Go back to News pageSAN FRANCISCO --California's minority voters, especially Latinos and Asians, may have saved Sen. Dianne Feinstein from defeat last week, but deep divisions within these groups made it a lot easier for Proposition 187 to pass. Minorities also played a large role in Kathleen Brown's loss to Gov. Pete Wilson because Brown was unable to garner from them the kind of support Feinstein got, according to a Free Press analysis of Bay Area precincts. For example, in San Rafael's mostly Latino Canal District, Feinstein rolled up a 3-1 majority over Republican congressman Michael Huffington. By contrast, Brown managed to beat Gov. Pete Wilson by only 10 points in this precinct, a tepid showing for a liberal Democrat in a heavily Democratic area.
As expected, Feinstein did well among blue-collar voters in union towns like Pacifica and among upper-income liberals in cities like Palo Alto and Berkeley.
But it was her overwhelming support from Asians, blacks and Latinos that made the difference.
"Huffington is a ghost: He's rich and that's it. But you know who Dianne Feinstein is and where she's going. You had to go with her," said Michael Lopez, 47, a dentist who lives in Pacifica.
Mervin Field, director and founder of the California Poll, said the outcomes of both the senate and governor's races illustrate that no candidate should assume that minorities will vote as a block for any politician or on any issue.
"Minority voters saw in Feinstein a politically proven performer and they just didn't have that much confidence in Kathleen Brown. And that lack of confidence mattered more to them then her stand on 187," he said. "Again, I think this shows what we saw all day on Tuesday: Just because a person is Latino, Asian or African American doesn't mean they are going to vote one particular way," he said.
Field said it was not shocking that Latino and Asian voters did not come out as strongly against Proposition 187 as some pollsters thought they would. He said there was always significant Latino support for the measure, which is supposed to end health and education services for illegal immigrants.
Analysis of precinct results in the Bay Area showed that working-class Latino districts, like the North Fair Oaks community on the Peninsula, voted down Proposition 187 by 20-point margins. Yet that pales in comparison to the 40-point margin that Feinstein got in the same precinct. The measure actually lost in some upscale Asian communities, including precincts in Milpitas, according to the Free Press analysis. "The Asian vote for 187 was always pretty solid in the middle- and upper-income groups," Field said. "For Latinos, some people got fooled because the support eroded. But people seem to forget there are plenty of conservative Latinos. "It is also the case that those who are down on the economic ladder and are citizens are competing head to head with illegal immigrants in some situations," he said. "That's where the Latino support for 187 came from." Support for Proposition 187 was sliding during the last weeks of the campaign after starting out with overwhelming backing. But Field said the tide turned in the days before the election, especially in Southern California, because of an anti-187 demonstration in Los Angeles. "That probably was the turning point," he said. "When I saw that demonstration and all those Mexican flags the thought crossed my mind that pro-187 groups may have been giving out the flags. You couldn't have asked for a worse image. I think it hardened the support dramatically." White, older voters like Jerry Little were the core of the pro-187 vote, according to exit polls and the Free Press analysis. It was a sense that America is losing its "heritage" that led Little, 63, an artist who lives in Rossmoor, a retirement community near Walnut Creek, to vote for Proposition 187.
"I know as soon as you say this you're going to be seen as biased against other ethnicities, but the fact is we've changed as a country in my lifetime and I don't like it," he said.
Doug Winslow, an analyst with American Data Management, a firm that handled Democrat Tony Miller's campaign for Secretary of State, said a lot of voters were apparently reluctant to tell pollsters their real feelings about Proposition 187 because of fear they would be tagged as anti-immigrant or racists. "I think it's pretty clear that people were answering polls honestly and it's also pretty clear that the pollsters missed a lot of people who were galvanized to vote because of this proposition," he said. "But what they really missed was that it was the supporters of 187, not the opponents, who got the most fired up and came out. I think 187 was the reason Tony and other Democrats lost at the statewide level." Winslow said the low turnout in San Francisco, where just 47 percent went to the polls, also hurt Democrats. "The turnout was very good everywhere else for a mid-term election," he said. "What happened in San Francisco? The newspaper strike. It really hurt Tony Miller because he has core constituencies there."
Dwight Chapin, Kevin Fagen, Erin Hallissy, John King, Mark Simon and John Woolfolk of the Free Press contributed to this report.
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