Like Al Gore before him, Democrat John Kerry won California’s
huge electoral vote without much problem or much investment of
either time or money – even while losing most of the rest of
America.
Like Al Gore before him, Democrat John Kerry won California’s huge electoral vote without much problem or much investment of either time or money – even while losing most of the rest of America.
Which means that despite brave talk from Republicans like Gerald Parsky, President Bush’s longtime friend and point man in California, and despite the easy recall election victory of Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his unquestioned influence on the fate of several ballot propositions, this state remains a Democratic bastion.
Both houses of the Legislature still have big Democratic majorities, girlie men or not. Every statewide office except governor is held by a Democrat and there is not much prospect of anything very different in the near future.
Even Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, long known as one of the two or three most consistent liberals in the Senate, had no trouble disposing of Republican Bill Jones, a proven vote-getter who did a creditable job in eight years as secretary of state. Though she’s never considered as formidable a campaigner as her Senate colleague Dianne Feinstein, it was the second time she’s beaten back a former statewide officeholder.
Altogether, little has changed in the results since the fall of 1998, when former state Senate President David Roberti was asked what Republicans could do to regain some of their former political strength in California. “Annex Montana” he replied.
That was a double-edged quip. It referred to the large number of affluent Anglo Californians who have cashed in the equity in their houses and taken their profits to other Western states like Idaho, Arizona, Nevada and Montana, where real estate is much cheaper and politics usually far to the right of California’s.
And it referred in a sideways manner to the massive increase in Latinos eligible to vote, a phenomenon that’s far greater in California than elsewhere.
Latinos provided the margin of victory for ex-Gov. Gray Davis when he won reelection in 2002, a year when millions of Anglo voters stayed home out of sheer disgust with the candidates of both parties. They are the balance that’s kept California solidly Democratic even in the face of large Republican gains in voter registration.
Many have never left the Democratic reservation – except when Schwarzenegger ran in the recall.
In a way, all this is bad for California. After all, this state in seven general elections since 1992 has voted Republican in a top-of-the-ticket race only once – when Pete Wilson won a second term as governor in 1994. During that time, California turned thumbs down on Republican presidential candidates from George H.W. Bush to his son George W. (twice). It rejected a former attorney general, Dan Lungren; a former secretary of state, Bill Jones, and a former state treasurer, Matt Fong. By large margins, it nixed an appointed U.S. senator, John Seymour, and a longtime moderate Republican congressman seeking a Senate seat, Tom Campbell.
This means California is not really in play during presidential elections. Candidates of both big parties spend no time here, except while running their campaign cash vacuum cleaners through financial centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
That’s a big change from the 1980s, when the state was first solidly Republican and then very much in play after the end of the Ronald Reagan era.
What can Republicans do? They’re tried re-organizing their party and they added millions of dollars to its spending this fall. They registered hundreds of thousands of new and converted voters. And still they lost.
Maybe they should try fielding more candidates like Schwarzenegger, whose fiscally conservative policies favoring business and opposing most regulations on it are the essence of laissez faire Republican economic thought. Schwarzenegger balances that approach with a pro-choice stance on abortion, approval of some new gun controls and a live-and-let-live toward gays, even those who want to get married.
Long before California became a Democratic bastion, Republicans who took Schwarzenegger-like approaches to social issues consistently won in this state.
But when California Republicans became known as anti-immigrant, anti-gay rights, anti-abortion and anti-gun control, they moved out of the state’s mainstream.
Schwarzenegger won in part because of his celebrity and charisma, but also because he’s far more in tune with most of California than his fellow Republicans.
The latest results confirm that unless the party moves much farther in his direction, even dull Democrats like Kerry won’t have to expend much money, time or effort to carry this state.
