The Political Center Makes a Comeback

In California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gained high popularity in his first year in office by identifying himself with all of those causes, he

came a cropper by forcing a special election on a very different agenda. He launched a crusade to punish teachers, nurses and other public employees

for their "greed," only to see the public endorse their work and tell the governor, in effect, to deal with them, not stiff-

arm them. The defeat of all four of Schwarzenegger's initiatives clearly signals that he misread Californians as wanting a partisan conservative regime in Sacramento.

The same message was sent unmistakably by Virginia, a state that has been reliably part of the Republican presidential base. Republican gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore ran a classic version of the last decade's "bring-out-the-base" campaign, promising to fight taxes, crack down on crime, curb abortions, impose the death penalty -- and, as an added fillip, get tough on illegal immigrants.

He got out the base, but lost heavily in the fast-growing suburbs to Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine, the Democrat who campaigned on support for schools and balanced growth.

Kaine was helped enormously by the fact that the current governor, Democrat Mark Warner, has steered Virginia from a fiscal mess to economic prosperity while working successfully to get his progressive education program and

other initiatives through a Republican legislature.

It was one more proof that the strength of the Democratic Party lies in its governorships -- a lesson that still has not dawned on many of the Washington-fixated consultants and contributors, who continue to delude themselves that their talk-shop congressional leaders should be the national symbols of the party.

davidbroder@washpost.com