Democatic Convention : Veteran Democrats Note Twists, Turns in Conventions : Politics: Witnesses to last week's event, Edelman, Berman and Waxman reflect on the unity, divisiveness and optimism of past gatherings.

By ALAN C. MILLER

July 20, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK — Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman was one of the rare delegates in last week’s Democratic National Convention who could recall being involved in actually choosing a presidential nominee rather than just rubber-stamping the primary results.

For Edelman, a veteran of three decades of Democratic activism, stage-managed, television-age events such as the recent convention became old hat long ago. This was his eighth convention since 1960, when he was a floor demonstrator for Adlai E. Stevenson, who was edged out by a young senator named John F. Kennedy for the party nomination at the Los Angeles Sports Arena.

“When we demonstrated on the floor for Stevenson, we were trying to influence the delegates,” the 61-year-old Edelman recalled here Friday, hours after the balloons dropped and the cheering stopped. “The outside world did not count, or it did not count very much.”

Since then, of course, conventions have become coronations for candidates who prevail in primary elections. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton even announced his choice of Tennessee Sen. Al Gore as his running mate four days before the conclave opened, removing even that traditional element of drama from this year’s proceedings.

But Edelman, while conceding that something has indeed been lost in the process, disagrees with those who say these much-ballyhooed quadrennial gatherings are anachronistic.

“You’ve got to do it,” said Edelman, who represents much of the San Fernando Valley and was here as a Clinton delegate.

“You’ve got to bring people together. It’s a time when the media pays attention. The candidate can define himself. The platform is adopted. While it may not be significant, it still serves a great purpose for the party.

“The convention gives people a sense that everyone has a common purpose, a purpose bigger than yourself, which is to help elect these people. You’re connected with people.”

Other Valley-area convention veterans agreed that, despite the predictability of the outcome, each one provides twists and turns for the party and its candidate.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) also attended his first convention in 1960 as “a kid with banners” backing Stevenson. Berman was a 19-year-old UCLA student at the time. This year, as a super-delegate selected by the party, he was participating in his sixth convention.

Standing beside the sprawling California delegation on the convention floor at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday evening, shortly after Jesse Jackson had addressed the gathering, Berman reflected on Jackson’s role this year as compared to 1984 and 1988. At those conventions, party nominees spent much time and effort to obtain Jackson’s support.

“I was disgusted to see Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis jump through hoops, make deals and bend over backwards in a way I thought was demeaning to their persons and destructive to their candidacies,” said Berman, who represents the East Valley.

“Bill Clinton did it right and Jesse Jackson responded right. Bill Clinton showed strength and Jesse Jackson showed class.”

In the past 32 years, Berman, now 51, has yet to back a Democrat at a convention who went on to capture the White House. He hopes to break that streak this year; he supported Clinton here.

After supporting Stevenson in 1960, Berman missed the 1964 convention, when Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated on his way to being reelected. Berman headed the steering committee that selected California’s delegation for then-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s quixotic presidential bid in 1976, when former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter was nominated.

As many here were acutely aware, Carter has been the only Democrat to gain the White House in the last six presidential elections.

The convention Berman most regrets, he said, was the divisive, tear gas-filled 1968 session when he was a president of the California Young Democrats and a delegate for Sen. Eugene McCarthy, champion of the anti-Vietnam War forces.

The nominee that year was Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president, who refused to disavow the Administration’s war record upon being nominated. Humphrey lost narrowly to Richard M. Nixon that November.

“I just remember that if those of us who had been for Bobby Kennedy,” who was assassinated the night he won the California primary that year, “or Gene McCarthy had moved a little quicker to close in behind Hubert Humphrey, we might not have had Richard Nixon,” Berman said.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) was shoulder-to-shoulder with Berman in 1960 as a Stevenson supporter. Indeed, the two allies met through their activism on behalf of the former Illinois governor and liberal standard-bearer.

This was Waxman’s sixth convention, too. He supported Brown in 1976, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 1980, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart in 1984, Dukakis in 1988 and Clinton this year.

“The one that was the most optimistic--where there was a feeling of real unity and confidence for the party’s future and the election--was in 1976,” Waxman, 52, recalled.

“You felt it on the last day when Carter joined hands with all his opponents and Martin Luther King Jr.’s father and all the Democratic big shots of that time and of the past and it was like a healing of the wounds of the Vietnam War when the party was split.”

Edelman, a supervisor since 1974, compared the feeling at this year’s upbeat convention to 1976, when he was among a minority of Californians who backed Carter at Madison Square Garden.

That year, he said, the Democrats’ hopes were buoyed by the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon’s resignation and succession by Gerald R. Ford, whom Carter defeated. This year, he said, the party’s optimism is fed by the economic decline that has plagued President Bush.

But Edelman also ruefully recalled that the Democrats expected to win with Dukakis when they left Atlanta four years ago.

“People always think they’re going to win,” Edelman said, reflecting on long, often painful, experience. “You know that’s not always the case.”