The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Carter's California Politics

JIM LEHRER: Good evening from San Francisco where later this evening President Ford and Jimmy Carter will exchange rhetoric on foreign affairs and national defense. It`s the second of their nationally televised debates, San Francisco being the place because it was here that the United Nations was formed over 30 years ago. But after the debate, both men will move from the California symbolism to the real thing, because California with its 45 electoral votes is the critical state in this election. And it`s getting close here according to the polls, about the same as it is nationally. Carter started with a .good lead over Ford, but that lead has been slowly eroding. Back in the Carter glory days of August, the last time he came to San Francisco, he stepped off the plane with a 20 point lead in the polls in California and in the nation. It was a happy, optimistic time.

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JIMMY CARTER: I don`t think we have any political problems right now. We`ve got a good organization building up here. We`ve got a unified party. I`ve got a very close relationship with the Governor, with Senator Cranston, and Speaker McCarthy and others. I`ll be running on the same ticket with John Tunney. And I think we have a good prospect in California to win in November.

JOHN TUNNEY: I`ve been, today, with Governor Carter throughout the state, Los Angeles and here, and it`s very clear to me, with the response that we`ve gotten from the crowd, that we not only have a great campaigner in Governor Carter, but that when he gets elected that we are going to have really one of the great Presidents this United States has ever had. And I`m awfully pleased to be running with him, I`ll tell you.

LEHRER: But tonight, neither Tunney nor Carter himself are as happy or as all fired optimistic as they were then. And tonight we examine what`s happened to the Carter campaign in California and why the smiles are gone. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: I think the vanishing smiles reflect Carter`s vanishing lead, especially and lately in the highly regarded California poll. You mentioned a minute ago, last August Governor Carter led President Ford by 20 percent in California. But in the latest figures, released last night, Carter`s lead has been cut by 16 percent, and he now holds only a narrow, four percent edge over the President among those Californians who are most likely to vote on November 2nd.

Carter`s downward trend in California is not unique. Every major, national poll has also shown President Ford to be closing the gap. The worst news for Carter comes from pollster Daniel Yankelovich, who reported this week in Time Magazine that the national race is now in a dead heat. On the other hand, independent pollster Lou Harris, and Carter`s own pollster Pat Kodell find Carter still nine points ahead of Ford. The most recent, national survey, our own PBS Roper poll, completed only yesterday, also shows Carter with a narrow, four percent lead, but finds almost a fourth of all voters still undecided.

Let`s take a closer look at these polls and what they mean with William Bicker, Director of the State Data Program of the University of California at Berkeley. The State Data Program is the repository for all the results of those California polls taken by Mervin Field.

Mr.-Bicker, what do you make of this huge loss in about a month for Mr.Carter?

WILLIAM BICKER: First, let me say that this is based on analysis of patterns from previous elections rather than the current poll. Access to that poll is limited totally to the media subscribers, and we don`t obtain them until some time later.

MacNEIL: I don`t quite follow that.

BICKER: In other words, I don`t want people assuming that I have immediate access to the current poll. I don`t. I can give you what I believe to have occurred - because it`s occurred many other times in California - on the basis of previous analyses. And it is quite simply this: Carter did very poorly in the Primary. What we found in California is that once you support someone in the Primary, you do not break away from him. If, however, the man you supported loses, you`re sort of free. In fact you are forced to be free. You`ve got a re-decision. You have to matte another choice. Governor Brown, as you know, has been supported by a wide spectrum of the California electorate: Conservatives, Moderates and Liberals. I think Carter`s major problem in the most recent poll is due to the reduction in support he is getting from the Moderates and Conservatives that supported Brown, and now, given particularly the strong emphasis on New Dealism, perhaps to some extent the Playboy interview, other indications of a Liberal character, most importantly, no doubt, the Mondale nomination, placed him outside, placed him to the Left, and therefore, the Conservative and Moderate Democrats feel free to start moving towards Ford. Ford, if you will remember, also was defeated very soundly in California, and therefore for a long time, there was a decision-making process which had to go on in the minds of the Republican voters, particularly until the convention, as to whether or not they would support Ford. Ford, however, had someone to his right, and then adopted a rather, I would say, strong, Conservative platform. This has solidified a support among Republicans, no doubt Moderates as well, because he isn`t as "extreme or as to the Right" as Ronald Reagan, so therefore, he is highly acceptable to the totality of the Republican Party; doesn`t look nearly as Conservative as he does. And also probably very acceptable to Moderates and Conservatives who have, in this state in the past, supported Yorty and others, and they are ready to switch.

MacNEIL: Are you suggesting that this is the result of a shift to Ford, or just a shift away from Carter?

BICKER: I`m saying it`s a little bit of both. I`m saying Ford has the Reagan campaign which gave Ford a perspective even though he is sitting on a very conservative platform, he`s not being that far right. So, to those people who supported Ronald Reagan, or who dearly wanted Gerry Brown to be the nominee, they don`t have to look at Ford as the most extreme, right- wing choice. To those people who supported Governor Brown and were of Moderate and Conservative identification, Carter had very comparable attitudes he was expressing, a very comparable program - the "trust me" theme, the general fuzziness on issues - going for him when he did have that 53 percent. This dropped 12 points, and that`s a very significant drop. It shows l) that the support of people who didn`t back you but backed your opposition in the Primary is not that solid, and 2) if he keeps moving to "the Left" and drops his "trust me" reorganization, and continues to be sort of New Deal programmatic, particularly with Mondale doing the same sort of thing, he is very likely to lose California.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Terry O`Connell managed Senator Henry Jackson`s successful Primary campaigns in New York and Massachusetts before joining Carter`s staff. Today he is the Director of the Carter effort here in California.

Mr. O`Connell, how do you account for Carter`s severe drop in the polls?

TERRY O`CONNELL: I think that you have heard a pretty accurate assessment of what has happened. I think that the salient point, the significant point is that that`s based on perception rather than reality. I mean people perceive that this has happened with Jimmy Carter, that he has moved to the Left . . .

LEHRER: Isn`t that what politics is all about though?

O`CONNELL: Absolutely. It`s a lot of perception. I think that in reality that hasn`t happened, and I think in the last ten days or so - ten or 13 days - that we have reversed that trend, and I think have reversed that perception somewhat. Simply the kind of things that Jimmy has been doing and has been saying I think has reversed that appearance of a drift to the Left.

LEHRER: You know you and your organization have been criticized on the basis that the organization really isn`t working very effectively here in California. As the man who is in charge, do you agree?

O`CONNELL: I think that that`s often the point of view, and the point of view of going out and doing a lot of persuasion efforts and things of that nature, and we haven`t done that, but we haven`t planned to do that with the limited amount of money that`s available because of the federal election law.

LEHRER: Is money a problem?

O`CONNELL: Money is a serious problem.

LEHRER: Give me an example of where it has hurt you.

O`CONNELL: The obvious area is signs, buttons, bumper stickers, the obvious paraphernalia of campaigns. There just aren`t any this year. Headquarters and things of that nature are unified of necessity because of sharing of costs.

LEHRER: Ford has that same problem though, doesn`t he?

O`CONNELL: That`s absolutely true. I think that there`s a very low profile for the Ford campaign in California too. They do have some advantages in that the Republican Party is more centrally organized, better financed, more used to running unified campaign efforts.

LEHRER: Is Jerry Brown hurting the campaign?

O`CONNELL: I would like everyone to hurt the campaign like Jerry Brown has been hurting ours. He`s been very, very, very helpful.

LEHRER: But it has been very lukewarm, hasn`t it?

O`CONNELL: I don`t think so. I think again that`s a matter of perception. We were talking about this last night with people. Jerry, I would venture to say, has done as much if not more than any elected official for Jimmy Carter.

LEHRER: Then why is he perceived as having hurt the Carter campaign and would cause me and others to ask you that question in the first place?

O`CONNELL: I think very simply, this. The popular conception - conception as opposed to perception - is that Gerry Brown would be aided by Jimmy Carter losing, and therefore he can run again in 1980.

I think that that is politically not accurate. I think politically he would be hurt substantially by Jimmy Carter losing.

LEHRER: What about the point that Mr. Bicker made a minute ago - the perception of Carter being too Liberal early on, and the selection of Mondale - has that hurt?

O`CONNELL: I think that that`s changed his image. You act like before the convention he was getting large numbers of Republican voters that were voting for him. Now part of that was because Conservatives viewed Jimmy as Conservative, Moderates as Moderate, Liberals as Liberal. And part of it was because there were people that said, "If Gerry Ford doesn`t get it, I`ll vote for Carter," or "if Reagan doesn`t get it, I`ll vote for Carter." I think that we were stating, prior to the convention, that we expected a major shift in the polls, and that we expected it to be a very close race, basically along Democratic and Republican lines.

LEHRER: All right, thank you, Mr. O`Connell. Robin?

MacNEIL: Rollin Post is the political reporter for the station we are broadcasting from, KQED-TV in San Francisco. Mr. Post, how do you explain this huge slippage, almost a landslide against Carter if the polls are to be believed?

ROLLIN POST: I think, Robin, you remember you and I discussed this on this program right after or during the Democratic convention, right after, I think, the nomination, and you asked me about Carter in California and the West, and I said that the greatest problem area with Carter at that moment was probably the far West and particularly California, because nobody knew who he was. He had not spent much time out here. Now the campaign is beginning to form up. In September all of a sudden the California voters were getting some image of Jimmy Carter. He started to be active; he got on all the nightly newscasts; he was reported daily in the newspapers and the image has not been a very good one. Admittedly, I think a lot of the issues have been trivial, but nevertheless they have had impact. Playboy Magazine, a confusion over his stand regarding the head of the F.B.I., Mr. Kaley; what he would or wouldn`t do with it; what his tax program was or wasn`t. I think this is beginning to take its toll in California now that the people are beginning to firm up some opinions, during the month of September. And all of what Terry said, that there are problems with money and so on, are absolutely correct, but a lot of it, and a lot of their slippage here, is due to their own, fault. They had a lead time that Ford did not have; Ford`s convention was not over until the 20th of August. Carter had a convention over in the middle of July. In New York, at that time, they were told by their own California people, the Carter people in California, and by the Brown people in California, that, "You have got to start putting together a campaign in California, and you have got to start right away at least on an organizational level. You are at least free of one problem that the Republicans are going to have. The Brown forces are not going to split and run; they are willing to cooperate. You have a unified party in California. A very unusual situation in California anyway. You do not have the bitterness that is engendered between Reagan and Ford. Go to work." July ended and nothing happened; August came and went, and they played softball down in Plains, and nothing happened. The Democratic Party sat in California for six weeks, waiting for somebody to give them some marching orders. Finally they selected Terry and they sent him out here to try and put together a campaign starting in September. They were told in California, "You run California campaigns with Californians. Don`t bring out outsiders except as a liaison operation." They said, "Oh well, Kennedy did that in `60." Kennedy, indeed, did bring somebody out, but the fact was, Californians were in charge of the campaign. You cannot put together a California operation successfully in a short time in a state this large with such a diverse Democratic Party operation.

MacNEIL: Mr. O`Connell, why so late, and why you; why not a Californian?

O`CONNELL: I think that Rollin mentioned two things, one of which was really an illegality for us to do, and the other which bordered on foolishness for us as far as money is concerned. The campaign was programmed because of the shortage of money to begin on or about August 15th. I was, in fact, selected on August 13th to come out here. There was very little that you could do organizationally prior to that, because to organize costs some amount of money, and the money just isn`t there to spend. When you run out of money in this campaign, you run out, period. There is no going into debt; there is no borrowing; no running up a deficit. Secondly, it is very difficult this year to do certain things because we cannot give orders to the state party; we cannot direct in any way anything that will eventually end up in expenditures. That is illegal. Those are difficulties we have to work with. I makes it very tough, and it makes it very hard. I think that some of the factionalism in California coupled with the fact that we have a short time to do things in and a very small amount of money, and we knew what we wanted to do, combined to make it necessary to send someone who a) knew the plan, the Carter plan, and secondly, was not involved in those kind of activities. Point of fact: that coincided with the recommendation of Gerry Brown.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: William Lockyer is a Democratic State Assemblyman from Oakland; he is Chairman of the Assembly`s Labor Relations Committee, and also Mr. Lockyer was a Carter Delegate to the Democratic convention in New York last July.

Mr. Lockyer, you are a local official, a state official here; you are a Democrat; you are very concerned I am sure, about how the Democratic Party as a whole is going to affect things. What is your view of what is happening to the Democratic Party and the Carter campaign in California?

WILLIAM LOCKYER: First it should be understood that the Democratic Party in this state is virtually non-existent. There are small duchies, diverse elements scattered here and there; there is no cohesive party like people in the East are accustomed to. Secondly, I am not terribly surprised by the drift in the polls. I kind of expected that as Carter and the issues became more and more defined as we approached election day. I also believe that there is a new element that we need to consider, and that is that the rules of the game are significantly different this year than ever before, and political analysis, much like generals programming wars, tend to look at the last war and extrapolate, and they are waiting for an explosion of activity like the McGovern campaign. It isn`t going to happen. One of the peculiar things in my mind is that in an effort to purify politics, we may well have killed it. What the campaigns have both had to do is to lop off all of the expenditures that involve people and buy big media. But the visible things, the headquarters and bumper strips and so on that political reporters used to kind of use as a thermometer to gage the level of activity is gone.

LEHRER: But the point is though, it was Carter who in August had a 20 percent lead. It was not Ford. And Ford is confronted with the same problems that you have just laid out, that Mr. O`Connell, everybody has laid out just in terms of what the law has done to change the operation of a campaign. Specifically, looking at the Carter campaign now, what mistakes do you think Carter has made, or the campaign has made in California, or do you attribute everything just to a situation that couldn`t be helped?

LOCKYER: Much of it was inevitable I think, because of the timing of the original Primary. Carter did not spend very much time in California, really wasn`t . . .

LEHRER: Should he have spent more time in California?

LOCKYER: I wish he had, but of course, he was fighting in Ohio and fighting in Pennsylvania and so on, and it was very hard to move West at that time. So, here we wind up with a kind of un defined candidate late in the game, trying to communicate effectively to voters what he is all about and what kind of a Democrat he is.

It is hard right now.

LEHRER: Are you concerned about what the faith of the people below him on the ticket may be if things don`t get together?

LOCKYER: Californians are characteristically ticket splitters, and I think most of the other local Democrats feel that they will do well independently of the national ticket, but we strongly support Carter and want him to be the next President.

LEHRER: All right. Thank you. Robin?

MacNEIL: Let`s go back to the Brown factor for a moment. Rollin Post, is Governor Brown`s warmth, coolness, whatever it is, cooperation, holding himself back for another year - whatever the factor is, has that been a factor in Mr. Carter`s slide here?

POST: I don`t know. I don`t think so. Brown has not been really out front with Carter, but nobody has because Carter hasn`t been around. There`s only so much that the Governor can do not being the candidate. In that I am sympathetic. I detect, over the last few days, that Brown has warmed up more than he was, and he has gotten his engine going a little faster than it had been for Carter. I think that he is making the appearances with Carter; I think he is showing up with Carter; he met Carter at the airport the other night when Carter arrived. So I think there is some display of that. But the fact is, and I seem to be the only one at the table that thinks this, but the fact is that Brown was and is the Democratic Party at the moment in California. He is the most popular, single Democrat in the state. The Brown forces and those who like Brown very much and would like him to be President are obviously not going to rush back to California from New York and busily organize campaigns for Jimmy Carter unless they are asked to. The problem was nobody asked them to, so there they sat, and there they did nothing until they were finally pushed into doing something. Now, pushed they were, and they will respond, but they are not going to volunteer this.

MacNEIL: Mr. Bicker, you were nodding at that. What`s that? Do you

BICKER: Yes, I agree quite strongly with that. I disagree a little bit with something in Lockyer`s statement about the total absence of a Democratic Party. When I look at the Party - either Party - it resides in the Legislature. We have a very good, well staffed, high powered legislature. It so happens, if you look at the information, that every term they are in, they usually gain five percentage points above their own Party`s turnout. This is just the opposite of what happens in other parts of the country. These are the Parties, and I would say that Carter`s first move should have been to work through the Speaker. With him the Governor has extremely good working relationships. And mobilize that element of the Party, and he had an in place organization, the only one in the state. The only campaigns that I know of that are going on are those for the few, contested Assembly, State Senate, and Congressional seats with the staff available on both sides out of either the Majority or Minority Leaders.

MacNEIL: You all make this sound as though it`s organizational problems, and yet the poll results are rather the same as they are for the country as a whole, and I am just wondering why are these problems peculiar to California, or is it something else?

BICKER: Maybe we see them, and we don`t see them in the rest of the country. For one, just a quick point. I get a call about every three days in the position I occupy, asking me for precinct data for the past 15 elections in California. Well, it so happens that according to California electoral law and population shifts, precinct boundaries in California change on the average of 30 percent in each general election. So the only thing to analyze over the span of 30 years in California is a 52 year old Californian. Easterners don`t seem to understand this. So they send people out, and they say, "All right. Where is the precinct data for Los Angeles County?" You`ve got it. It`s sitting in front of you. It`s that map. It takes them about four weeks to find out that. It takes them a few weeks to find out where the real power is which is in the Senate, Assembly and Congress, and by that time, I think they are in a little bit of hot water. Now there may be corollary problems in other states, but we see this in particular here, and it usually happens.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes. Gentlemen, there is another factor we understand in California in November besides the Gerry Brown factor, and it is called the Proposition 14 factor which, for residents not of California, to shorthand it: it is a measure that is designed to open up labor practices in the farm country; it is very controversial; Carter has endorsed it. How important do you think that could be in deciding this election in November, Mr. O`Connell?

O`CONNELL: I think that it is of significant importance to us, and I think that it has significant impact on our relationships to the Assembly campaign committee that Mr. Bicker was referring to.

We start our relationships with them before I actually arrived in California, by telephone, and have been tying in with the Assembly races and State Senate races, Congressional races for that matter - whatever the significant race is.

LEHRER: And this 14 is very important.

O`CONNELL: It`s important because the Speaker, Leo McCarthy, who is on of the Carter campaign co-chairpeople, has taken a negative position on Prop. 14, and there is obviously a division in the Assembly on Proposition 14. Those from rural areas have generally been against it or have taken a no position position, and those from the urban areas have generally taken a favorable position. In addition to that, we have a very strong relationship with the United Farm Workers as far as the get out the vote operation and voter registration. It makes it much more complex than it would have been otherwise.

LEHRER: Rollin, what`s your reading on that?

POST: I think 14 becomes a factor, and it may be one of the factors that Carter dropped a little bit in the polls. Back in the spring, when the Carter people were running the Primary, and they felt that their great strength was if they could get denomination and get out here in general, and one of their great theories of strength was going to be what is in California the San Joaquin Valley, the Imperial Valley, the farm and rural areas of California. This was a natural base for Carter. It`s also the area where the farmers and ranchers are most upset by Proposition 14. Now, I would think, that his endorsement of 14 does not help him with those people in this area. But, there is another side to this coin. The National Farmworkers under Cesar Chavez have gone out on a massive voter registration drive, and they have registered-somewhere, I think, between.200 and 300,thousand voters. 325,000 voters. Now these people registered in a selective way, in areas where you assume they are going to vote yes on 14 . . .

BICKER: And Democratic.

POST: And Democratic. Now, if the National Farmworkers first could register them and then get them out to vote, with even the normal percentage of those who registered won`t vote, some of them are Republicans whom they registered, some of them will vote for Ford, he still ought to be a net pick-up of about 200,000 for the Democrats in California on the basis of 14.

LEHRER: That`s not to be sneezed at.

POST: No, but it may be canceled out by what he loses with farmers. I don`t know. Bill might.

LEHRER: What do you think?

LOCKYER: Traditionally, for a Democrat to carry California, they had to do well in the Central Valley. Harry Truman is the sort of last, best example of that. Clearly, our private polls from the legislative races in the valley have showed some substantial drop by Carter, in agricultural areas . . .

LEHRER: Since he came out for 14.

LOCKYER: Yes. Of course, now we have this new influx of voters. And another fear, which kind of made it a Hobson`s choice, which was that McCarthy might be on the ballot, that there would be substantial Liberal defections if Carter weren`t similarly positioned with Tunney, Cranston, and Brown and the general Liberal and Labor community in the state. It made it real hard, and I think he did the moral thing, and I think that`s all that need to be said about that.

BICKER: One point on that.

MacNEIL: Yes. Briefly.

BICKER: He would have gotten all those votes without endorsing it.

LOCKYER: Yes, true.

BICKER: It`s very unlikely that anybody that Cesar Chavez turned out . . .

MacNEIL: We could go on arguing that, but our time is just about up. I just want to go around quickly . .

BICKER: I think that that`s a mistake.

MacNEIL: Is it rescuable for Carter? A yes or a no, because we are almost out.

BICKER: It`s going to take an extreme, systematic effort to find out exactly where he is in this state.

MacNEIL: Mr. O`Connell.

O`CONNELL: We are taking that systematic effort right now.

MacNEIL: Yes. Mr.-Post.

POST: Yes. I think Carter can win, but I think it`s extremely close.

MacNEIL: Yes. Mr. Lockyer.

LOCKYER: Yes, but tough.

MacNEIL: Yes, but tough. Thank you very much. That is all for now. Jim Lehrer and I will be back shortly with full, PBS coverage of tonight`s second, Presidential debate here from San Francisco.

And we would like now to thank station KQED for all their editorial and technical assistance for this program. From myself and Jim Lehrer and for the moment, good night.