California political axis now east-west

As California's "north vs. south" World Series fades into memory, a state election looms in which Democrats could pull off the first single-party sweep of the state's top seven elected offices in more than half a century.

The two events – one social/cultural, one political – are calling attention to the demographics of the nation's most economically important and politically influential state. What analysts are finding is that long-held notions of California as a Republican-leaning megastate, split roughly in two between a liberal north and a conservative south, are morphing like the Anaheim Angels' computer-generated "rally Monkey."

The more accurate new paradigm, experts say, is a map cutting east-west like a banana split, with a strongly Democratic coastal zone facing off against an increasingly Republican east.

The shift carries significant long-term implications for California's politics, its clout in Washington, and its social identity.

"The changes within California from essentially a north-south paradigm to an east-west paradigm hold the keys to how politicians of all stripes must recast their strategies to appeal to the state's jackpot of voters," says Mark Baldassare, director of the California Public Policy Institute.

Demographics have been moving slowly in this direction for a decade, he says. But they have only recently begun to shatter old notions that are reinforced by visible, but essentially shallow, rivalries such as sports loyalties.

The causes include steady and gradual shifts: the rise of Hispanic and Asian middle classes, the repopulating of San Joaquin Valley by commuters, and the loss of half a million defense/aerospace jobs in Southern California in the early 1990s.

Most important, analysts say, is the quest for middle-class housing by young, mainly white families who have been priced out of homes in Orange, Los Angeles, and San Francisco counties, as well as posh communities in Santa Barbara, San Diego, Monterey, and Marin counties.

The search for lower-cost housing has taken hundreds of thousands of families inland – both to the vast Central Valley and to the so-called "inland empire" of San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles.

Agricultural communities that long voted Democratic are seeing influxes of families with a conservative bent, turning the map of California into its own clone of the Bush-Gore presidential race with its rural-urban, churchgoing-secular distinctions.

"Every good political consultant worth his salt is rethinking the way politics must be played in this state," says Dan Schnur, a Republican strategist.

Consider the contrast between the presidential-race outcomes in 2000 and 1968: Two years ago, Democrat Al Gore carried 20 of the state's 58 counties – almost all of them touching the Pacific Ocean (or San Francisco Bay), crushing Republican George Bush statewide by a vote of 53 percent to 41 percent. In 1968, Democrat Hubert Humphrey won 21 of 58 counties – all but three north of San Jose, losing the state by 3 points to Richard Nixon.

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