Bush will be here in Santa Clara tomorrow, Stan.
Bush's visit may signal a bid to win California
By Jim Puzzanghera
Mercury News Washington Bureau
bayarea.com
Friday morning, Bush will fly north to Silicon Valley to give a speech linking economic security with national security and touting his embattled tax-cut plan. The setting again will draw off the war: United Defense's research and design facility in Santa Clara, birthplace of the Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
WASHINGTON -President Bush will ride his wave of postwar popularity all the way to the Southern California coast today, then to Silicon Valley on Friday, and key Republicans said his newfound standing gives him a real chance to win the state in 2004.
Buoyed by recent polls that show Bush far more popular in California than he was during the 2000 campaign, particularly among important Latino voters, top Republican officials believe that the president is poised to mount a serious bid for the nation's most Democratic state next fall.
A Field Poll early last month showed Bush would defeat whoever is the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee by a margin of five percentage points, getting 45 percent of the vote in California. Although the poll came as U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad, achieving such a showing is still a remarkable turnaround for Bush, a conservative who lost the state by nearly 1.3 million votes in 2000.
``We're laying the groundwork for what I clearly hope will be a win in California,'' said Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, one of Bush's leading congressional backers who co-chaired his 2000 California campaign.
Bush's trip to the state this week, which will begin with a historic speech this afternoon on an aircraft carrier heading to San Diego, demonstrates how he might capitalize on the decisive military victory in Iraq to compete for California's 55 electoral votes.
But in traveling to Santa Clara on Friday, the trip also highlights what Democrats said is the president's major problem heading into 2004: the economic doldrums that have ravaged the region and the state.
Joblessness
``What I hope the president will see is the unemployed waving their résumés as he pulls up in his limousine'' in Santa Clara, said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose. The economy will be the major issue in 2004, and Republicans are ``living in a dream world'' if they think Bush can win California despite huge job losses during his tenure, she said.
But the war has the potential to continue paying political dividends, and it will be the overriding theme of Bush's California trip.
Today, Bush will fly in a Navy plane to the USS Abraham Lincoln as it heads back from the Persian Gulf to give the first presidential address ever made from the deck of a moving aircraft carrier. He will declare that major combat in Iraq has ended, and will meet with soldiers before spending the night on the ship.
Friday morning, Bush will fly north to Silicon Valley to give a speech linking economic security with national security and touting his embattled tax-cut plan. The setting again will draw off the war: United Defense's research and design facility in Santa Clara, birthplace of the Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
``This trip is a very good preview of the election,'' said Bill Whalen, an aide to former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson who is now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
By linking national and economic security, Bush can ``both talk about his greatest strength but address what is perceived as his greatest vulnerability,'' Whalen said.
The trip is Bush's sixth to California since taking office in 2001. By contrast, he has visited Pennsylvania 19 times and Florida 14 times. At this point in his first term, former President Clinton had visited California 17 times and had made 26 trips to the state before his 1996 re-election.
Republicans don't expect Bush to come close to matching the attention Clinton showered on California, which is crucial to any Democrat's presidential hopes. But state Republican Party Chair George ``Duf'' Sundheim said the White House had told him Bush would be visiting regularly.
``It's very clear they plan to play here'' in 2004, he said.
Closer ties
Sundheim also noted that Mindy Tucker, a former Republican National Committee communications director with close ties to the White House, has been dispatched to serve as a counselor to the state party.
``Things are starting to look up out here,'' Tucker said this week, noting that GOP statewide candidates have been increasing their share of the vote in the past few elections even if they have not been winning.
Tucker is focusing on building the president's support among women and Latinos, as well as improving how the White House delivers its message in California.
``If everything gets done that needs to get done in a year or so, we could absolutely be in a position to make this a very competitive state,'' she said.
Democrats eagerly point out that Republicans have made that claim before, only to see their presidential candidates lose the state by wide margins. But the political dynamics in California may have been altered for Bush by his response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the decisive military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his own charismatic personality.
Davis takes heat
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at the University of Southern California, noted that Democratic Gov. Gray Davis is taking much more blame for the state's woeful economy than Bush. In a Field Poll released last month, Davis' approval rating was 24 percent -- the lowest figure for a sitting governor in the poll's 55-year history. Bush's approval rating is 61 percent.
``I don't think Californians like Davis personally as much as they like Bush personally, even though they agree with Davis' policy stances more than they agree with Bush's policy stances,'' she said.
Perhaps more important to Bush's re-election hopes is his growing support among Latinos. Republicans have been foundering in California for nearly a decade because of the backlash by Latino voters to the divisive battle over Proposition 187 in 1994. The ballot measure, promoted by then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, sought to deny public benefits to illegal immigrants; it was passed by voters, but struck down by the courts.
But in last month's Field Poll, Latinos favored the Democratic nominee by only 42 percent to 36 percent over Bush. Although Latinos still preferred a Democrat, Bush's showing was a significant improvement over the approximately 25 percent of the Latino vote he earned in California in 2000.
Latinos' support
While national polls have shown Latinos strongly backing the war in Iraq, their support drops off when asked about Bush's policies on issues like the economy and the environment, said Jaimie Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University-Los Angeles. Regalado expects those issues to be prominent in the 2004 campaign, with most California Latinos still voting Democratic.
Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said the increased Latino support for Bush is a hopeful sign for him. Republican candidates who ran successful statewide races in the past have earned at least 30 percent of the Latino vote.
``From the information we have now, Bush is in a fairly strong position, and I guess it's news because it's been such a long time since a Republican has been in such a strong position in this state,'' he said. |
