The Wall Street Journal - Tuesday, 1 April 1997.
Hilary Stout, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Instead, in flew Al Gore.

A few weeks ago, when the White House brought its campaign here to address state legislatures on education standards and testing, Mr. Clinton wasn't at the speaker's podium in Sacramento. Vice President Gore was.

"I love this place," Mr. Gore rhapsodized from a gilded hall in the California capitol building. It was the culmination of a several-minute opening paean to the Golden State for its people, its technology, its beauty and the "special place in my heart" it holds (he and his wife vacationed here as newlyweds, and his family has camped in Yosemite National Park). "This is such an amazing state."

Three years away from the first primary battles of 2000, the vice president seems already to be appropriating the script of his boss: If you want to be president, you must shower attention on California.

Bill Clinton's courtship of the Golden State, with its 54 electoral votes, is legendary. But Mr. Clinton hasn't been to the state in the four months since the election, though a planned fund-raising trip last month was canceled because of his knee injury. That contrasts with his average of visiting California once every seven weeks in his first term.

Into the void has swooped Mr. Gore, whose trip to Sacramento and San Bernardino last month marked his third California visit in the first 2 1/2 months of 1997. His staff insists that his recent trips there are nothing other than the work of a good vice president.

"California is an important state to the rest of the country," says Ginny Terzano, a spokeswoman. "It is in many ways a bellwether for the rest of the country. If you don't know the issues Californians face, then you're out of touch."

But Mr. Gore, whose interest in the presidency has been clear ever since his failed run in 1988, is taking the baby steps critical to setting up the infrastructure to run strong in the most important of states on the electoral map. "If he wants to run for president . . . then he's got to spend some time here in California developing relationships with people," says Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party and a Gore supporter in the 1988 campaign.

Although aides say it's way too early to begin formal organizing, and Mr. Gore hasn't said yet whether he plans to run in 2000, the vice president has the commitment of several important California money men: John Cooke, a Walt Disney Co. executive and longtime friend, and Walter Shorenstein, a San Francisco real-estate tycoon. He also has the support of some important political operatives, including Darry Sragow, who is managing the California gubernatorial campaign of Northwest Airlines' co-chairman, Alfred Checci.

In addition, Mr. Gore has been strengthening ties with the influential high-tech industry, arranging a dinner group of Silicon Valley executives whom he brought together in Washington during the inauguration. He has met with the group, which includes John Doerr, a well-known high-tech venture capitalist, three times since the beginning of this year. The topic is education and technology in the schools, but many of the participants are contributors to the Democratic Party. In Sacramento, Mr. Gore joined the group for a wonkish dinner over pizza, Coke and beer.

Tomorrow, many members of the group will join Mr. Gore and President Clinton at the White House to endorse the administration's call for national education standards and testing, a move that Mr. Gore had been pushing in his previous meetings with the executives.

Mr. Gore's staff insists the vice president hasn't gone out of his way to visit California; he has only been fulfilling obligations. The president asked him to tour the flood damage in January, they say, because Mr. Clinton was playing golf on a family vacation in the Virgin Islands. Bill Lockyear, president pro tem of the California Senate, had invited Mr. Gore to speak to the legislature more than a year ago. And the focal point of Mr. Gore's trip to California in February, an address to the annual AFL-CIO convention, was an event he has participated in every year of his vice presidency. The labor union just happened to move the site of the gathering to Los Angeles from its traditional spot, Bal Harbour, Fla.

But during those visits, Mr. Gore has taken care to reach out to traditional Democratic constituencies. After his speech at the AFL-CIO gathering, which he rushed to attend immediately after returning home from a trip to South Africa, he met with gay and lesbian leaders. After the education speech to the legislature last month, he met with a small group of labor leaders and the Senate Democratic leadership before moving on to dinner with the Silicon Valley CEOs. His recent visit here was perceived as so political -- particularly since he attended a $100,000 state Democratic Party fund-raising lunch -- that many Republicans skipped his speech to the state legislature.

Mr. Gore isn't the only one to realize the importance of California early on. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri, considered a likely rival for the Democratic nomination in 2000, recently made a tour of the state after speaking to the AFL-CIO convention. Mr. Gephardt is back today in California for fund-raising events.

Sen. Paul Wellstone, a liberal Minnesota Democrat, plans to attend the California Democratic State Party convention this weekend. Another oft-mentioned presidential potential, former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, plans to be spending a lot of time in the state, too. He has accepted a visiting professorship at Stanford University.

Mr. Gore's interest in California comes after some post-election signs of abatement in the president's renowned pandering to the state. Some suspect that certain Clinton policy positions affecting California differ now from what they might have been before the election. For example, shortly after the inauguration, the administration challenged the California medical community by vowing to use federal law to prosecute physicians who under a new California law prescribe marijuana to terminally ill patients.

"That surprised us," concedes Mr. Torres. "We know what impact it has on AIDS patients and terminal cancer patients. We just thought it was unnecessary to go after the California initiative so strongly. We felt . . . that those issues could have been resolved by some means other than attacking California."

Some political analysts believe Mr. Clinton, who loves to bask in Hollywood circles, has a more natural affinity for California than does Mr. Gore. But others say the vice president's interest in the environment and technology give him a good base for popularity in the state.

And before 2000 rolls along, quips John Peschong, who recently stepped down as head of the California Republican Party, "He'll probably be on `Murphy Brown' or `Friends.'"

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