The Rise and Fall of Issues--Even Education

SACRAMENTO —  Gov. Gray Davis cleaned up last year railing about California’s sorry schools. Pete Wilson left the governor’s office on a high note after morphing into an education reformer.

For some time, education has been the winning issue for California politicians. Candidates who ignored it--like Dan Lungren last year--were themselves ignored by voters.

But now at least one pollster believes that the issue has peaked and soon will hit the skids as the voters’ top concern. “Health care is charging to the top,” asserts Steve Kinney of Hermosa Beach, a GOP operative and pollster for 30 years. However, “infrastructure is the fastest growing issue,” he adds, and probably will be No. 1 by the 2002 election.

That’s assuming the economy keeps booming. If not, Kinney foresees voters fretting more about taxes, crime and jobs--as they did earlier in the decade.

Kinney’s theory about education as a voter motivator is that the politicians--especially Davis--will talk themselves out of a good issue, like animals overgrazing.

After the Legislature passes the governor’s modest reform proposals, the feds kick in more education money and all the pols beat their chests about how they’re fixing the schools, voters will believe the problem is being handled, Kinney predicts. Contributing to this complacency will be the voters’ memory of having passed a record $9.2-billion school bond issue last November.

“Once it’s perceived that a problem has been talked about enough and is being solved,” Kinney says, “people focus on a new issue.”

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As evidence, Kinney points to illegal immigration and affirmative action, hot issues that cooled after passage of Propositions 187 and 209. Crime also lost political punch after voters passed the three-strikes initiative.

Kinney bases his analyses on the voters’ intensity of concern. He doesn’t just ask people which issues they consider the most important, as pollsters usually do. He asks how important a specific issue is to them “personally--on a scale of one to 10.” Then he counts only the “10s.” The others can be swayed too easily to another view, he contends.

Kinney’s polling at the end of 1998 showed education still at No. 1, but health care climbing; 80% called education a “10,” compared to 67% for health care. Crime was 35% and taxes 28%.

“Education will slip to fourth or fifth by midyear,” he predicts.

Such public passivity is hard to imagine, however, given the latest bad news--screamed in headlines all over the state--that California ranks next to last nationally in fourth-grade reading skills.

Davis’ pollster, Paul Maslin, agrees with Kinney about the trend, but not the timing. “Over a five-year period, he’s right,” Maslin says, “But I’m not sure he’s right over the next two years. I really believe we’re a long way from this [education] thing playing out.”

Maslin does buy the thesis that health care and infrastructure--highways, potholes, water--will escalate as political issues.

“As the baby boomers get older, health care will become a lot more personal and worrisome,” he notes. “And the state’s population is growing again. Well, guess what? We’re going to have to figure out a way to build not only more schools, but more water pipes, more roads. . . . Is this state broken or not?”

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But the new governor hasn’t been focusing on much except promoting his school bills, mostly at campaign-style road shows.

Davis did announce in his State of the State address that he would create a “Commission on Building for the 21st Century,” under Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, to develop an infrastructure master plan. The panel was given a May 1 deadline to report back. But two months later, Davis still has not appointed the commission members.

The two Democratic legislative leaders seem more on the cutting edge of future issues.

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles is sponsoring legislation to expand health care coverage for the working poor. There are 7 million uninsured Californians, he notes, and 40% live in L.A. County. “Health care should be a right, not a privilege,” asserts the potential mayoral candidate.

Senate leader John Burton of San Francisco is pushing a $16-billion bond package to modernize the state’s transportation system. Besides easing congestion, the liberal lawmaker says his proposal would boost California’s economy. “And if you don’t have a growing economy that produces enough revenue to take care of working people and the poor,” he adds, “I have real emotional problems.”

Davis should get out front and lead on these emerging issues, show he can handle more than one problem at a time. The Legislature won’t wait. And if the pollster is right, the public may not either.