Abstract

ALIFORNIA was the focus of national attention during the 1962 congressional and gubernatorial elections. Sometime between the election and the publication of this article, the state became the most populous in the union, thus qualifying it in future years for the perquisites of primal representation in party conventions, the electoral college, and Congress. Dramatizing this newly acquired eminence was the return of Richard M. Nixon, native son and former Vice President of the United States, to enter the gubernatorial campaign, intended undoubtedly as an initial step toward winning a second Republican presidential nomination. The triumph of Nixon as the Republican presidential nominee in California by the narrow margin of 36,000 absentee ballots in 1960, does not nullify a provocative analogy between the fate of former Senator William F. Knowland in the 1958 gubernatorial campaign and that of Nixon in 1962.1 In each instance a nationally established leader of the Republican party, long absent from the councils of state politics, returned to attempt to capture the governorship as a springboard to the White House. Both encountered deep schisms and bitter personal animosities within the state Republican party, marked by public recriminations more devastating than those mustered by the opposition during the general election. Each held the common opponent in light regard, completely miscalculating the determination and electoral appeal of the unpretentious, but voter-oriented incumbent governor, Edmund G. Pat Brown. Both went down to crashing defeat, Knowland leading the conservative and Nixon the moderate wing of their party. In spite of the loud protestations of innocence by Democrats and Republicans alike, both campaigns were violent, unprincipled, and rank among the most unedifying in the recent history of the state. Finally, each of the two G.O.P. candidates chose to ignore the Warren-Knight formula for past gubernatorial successes: a policy position in the center of the ideological spectrum and an avoidance of undue partisanship. Considered from a near-term perspective the 1962 election results would seem to warrant several observations. The electorate preferred the status quo, marked by modest progress in public policy, to proposals for change shrouded in strident terms of What's wrong with the state! Growing evidence also points toward the gradual professionalization of the Democratic party. Expert organization, skilled leadership, and adequate financing have placed the two major parties upon virtually equal competitive footing in the arena of state politics. Beyond conjecture is the fact that the year 1962 found a strong, determined, and aggres-

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