MAKING CHOICES

Voters were in a cynical mood about politicians and government in the spring of 1998. Yet they liked the way things were going in the state. As a result, their preferences for candidates in the June primary were in the direction of making "safe" status quo choices, as is evident in their preferences for candidate qualifications and their ballot choices.

In the April 1998 PPIC Statewide Survey, California voters surprised us when 44 percent said they preferred statewide candidates with a track record in elected office. Forty percent said they wanted candidates who were political newcomers. A month later, in the May 1998 PPIC Statewide Survey, there was an eight-point margin in favor of seasoned politicians over political outsiders (46 percent to 38 percent) when voters were asked about the candidate qualifications they preferred (see table 4.6). Democrats were more likely to prefer experienced politicians than were Republicans and independents. In contrast to most other questions in the PPIC Statewide Surveys, the responses of crossover voters differed substantially, with only 38 percent saying experience in elected office was the most important qualification for candidates, and 48 percent saying experience in running a business was most important. Still, across all groups of respondents, the degree of emphasis placed on experience in office is in stark contrast to their deep distrust of elected officials.

In another rebuke of outsider politicians, a third of the voters in the April 1998 PPIC Statewide Survey said they would be less inclined to vote for candidates who spent millions of their own dollars for political campaigning, while only 11 percent said they would be more inclined to vote for such candidates. About half said this would make no difference in their ballot choices. In the May survey, 53 percent said they favored the candidates who raised money from their supporters to pay for their political campaigns, while only 35 percent said they preferred candidates who can spend their own money. There were no differences across parties. These findings were consistent with the success of the candidates in the primary. Those who had gone the conventional route of collecting contributions to finance their campaigns won, while the self-funded outsiders lost.

Voters thus went into the June primary in a risk-adverse mood. They wanted choices that would maintain the status quo of good economic times and avoid slipping back into the deep recession of the not-so-distant past. With this in mind, there would be no one like Jesse "The Body" Ventura emerging as the candidate for Governor of California or U.S. Senator in the state's first-ever blanket primary.

The voters' wish list for candidates' qualities gave Lungren and Davis for Governor and Boxer and Fong for the U.S. Senate big advantages in June. Voters were unwilling to take a chance with politicians untested in statewide offices, such as Al Checchi, Jane Harman, and Darrell Issa, who each greatly outspent their rivals. Most Republicans stayed with Lungren and Fong, while most Democrats voted for Davis and Boxer. The voters had spoken. They didn't want a radical change in their state's elected officials to get in the way of the good times that were underway.^[4]