Despite Pent-Up Demand, Don’t Look for Democrats to Veer Left

In the rosy afterglow of last November’s election results, California Democrats rejoiced at the prospect of controlling both houses of the state Legislature, by increased margins, and having, for the first time since 1982, a governor from their own party in the Capitol’s corner office.

But despite 16 years of pent-up Democratic legislative activism, liberal fervor to resuscitate bills vetoed by Republican Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson--revisiting radical health-care reform, gay-rights issues, stringent environmental regulations--will be muted considerably by the cold reality of fin de siecle politics. California Democrats are not about to throw themselves off the deep end, or rather the left end, for several reasons.

One interesting result of term limits has been a Legislature that looks more like California, both demographically and ideologically. The November election showed Democratic politicians finally coming to terms with a state less liberal than it used to be. Republicans, on the other hand, stumbled because they ignored the reality that California is less conservative than the GOP thought.

Some items on what once was “the liberal agenda” have already moved into the mainstream. For most of the state’s voters, reproductive choice has become a virtual nonissue. Conservative GOP legislators have been, by and large, marginalized on this front.

Gun control has helped Democrats move to the center on the crime issue; antigun messages aided their drive to victories last fall. The recent state Supreme Court ruling upholding a West Hollywood ordinance that banned the sale of cheap handguns confirms the climate is right for Democrats to continue efforts to rein in guns. Democratic lawmakers will resurrect a handgun ban they passed, but saw vetoed by Wilson last year. Wilson also vetoed a more inclusive assault-weapons ban. Both Gov.-elect Gray Davis and Atty Gen.-elect Bill Lockyer campaigned in favor of broader restrictions, and legislative Democrats will likely act to pass them.

Just as the current political dynamic supports some elements of Democratic activism, there are also many practical and political constraints on over-the-top behavior.

First, there is the innate caution of California’s new governor. Davis relishes reminding skeptics it took him 24 years to move 15 feet down the hall of the state Capitol and into the governor’s suite. This is not a wild and crazy guy. And he is savvy enough to have learned from the beating President Bill Clinton took when he overreached his centrist “mandate” during his first two years in office.

There will likely be no radical policy initiatives from Davis, no veering left, as Clinton did with his grandiose scheme to restructure health care. Nor will the lesson of Washington’s excesses be lost on California’s Democratic legislators, who saw their party lose control of Congress--and, for a time, the state Assembly--in the wake of that early Clinton debacle.

For Democrats who might need more behavioral modification, term limits give Davis a powerful tool. Lawmakers who must leave office will need new jobs, and the new governor will have many appointments to make during his tenure, from Cabinet level down. That will give this governor a lot of clout with the Legislature.

Still, Capitol gnomes are buzzing about the conflicting signals the famously careful Davis is sending by waffling and then caving on a pay raise for state workers.

During the campaign, Davis indicated he wouldn’t take a pay raise unless rank- and-file state employees, who’d gone without a cost-of-living increase for four years, got one. Not a surprising stance for Davis, who counted public-employee unions among his staunchest supporters--even during the early, “road-kill” days of his gubernatorial effort.

But the governor-elect took his raise, minus a symbolic 5% cut, while calling the workers’ pay hike “problematic” in light of budget uncertainties. Labor leaders were furious, and there was talk of picketing Davis’ inauguration. Suddenly, the budget forecast brightened enough to allow Davis’ new finance director, Tim Gage, to assure state workers a pay increase.

Uncharacteristically incautious? When you think it through, denying state workers some increase is probably the riskiest thing Davis could do. He owes liberals little; he owes labor a whole lot.

The state budget is always a check on legislative exuberance. The fundamental reality is that much of the pent-up Democratic activism revolves around money. The specter of a $4-billion surplus morphing into a deficit of at least $1 billion, coupled with the need to enlist Republicans to garner a two-thirds vote to pass the budget, should cool any ardor for big-ticket programs.

If budget constraints are not enough to deter hungry activists, perhaps this will curb their zeal: Davis is as likely to raise taxes to fund a liberal wish list as he is to repeal the death penalty.

There are other factors that should moderate Democratic policy goals. The Democrats are unlikely to want to take any chances on jeopardizing their legislative majorities in the run-up to the 2000 elections. Those contests will decide which party controls the Legislature in 2001, when the next redistricting is done.

In addition, the political plans of one of the Legislature’s powerful leaders will weigh heavily. Assembly Speaker Antonio R. Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) is termed out in 2000. He has not been shy in flirting with a possible run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2001. He’ll need to reach out beyond his Latino base to build the kind of multiethnic coalition that wins L.A. elections. Villaraigosa is already alerting liberal supporters that he will be “moving right,” toward the “moderate middle” where the high-propensity voters of the San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles are found.

There is no better example of the centripetal force of the political center than the issue of education. On Dec. 22, Assembly Republicans proposed their own school-reform package. It looked much like Davis’ plan. School vouchers, a GOP shibboleth opposed by most Democrats, weren’t even mentioned.

The political reach of liberal Democrats, like that of their GOP colleagues, has been determined by the simple arithmetic of winning. Like Republicans, if they want to participate in policy, they need to huddle in the middle with everyone else.