimpse of President Johnson directing bombing raids from the White House” that he became “wholeheartedly against the war and for the defeat of the president.” The speaker opted out of a Senate race and turned his attention to helping elect RFK.

This despite the similarities in style between Johnson and Unruh. Observes Boyarsky: “They shared an ability to dominate and manipulate their peers, an appetite for women and drink, and a Texas talent for conversation and storytelling.”

Within days, Kennedy decided to run, Sen. Eugene McCarthy scared Johnson in New Hampshire, Johnson bailed -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and riots erupted -- and the year didn’t get any better.

California was the center of the political universe on primary election night when Kennedy carried California and seemed to be nearing the Democratic nomination. Then he walked into the Ambassador Hotel kitchen. Unruh pulled people off the assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, to keep him alive for the police.

After that, Big Daddy became bitter and he brooded. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, the Unruh-led California delegation hooted the party establishment. Cops bloodied protesters. Back home, the speaker was so demoralized and Democrats were so discombobulated that Republicans wrested control of the Assembly, toppling Unruh from power.

And California joined the nation in electing native son Richard Nixon president.

Not a good year.

Thankfully, 2008 also is exciting, but upbeat and hopeful.

george.skelton@latimes.com