California Counts
Arnold Steinberg
FRED BARNES IS RIGHT about some things ("California Doesn't Matter," July 31): The short-sighted Proposition 187 (illegal immigration) ended up hurting Republicans, less because the capable Gov. Wilson embraced it, more because he obsessed about it. Indeed, Wilson's overkill television spots offended people long after his easy win over the incoherent Kathleen Brown. But Barnes is wrong about Proposition 209 (race and gender preferences). Absent the Republican party's equivocation, the issue would have helped Republican candidates. Proposition 209 co-author Tom Wood properly feared Bob Dole's late-term exploitation of 209. Campaign chair Ward Connerly eloquently opposed the party's clumsily linking the credible 209 to the discredited 187. Yet Barnes makes the same mistake (linkage) today. The fact that Republican opportunism on 209 backfired has been well documented, contemporaneously and later. Importantly, when an updated Proposition 209 appeared on a Washington state ballot in 1998, it won by a higher margin. The reality is that California's 209 remains an undeniable catalyst for change. Proposition 226, a California ballot measure to let union members control their own political money, was supported broadly until Republicans incompetently made the issue partisan. Otherwise, Prop. 226 would have passed and California "would have mattered." Strangely, Barnes does not give credit to Ron Unz for his Proposition 227, designed to end the state's disastrous bilingual education programs. Surely the revolutionary Prop. 227 showed, among other things, that California does matter. Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan, a "moderate" Republican, had the good sense to support this popular measure while other Republicans ran for cover. Barnes's spin on Proposition 22 (man-woman marriage) is wrong. The campaign buildup was strident and right-wing, seemingly a predictable debacle. But, miraculously, while Republicans finally moved from hysteria, opponents became shrill. Prop. 22's winning mandate for traditional marriage, while not precluding partnerships, surely matters. Barnes writes of venture capitalist Tim Draper's inelegantly conceived Proposition 38 (school "vouchers"), "just imagine if Prop. 38 won . . . California would matter again." But Prop. 38 is on auto-pilot to defeat. Oddly, Barnes acknowledges the potential for Prop. 38 among low-income blacks and Latinos and then fails to recognize their inevitable rejection of it at the polls. Both Barnes and the Prop. 38 campaign are unable to focus on the (overwhelmingly white) risk-averse 70-plus percent of the electorate with no children in public schools. So this well-intentioned rich guy, the politically challenged Tim Draper, will spend $ 25 million of his own money to preside over the largest state's decisive rejection of school choice. Sadly, one way or another, California matters. Barnes remains skeptical of George W.'s prospects in California. Obviously, no one can predict November, but surely Bush has enormously greater prospects here than failed gubernatorial candidate Dan Lungren or school vouchers. While it is true in California, as elsewhere, that often the least incompetent campaign wins, we can count on Democrats to screw up only so often. Waging an effective race, as Lungren and would-be senator Michael Huffington learned, involves more than spending lots of money. Republicans must campaign. Bush seems committed to doing so. And personality and style do matter, sometimes more than issues. Bush can win here. Even in trying, he may stop the hemorrhaging in congressional and legislative districts. Regardless, Gore must never take the state for granted. Even if Bush loses narrowly here, it would mean that he wins the country.
ARNOLD STEINBERG, Calabasas, CA |