Could Swing California Election : The Reagan Democrats--Anger Yields to Anxiety

Robert Flaugher still boasts about the Christmas card he received from Ronald Reagan.

Like millions of Democrats, the 64-year-old San Diegan voted for Reagan because he believed he would make the country stronger militarily and economically.

Looking back, Flaugher, who even raised money for Reagan, credits the President with a lot of success, but he does not automatically transfer his enthusiasm to other Republican candidates now that Reagan is leaving the White House.

These days, Flaugher echoes the thoughts of many other Reagan Democrats as he considers realigning with his own party.

“You want a government that will be strong. You also want it to be compassionate to its weaker citizens,” Flaugher said.

Robert Flaugher’s vote is a prize catch this year. He is one of an estimated 2.1 million California Democrats who either voted for Reagan or did not vote at all in 1984.

That year, the Reagan Democrats were just one layer in a Republican landslide. But their votes could be decisive this year in what is expected to be a much closer election.

The wayward Democrats could also be a major factor in the California Senate race. Sen. Pete Wilson, the Republican incumbent, was elected six years ago, partly, on the strength of an estimated 23% crossover vote. Wilson realizes that to fend off Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, his Democratic challenger in this year’s Senate race, he must again reach out to members of the state’s majority party.

The focus of pollsters, ad makers and political strategists, the Reagan Democrats, perhaps more than any other group of voters, are helping to set the political agenda this year. Candidates of both major parties, who tend to know where they stand with voters on the right and the left, have been targeting their campaigns toward the middle ground occupied by Reagan Democrats.

Democratic candidates like Michael Dukakis and McCarthy believe that without Reagan’s personal popularity and his home-state appeal, Republicans have very little to offer the Reagan Democrats in California. Republicans like Wilson and Vice President George Bush point to the Reagan legacy, notably high employment and low interest rates, which they say voters will want to protect.

Reagan Democrats joined a conservative tide in 1980, and they continue to show some of the characteristics of that movement. But the militancy that fired the Reagan revolution has mellowed along with its hostility toward government. Among Reagan Democrats, anxiety has replaced anger. People want change, but they are not sure how much. As befits their name, the Reagan Democrats stand for an age of ambivalence.

“People want change. They want more help from government in certain areas. But they are not sure they want to pay for it,” said Robert Epple, a Downey Democrat who is running for the state Assembly in a southeastern Los Angeles County district dominated by Reagan Democrats.

Government Activity

Epple says people want government to play a more active role, regulating insurance rates and improving the state’s transportation system. As he talks to people, Epple says, “I sense a tentative separation from the Reagan years, but not a wholehearted one.”

The Times has prepared a profile of Reagan Democrats in California with the help of Caltech political science professor Bruce Cain. The profile combines Cain’s research with information gathered by the Times Poll and interviews with voters. The Democrats profiled here are those who voted for Reagan in 1984.

As they approach the Nov. 8 election, these Reagan Democrats are like many other California voters in the issues they select as most important--drugs, the federal budget deficit, education, morality in government, taxes and national defense.

A majority of Reagan Democrats (58%) say they favor controls on growth in the state, although their enthusiasm for slowing growth is not as high as it is among traditional Democrats or Republicans.

In California, Reagan Democrats do have more in common with Republicans than a fondness for Reagan. They live in Republican areas and tend to think like conservatives on a range of issues. On the other hand, their eight-year romance with a Republican President has not severed their kinship with traditional Democratic voters. By and large, the Reagan Democrats have not changed their party registrations, and they continue to vote Democratic in state elections.

Statistical Profile

Most Reagan Democrats (79%) are white and between the ages of 30 and 65 (64%). Most (71%) own their homes, and a majority of them (nearly 60%) live in fast-growing suburban areas of the state such as Orange County, northern San Diego, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Only 17% of them live in the state’s traditionally Democratic inner cities.

The Reagan Democrats vote most like Republicans when it comes to money matters.

In the primary elections in June, a majority of Reagan Democrats declined to support ballot measures that would have raised the state’s spending limits for education and transportation.

Almost 70% of Reagan Democrats said they had a favorable view of Proposition 13, the state’s landmark ballot measure that put a limit on how much property taxes can be raised.

Although 38% of these Democrats classify themselves as conservatives, there are a number of ways in which they are not like Republicans. For one thing, they don’t make as much money. Nearly 60% of them make less than $40,000 a year compared to 45% of Republicans. And while 22% of Republicans make over $60,000, only 9% of Reagan Democrats make that much.

Many more Reagan Democrats, (62%) think of themselves as moderate to liberal compared to 37% of Republicans who classify themselves that way.

Forty percent of Reagan Democrats identify themselves as blue-collar workers compared to 29% among Republicans. Reagan Democrats are also noticeably different from Republicans in the way they size up the economy--less optimistically--and in the way many of them characterize their own political philosophies.

Almost 60% of Republicans said the economy is in good to great shape compared to 46% of Reagan Democrats.

In one important respect, however, Reagan Democrats are different from both Republicans and traditional Democrats.

Less Political

The Times study found them more distant from the political process, less likely to work on campaigns or give money to candidates, less likely to talk about how they vote and more likely to stay away from the polls if they are not excited by the candidates or the issues.

Nearly 50% of Reagan Democrats said they felt no obligation to vote in an election that did not interest them.

“They share a mistrust of institutional solutions. They don’t believe there is a program out there that will solve every problem,” said Assemblyman Steve Peace, a Chula Vista Democrat who has won the backing of Reagan Democrats. Peace’s own surveys indicate that 53% of the Democratic voters in his district have voted for Republicans in the past.

“The word independent is crucial--independence from special-interest groups of all kinds, labor unions, big corporations, and political parties. These voters have a high threshold of skepticism about politics in general,” Peace said.

Democratic Assemblyman Steve Clute of Riverside, who relies on the support of Reagan Democrats just as Peace does, makes a point of eschewing ideology when he is around his constituents.

“As for influencing people about who to vote for, I could care less. I don’t front for any presidential candidate, and people here wouldn’t like it if I did.”

Both Peace and Clute say they have stayed popular with voters because they have paid closer attention to constituent problems than to partisan issues.

“It’s the squeaky-wheel approach to politics,” said Clute, who talks about going to bat for a group of first-time home buyers who discovered that their roofs weren’t properly nailed down.

Measure of Indecision

With the 1988 campaign season shifting into high gear, many Reagan Democrats say they will have a hard time deciding how to vote in national elections this year. Like Greg Sandoval, a 34-year-old junior college administrator from San Diego, they regard the “Reagan revolution” as a mixed blessing.

Sandoval, who voted for Reagan, now faults the Administration for drying up financial aid to needy students. At the same time, he credits Reaganomics for triggering the real estate boom that helped his family build a successful landscaping business.

“On the one hand, I see young people being denied educations. On the other, I see my father, a poor immigrant from Mexico, realize his dream of becoming a successful businessman. It leaves me with very mixed feelings about who to vote for,” Sandoval said.

Dennis Gallagher, a San Diego police officer who voted for Reagan, says he is much better off as a result of the Reagan Administration’s successful war on inflation. “I was able to refinance my house because of the lower interest rate. That put more money in my pocket and more into savings,” Gallagher said.

But Gallagher also blames the Reagan Administration, including Bush, “for squandering the public’s trust over things like Iran-Contra, Atty. Gen. (Edward) Meese, and the recent Pentagon procurement scandals.”

It has dampened Gallagher’s enthusiasm for the Republican ticket.

“I think the Republicans are probably more in tune with the American people, but I wish they’d given us another alternative to vote for,” he said.

Democratic strategists, after looking at the income levels of many Reagan Democrats, are convinced that many did not benefit from the prosperity of the last eight years and now are looking to the government for help.

“We are talking mainly about young families with marginal white-collar jobs who are uneasy about the cost of decent housing, of educating their kids and taking care of their parents,” said Paul Maslin, a Washington-based pollster who has been commissioned by the McCarthy Senate campaign to survey voters in the state.

“They are worried that their kids won’t be able to compete with the Japanese. They see more and more jobs leaving the country. What they are saying to the politicians is ‘don’t tell us everything is rosy.’ ”

Maslin is confident that these, essentially middle-class, voters will return to the Democratic fold providing they believe that the party will to do right by them.

“The Democrats must avoid the old ideological buttons of caring only about poor people, which means higher taxes for the middle class. The Democrats must also be as strong as the Republicans on crime and drugs,” Maslin said.

“The voters (Reagan Democrats) we are talking about are very non-ideological. They care about family security. That means safety as well as economic security.

Republican strategists say they, too, sense that the same voters who responded enthusiastically to the anti-government rhetoric of the early Reagan years are having second thoughts. They look at clogged freeways and overcrowded schools, at houses they can’t afford and at the lines of homeless people and take a slightly different view of what government should be doing.

“It would be a mistake for Republicans to run on past achievements, on peace and prosperity,” said Ed Zschau, the Republicans’ unsuccessful candidate for U.S. Senate in 1986. “We’ve got to show that we understand the problems people are worried about--education, the deficit, homeless. Republicans have to realize that there is a feeling of uneasiness out there that people do think something, somewhere is wrong.”

Seeming Paradox

Typical of the West, California has been of two minds about the role of government. The same people who resent taxes and regulation also expect government to provide a wealth of services--ranging from roads and water to affordable housing and child care.

This is one of those years, strategists in both parties say, when politicians must figure how to satisfy those conflicting urges.

Curtis Batchelder, a statistical analyst who lives near Riverside, is typical of voters who believe that government can meet certain social responsibilities without imposing a huge tax burden.

“I don’t see why we can’t have it both ways. Responsible government intervention that would give us decent schools, streets and housing. I’m not talking about Big Brother. I’m not interested in a welfare state. I think people should take accountability for their own lives,” said Batchelder, who voted for Reagan in 1984 and would have preferred Jesse Jackson this year.

Swinging from the right to the left, Batchelder’s preferences reinforce the notion that Reagan Democrats are swayed more by a candidate’s personality than by his politics.

Personal Appeal

Even with Reagan gone and Jackson out of the picture, many political observers predict that the results of the November elections will hinge on the candidates’ personal appeal.

“The way voters size you up these days may have very little to do with ideology or party affiliation,” said Peace, who commissioned his own study of Reagan Democrats in his district.

Peace said he sees a maverick streak in voters as they size up the presidential election.

He said his wife is a good example. “She is a conservative and she is going to vote for Dukakis. I’ve given her all that stuff about how he used to lobby for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), and it hasn’t changed her mind. She says he appears honest and that he evinces personal strength.”

As for Peace, a Democrat . . . the question might be asked why he would gainsay his party’s presidential candidate.

Peace smiled. “The word independent is crucial down here.”

REAGAN DEMOCRATS: A PROFILE RACE: predominantly white (79%).

RELIGION: 40% Catholic (largest group).

AGE: 53% over 45, 85% over 30.

EDUCATION: 37% have college educations.

STANDARD OF LIVING: 60% make less than $40,000, 22% make less than $20,000.

HOME OWNERSHIP: 71%.

POLITICAL IDENTIFICATION: 38% conservatives, 37% moderates, 25% liberal.

POLITICAL ACTIVISM: 48% would not vote in an uninteresting election.

VIEW OF ECONOMY: 46% believe economy is booming.

VIEW OF PROPOSITION 13: 69% favor it.

VIEW ON GROWTH: 58% favor limits on growth.

MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES: Drugs, budget deficit, education.