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Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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August 18, 2003

The race to 40 percent

The political buzz at the moment is that Arnold is in trouble. And on the surface, his campaign looks shaky right now. But the deeper fault lines in this race still favor him. Other than Ueberroth, who has yet to be heard from, Arnold is the only candidate in the field who has the potential to win significant crossover votes while gaining a large share of the independent vote. That makes him the candidate to beat unless he simply runs a terrible campaign.

Unlike many of my colleagues, I think the winner in this race is going to clear 40 percent. I see the Democrats coalescing around Cruz. And I think the Republicans, or most of them, will eventually rally around one candidate.

No one is going to overshadow Schwarzenegger’s personality. But with pressure from Simon and McClintock mounting on the right and Bustamante looming on his left, it’s clear that Arnold is being squeezed on California’s ideological spectrum. The irony is that he’s probably perfectly positioned in the mainstream, even if so far he has done almost nothing to communicate that fact to the voters. Poll after poll and election after election have suggested that Californians want limited government that works -- with taxes as low as possible. They are willing to consider higher taxes, but they want to know the money is going for something they value, especially education. They support abortion rights, gay rights, and some gun control. They favor smart government regulation that protects the environment and they are becoming more supportive of health care programs for the poor. They hate the idea of special interests controlling the Capitol.

Simon and McClintock are to the right of the California mainstream on social issues and the environment, so they are running on one issue – smaller government. While I share their reflexes, polls suggest that Californians are unwilling to give up any of the government services they get now in exchange for the ideal of limited government. And while both candidates can credibly claim that there is still plenty of waste to cut in state government, I don’t think the budget can be balanced by cutting waste alone. The gap is too large, and most of the money is in transfer payments to program recipients, not bureaucrats. Californians are simply demanding more services than their taxes can support. The state must either cut programs or raise taxes or both.

Bustamante is in line with Californians on most social issues, but probably is to their left on taxes. He is set to propose a big tax increase this week as part of his plan to balance the budget. That will be a good chance to see how he plays. Gray Davis did something similar in January and then, when the heat got too strong, ran for cover. But Bustamante has the advantage of playing to only one party. If he can get the lion’s share of the Democratic votes in this race, he can win while the Republicans carve up their votes and the independents scatter to the winds.

Which leaves Arnold. Schwarzenegger is never going to get the hard-right or the hard-left vote, but with an effective campaign he can capture the middle. The fastest growing group of voters in California right now is the one made up of those who belong to no party or one of the minor parties. In the most recent Field Poll, Arnold led Bustamante 27-14 among this group, with more than half of them undecided or favoring minor candidates.

Right now, Field, based on its interviews with voters, is projecting turnout at 45 percent Democrat, 40 percent Republican and 15 percent independents and others, which is almost exactly what it was last November. If that held, and Arnold got 70 percent of the Republican vote, half the independents and 10 percent of Democrats, he’d finish with an even 40 percent of the total vote.

Bustamante could still top that, but he would have to come close to matching how Davis did last year among their own party. According to the LA Times exit poll in 2002, Davis got 81 percent of the Democrats’ votes, while getting 39 percent of the non-partisans and 12 percent of the Republicans. It’s hard to see Cruz getting even 5 percent of the Republican vote in this field, and he will probably not top 30 percent among the independents. If that’s the case, he would need to hold about 75 percent of the Democratic vote to clear 40 percent overall.

If Arnold can move up to either 15 percent of the Democratic vote or 80 percent of the Republican vote, he would begin to close in on 45 percent and be all but unstoppable. And that assumes that the turnout holds to what Field’s respondents are telling the pollsters now.

Even if Arnold collapses, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that gets either McClintock or Simon to 40 percent. They are unlikely to pull many Democrats or independents and would thus need close to 100 percent of the Republican vote behind them. Not going to happen.