Posted on 11/11/2002 5:25:25 PM PST by Jagdgewehr
Californians have an interesting question to ponder following last week's elections: Why have Republicans taken total control in Washington at the very moment Democrats have total power in Sacramento?
California, despite what others might think, is not just one more state. We have 12.1 percent of the U.S. population, 14 million more people than the next largest state, Texas. Our gross domestic product is, by some measures, ahead of that of France.
A regional state – Connecticut, say, or Iowa or Louisiana – out of step with national trends is merely a curiosity, but California is no regional state. We are a nation within a nation, one that shares the diversity, cares and interests of the nation as a whole.
Yet politically we are worlds apart.
Latinos are the difference, some say. They comprise a third of the state's population and vote two-thirds Democratic. Yet Latinos make up a third of strongly Republican Texas as well. And Latinos, though increasing in numbers, are not new to California.
This state has had more registered Democrats than Republicans for decades and yet the Democratic sweep of all eight state offices Tuesday was the first in a half century. The Republican decline is unprecedented. Democrats control the state Senate, 26-14; the Assembly, 48-32; the congressional delegation, 33-20, and have both elected U.S. senators.
The domination of a single party in any democracy is not healthy, but in California it has been inevitable. The state GOP has a bad habit of nominating unelectable candidates, of adopting polarizing positions, and of preferring ideology over success.
Consider last week's election.
To do well in any election you need to be strong at the top. Gov. Gray Davis, an uncharismatic man condemned by voters for money-grabbing campaign habits and for botching the electricity crisis, was ripe for a fall.
In polling last February, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan was preferred by 46 percent of Republicans as the man to beat Davis. Bill Simon got 13 percent in that poll.
If a Republican can win overwhelmingly Democratic Los Angeles, as Riordan did as mayor twice, he can win the state. Trouble was, Riordan had to get by the GOP primary. He had the support of President Bush, dying to be rid of Davis, but on a series of issues, including abortion, gay rights, gun control, environmental protection and affirmative action, Riordan proved too moderate for his party.
Simon, the unknown businessman from the East, crushed him in the March primary, 49 percent to 31 percent.
Well, you ask, what's the point of being a Republican if you don't have core values? Riordan was a Democrat pretending to be a Libertarian, and the GOP rank-and-file was on to him.
Sure. Problem is that California is a modern state, not Alabama or Mississippi where race, gender and sexual rights can be written off without consequence or where a NRA endorsement wins elections.
California has its GOP pockets – El Cajon, Oceanside, Irvine, San Bernardino, Sacramento Valley, to name a few. But to win statewide, candidates need broad appeal, and that's where the GOP's ideological fixations doom it to second-class status.
It's new for California to have one of its major parties in such sorry shape, and it needs to be fixed. Single-party democracy is a contradiction in terms. There was a time when state Republicans – despite the Democrats' edge in registrations – elected governors and senators, and it can happen again.
Not, however, if the state party remains indistinguishable from the South Carolina GOP.
California is not the South, but why should its Republican Party be in worse shape than New York Republicans, for example? The two states are similar in many ways: wealthy, populous, multiethnic, mixed rural-megalopolis, mixed industry-agriculture, mostly Democratic.
Yet New York easily re-elected moderate Republican Gov. George Pataki Tuesday. Pataki even won 40 percent of New York City, a Democratic city that gave George W. Bush only 11 percent of the vote in 2000. Other GOP moderates – Christy Whitman, Lincoln Chafee, John Rowland, William Weld, Paul Cellucci – have won across the Northeast recently, taking both governorships and Senate seats.
In every case, and unlike their California counterparts, they won by being moderates on issues of social and environmental rights.
The danger of having a powerless GOP is that California is penalized when Republicans run national affairs, as they do today.
The White House doesn't bother to campaign for California candidates – like Simon – who have no chance, and in presidential elections writes off our 55 electoral votes. Our congressional delegation, representing one-eighth of the U.S. population, is unable to give us the Washington representation to which we are entitled.
The Republican Party's national strength today is rooted in Southern extremism. Outside the Bible Belt, the party thrives and influences events only by appealing to the center. In the Northeast and much of the Midwest, the GOP has learned the lesson. In California it has not.
Yes, but whose middle?
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