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Last Hurrah for GOP in California? by Steve Sailer UPI, November 1, 2000 |
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George W. Bush's two-day campaign swing through California has at least temporarily revived local Republicans' hopes of pulling off a spectacular upset in the nation's most populous state. Yet, even a Bush victory might prove to be merely the GOP's Last Hurrah in California. Long-term population shifts are bringing more Democrats into the state each year. In response, Republicans are fleeing California for less crowded and less diverse states in the Inland West, such as Nevada and Idaho. In Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, California supplied the Republican Party with four of its last five victors in Presidential elections. Yet, today the GOP no longer holds even a single statewide office in California. In the 1998 gubernatorial election, Democrat Gray Davis crushed Republican Dan Lungren by 20 percentage points. Republicans trail in the state legislature 73 to 47. And it's only likely to get worse for the Republicans. Demographer William H. Frey is a professor at the U. of Michigan and a senior fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, California. He estimates that over the last ten years, California added 2,064,000 voting-age Hispanics and 980,000 Asians. Meanwhile, it will have lost 290,000 non-Hispanic whites. Whites are already less than half of the total California population (when counting children), and are now just 53% of the voting age population. While many of these new minorities are immigrants who can't yet vote, much of the political future of California is already written. Frey predicts, "Like other high-immigration 'melting pot' states, California will veer toward the Democrats." Frey notes that future party affiliations of Asians are uncertain, but that they currently tend to vote Democratic. He predicts that Hispanics are unlikely to ever be as solidly Democratic as African Americans. "Hispanics aren't in lockstep with the Democrats. The Republicans can appeal to Hispanics on family values and on issues relevant to small businessmen. Still, Hispanics' needs for government spending on basic social support will have them leaning Democratic for a long time." Democrats have done well in California as the poor have multiplied. According to a September report of the California Budget Project entitled "Falling Behind: California Workers and the New Economy," the percentage of workers in Los Angeles earning poverty level wages grew from 18.9% in 1979 to 34.4% in 1999. Even from the recession year of 1994 to the boom year of 1999, the percentage of workers earning poverty pay still rose. Jean Ross of the CBP notes, "We've had tremendous growth in the number of jobs, but not in wage growth." The law of supply and demand suggests this stems from the huge increase in California's supply of less-skilled immigrant workers. Demographer Frey points out, "Another cause of the rise of the California Democrats is selective out-migration of the more rock-ribbed Republicans. The folks who have been leaving California's suburbs for other states have the white, middle-class demographic profiles of Republican voters. California's middle class families are being squeezed out by real estate prices. And Republicans are heading for whiter states where they won't have to pay taxes for so many social programs for the poor." Finally, while white high school graduates have been leaving, California's booming New Economy is attracting an influx of well-educated whites from the other 49 states. Traditionally, Frey notes, "Californians of high socio-economic status have been more likely to be classic liberals than similarly well-off residents of other states." Frey expects that newcomers who move to California to make their fortunes in Hollywood or Silicon Valley will also tend to vote Democratic more often than their wealth would suggest. On the other hand, the good news for Republicans is that exiles from California are making the Inland West much more conservative. In the Seventies, for example, Idaho elected some very liberal Democrats, such as former U.S. Senator Frank Church, the scourge of the CIA. Today, Republicans rule Idaho's state senate 31 to 4. These lightly populated states such as Idaho, Nevada, and Utah each boast two U.S. Senate seats, just like California. So, white flight from California to a variety of small states might help Republicans control the Senate in the 21st century. Still, this might ultimately prove small compensation to the GOP for getting shut out of America's trend-setting superstate. Steve Sailer (www.iSteve.com) is a columnist for VDARE.com and the film critic for The American Conservative.
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