California’s not the weird one anymore

So let’s recap. The governor of South Carolina disappears and is thought to be hiking in the Appalachians. On Naked Hiking Day, no less. He turns up at the Atlanta airport and later admits spending the previous several days crying in Buenos Aires with a woman not his wife.

That followed close on the heels of the admission from a U.S. senator from Nevada that he’d had an affair with a campaign worker married to one of his aides. That followed the threat by the governor of Texas that it might consider seceding from the United States. That followed the governor of Illinois allegedly holding out for money as he decided whom to appoint to Barack Obama’s former Senate seat. That followed the governor of New York consorting with a call girl.

In California last week, meanwhile, legislators and the governor were soberly -- if belatedly -- working their way through a budget mess, and the mayor of Los Angeles was making the politically astute move of canceling his campaign for higher office.

Tell us again: How is it that California is still seen as the kingdom of weird?

As your mother always told you, reputations are easy to lose and hard to rebuild. But it remains odd that the state got a reputation for wackiness in the first place when, by and large, it has elected to office people garbed by Brooks Brothers.

If you skip Arnold Schwarzenegger -- admittedly a large exception to the rule -- recent California governors have exuded starched respectability. Put Gray Davis, Pete Wilson and George Deukmejian in a room and, if anyone could still identify them, the verdicts would be similar: Not flashy. Not even remotely Californian.

Ditto the state’s senators. Weirdness is not the usual descriptor for Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein. Sure, Boxer recently upbraided a general who called her “Ma’am” instead of “Senator” in a hearing, but many of her male colleagues would take similar umbrage. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) once wheeled on the floor of a party convention to hiss “Senator” when a reporter mistakenly called him by the lowly appellation “Governor.”

Feinstein has spent much of her political career confounding liberals and conservatives alike with her own brand of willful centrism. She has hardly conformed to the role of San Francisco lunatic that opponents tried to assign her as she sought statewide office.

Bill Carrick, a South Carolinian-turned-Californian, mocked the California image that, as of last week anyway, had been co-opted by his former residence.

“We just have a lot of politicians -- we really don’t get credit for this -- who are very stable people,” said Carrick, a Democratic political strategist. “In the modern history of California politics, many people succeed who are sort of regular people who don’t go into any Argentina moments.”

The state has offered up its share of celebrity officeholders. But Iowa sent Gopher from “The Love Boat” to Congress and Georgia forwarded Cooter from the “Dukes of Hazzard” -- and somehow those states managed to remain respectable.

That is, to some extent, because the California stereotypes have been driven by perceptions of the populace, not the politicians.

“We discover everything from Hula hoops to recreational drugs faster than the rest of the country,” Carrick said. “As a consequence, people tend to translate our social culture in stereotypical ways.”

They forget, he added, that “for every Venice Beach, there’s a Visalia.”

Californians sometimes share the misperceptions. Generally speaking, political California is still riven by geography. Inland voters remain more culturally conservative than their laissez faire coastal counterparts.

But demographic changes and the movements of people chasing affordable housing are starting to homogenize the state’s politics. In Kern County, long a conservative bastion, Obama won 40% of the vote. He won 50% in Fresno County. In Los Angeles County, the measure to ban same-sex marriage won, if narrowly.

“While there will always be a distinct sense of self, the political concerns are beginning to meet in the middle,” said Adam Mendelsohn, a strategist for Republican campaigns.

The Central Valley, he noted, is working to attract high-tech and green businesses, lessening the hold that agriculture once had on the political culture there.

“Their economies are not confined to the region the way they were,” he said. “That . . . creates a more common belief set.”

Here, as everywhere else in the nation, elections are most often decided in the suburbs, where jobs, safety and quality of life rank as the biggest concerns. Thus, as the next race for governor nears, Jerry Brown, he of the “Gov. Moonbeam” reputation, is running on cleaning up Oakland as mayor, while simultaneously using his current post as attorney general to round up all manner of accused criminals. Gavin Newsom is running not solely on his support for gay marriage but as a mayor who has curbed San Francisco’s excesses in favor of funding schools and healthcare.

Take heart, however. Nearby, a U.S. senator is digging out from his affair. A governor is embroiled in a nasty divorce; his estranged wife claims he’s had two affairs and fought him for squatting rights in the governor’s mansion. And a high-profile mayor, a former Mafia defense attorney, is considering an independent bid for governor.

Over to you, Nevada.

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cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Each Sunday, The Week examines implications of major stories. It is archived at latimes.com/theweek.