California Voting
BARONE, MICHAEL
California Voting by Michael Barone ONE THING LAST WEEK’S California primary for governor did not prove is that voters reject candidates who spend heaps of their own money on their campaigns....
...That message ran counter to the sensibility of Democrats rallying to Bill Clinton after the Lewinsky affair became public on January 21...
...Harman’s knowledge of California government and its impact on the lives of voters was thin, and it showed...
...Lungren’s has been to project the sunniness and confidence of the 1950s California in which he grew up...
...Davis, ostentatiously courting Democratic powers like the unions and San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, coasted in...
...Political reporters, few of whom could self-finance a campaign, and other politicians naturally resent such candidates, but voters don’t much care...
...It was the classic three-candidateprimary mistake: Candidate A attacks Candidate B, hurting her but also himself—and helping Candidate C. Checchi presumably figured he had enough money to rehabilitate himself and then if necessary savage Davis...
...Either candidate could win...
...California Democrats, having nominated Feinstein (three times), Barbara Boxer, and Kathleen Brown in the 1990s, felt no compulsion to nominate a woman once again, and Al Checchi’s preparation was much more impressive...
...In Alaska and Washington, the two states that have long used the “all-party primary” system that California instituted last week, voters tend to flock to candidates who face a serious contest...
...Barbara Boxer won just 44 percent of the votes, to 42 percent for Republican contenders Matt Fong and Darrell Issa...
...And there was a danger sign for Democrats...
...The problem for both will be prescribing a cure for the ailing parts of the public sector—notably the state’s incompetent public schools—while sounding a soothing note...
...Lungren, the attorney general, has taken care not to consort with the hard Right...
...You might say he won the election on two days in January, when Dianne Feinstein bowed out of the governor’s race and Monica Lewinsky arrived on the political scene...
...Then, when Harman zoomed up in the polls, Checchi went after her...
...But in the last four weeks Davis, with $9 million raised mostly on the West Side of Los Angeles, and Harman, with over $10 million of her own money, were able to continue spending...
...Davis, the lieutenant This page intentionally left blank - advertisement governor, will presumably pander less to core Democratic constituencies than he did during the primary...
...Both Davis and Republican Dan Lungren are two-term statewide incumbents, positioned for success in times of contentment...
...Still almost unknown, he is now one of the Republicans’ best chances for picking up a Senate seat...
...Can Boxer adjust her appeal to win in a time of voter satisfaction and when her embarrassed silence about the charges against Bill Clinton leaves her claim to principled feminism in tatters...
...In 1992, Boxer won her seat by 48 percent to 43 percent as a protesting feminist, when California voters were angry and eager for change...
...The real story of the California primary is contentment: Two voters out of three told the Los Angeles Times exit poll that California is moving in the right direction...
...In Washington and Alaska, incumbents who fall below 50 percent in the all-party primary often lose in November...
...He is the incumbent treasurer, takes inoffensive stands on the issues, is the son of a longtime state official (secretary of state March Fong Eu, a Democrat), and is of Asian descent in a state that loves to proclaim its diversity...
...House and California assembly in November 1996, similar to the small Democratic edge in the 1996 and 1994 primaries, and smaller than the large Democratic edge in the 1992 primary...
...But he spent most of his money, starting last fall, on commercials preaching the need to shake things up, the need for change...
...Jane Harman entered the race only after Dianne Feinstein bowed out on January 20...
...Hence the big victory for Gray Davis, who has held high public office in California for 23 of the last 25 years...
...The gubernatorial-primary numbers—the fact that many more votes were cast for the three Democratic candidates than for Lungren—probably don’t forecast the final outcome...
...Michael Barone is senior staff editor at Reader’s Digest and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics...
...In the case of the Democrats, who voted in especially large numbers (they had a choice among would-be nominees for governor, unlike the Republicans), something even stronger was at work as well: a fierce determination among party loyalists, who have been rallying around their president, to keep matters as they are...
...Fong, winner of the Republican primary, has notable strengths...
...What about November...
...Davis was also helped by his opponents’ mistakes...
...Davis’s tack has been to criticize outgoing governor Pete Wilson for divisive stands on issues...
...A better measure of party strength: In each of the two down-ballot all-party primaries in which both parties had contests, the Democratic candidates together averaged 49 percent of the vote, the Republicans 47 percent—less than the Democratic edges in elections for the U.S...
Vol. 3 • June 1998 • No. 39
