California Crucible. Jonathan Bell

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      Politics and Party in California at Mid-Century

      The social and economic changes of the Depression and World War II had affected California at least as manifestly as anywhere else in the Union. Whether we think of the mass of displaced Okies in the 1930s or the millions who descended on the Golden State to seek employment in war industries in the 1940s, there was no question that California was undergoing rapid and significant social changes that required collective solutions. The state population had swollen in the 1940s alone from a little under seven million to 10,586,223. The African American population had rocketed from 124,000 in 1940 to over 462,000 ten years later.¹ Between 1941 and 1944 California's manufacturing employment rose an extraordinary 201 percent, compared to the national average of 51 percent. The state government had become responsible for coordinating one of the nation's largest war economies, a network of plants and factories that had sprung up almost overnight and required new roads, water supplies, and public power.² Undergirding this picture of change was a history of political progressivism and radicalism that had found expression with the gubernatorial campaign of Upton Sinclair in 1934 and the pension campaigns of Francis Townsend and George McLain through the 1930s, together with the rise of a powerful communist movement in the state that was among the largest in the nation. The party had by the outbreak of war infiltrated the left wing of the Democratic Party and most of the CIO unions on the West coast, and was involved in any number of civil rights and civil liberties organizations that formed the lynchpin of mass political engagement in these years.³ California was the home of the progressive wing of the Republican Party, symbolized by senator Hiram Johnson and congressman Richard Welch of San Francisco, and also home of stalwart supporters of the New Deal such as Democratic congressmen Jerry Voorhis of LA and George Outland of Santa Barbara. Though the state's citizens had only elected a Democrat to the governorship once since 1888—Culbert Olson in 1938—they were comfortable with Republicans like Earl Warren who, having defeated Olson's chaotic administration after just one term, would oversee the largest expansion in state government capacities in California's history up to that time. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that the postwar settlement would involve a progressive pact between government, social movements, and private enterprise that would invigorate the liberal spirit of the New Deal age.⁴

      In fact, California politics at the midpoint of the twentieth century was a world unusually unsuited to the demands of a modern industrialized state. The reforms of Hiram Johnson's administration in the 1910s that had been designed to break the power of organized factions and lobbyists over the state's political system had by the 1930s had the opposite effect, and had calcified political activity into an organized chaos of individual candidacies, one-party dominance over the legislature and local government, and a lack of serious mainstream public debate about the ideological direction of the state and the country.⁵ Yet it is important to lay out the dynamics of late 1940s California politics to show what was missing from public discourse and political organizing in these years, and how that lack of a serious engagement with programmatic ideas in postwar party politics would shape the formation of a new age of political activism in later years.

      Political Culture in California at Mid-Century

      Recent studies of political movements associated with the left in California have inevitably focused on local studies of neighborhoods, local civil rights efforts, and nonparty campaigns for civil and economic rights centered in specific communities, whether they be the bohemian enclave of Edendale in Los Angeles or African American sections of West Oakland.⁶ Yet these localized examples of political pressure usually met with successful statewide opposition, as in the case of the repeal of a welfare rights proposition by powerful antiwelfare interests in 1949.⁷ The Republican Party's control of the legislature and most local governments, due in part to a tradition of Republicanism in the state and in part to the effects of California's peculiar cross-filing law, severely restricted the political options open to Californians between the 1920s and 1950s, and helped to reinforce a strong rightward turn in the state's politics in these years.

      The practice of cross-filing in California virtually eliminated the party political impact of the New Deal in the state. Brought in as part of Johnson's reform package to rid the state of political corruption, the law allowed candidates for state and federal office to enter the primary of parties other than their own. Often during the 1930s and 1940s Republicans won Democratic primaries and vice versa, thus eliminating meaningful competition at the general election. It had been hoped that this free-for-all between candidates of different parties for the nomination would assert the primacy of the individual candidate and his or her suitability for the post, and eliminate the supposedly corrupt picking of candidates by political bosses behind closed doors. Indeed, party organizations were forbidden by law from endorsing any candidate for office, which meant in practice at least half a dozen candidates from each party would enter each primary. The last man standing with a large enough war chest and the loudest message tended to emerge victorious. The need for money and airtime inevitably increased the reliance of politicians on lobbyists and business elites rather than the reverse, and the superior discipline and organization of the Republican Party ensured that they would win the majority of contests regardless of the national political picture. Despite having a three to two advantage in political registration by the late 1930s, the Democrats had half as many seats in the State Senate and far fewer seats in the Assembly throughout the New Deal era and well into the 1950s.⁸ Even when the state elected a left-wing Democratic governor in 1938, the GOP-controlled legislature ensured his administration left little by way СКАЧАТЬ