By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 24, 1998; Page A02

LOS ANGELES, May 23 — The four major candidates for governor of California participated today in an unprecedented debate conducted in English and Spanish, and broadcast live across the state – a sign of the soaring importance of Latinos in the state's politics.

It is believed to be the first such encounter in a statewide race in which the audience that mattered was listening in Spanish, as the three Democrats and one Republican explained their positions on bilingual education, immigration, relations with Mexico and the increasing gap between the richest and poorest residents of the wealthiest and most populous state in the nation.

The future of bilingual education is among the most contentious of the issues voters will decide next month. It is the real backstory in a state where non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in the next century.

The recent surge in Latino voter registration was highlighted by the fact that in last year's Los Angeles mayoral race, Latinos for the first time came out in numbers larger than the city's black population, accounting for about 15 percent of the votes cast.

The three Democratic candidates for governor have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into a record-breaking blitz of TV advertisements, including 30-second spots running on Spanish-language television.

None of the candidates spoke in Spanish during the debate, and none is fluent in the language. Instead, their responses in English were simultaneously translated into Spanish for the viewing audience.

Indeed, 1998 may be the last year in California that the major candidates for governor do not include a Latino. The last two speakers of the California assembly have been Latino, and the ethnic group is on the rise, not only in numbers, but in political offices held around the state and nation.

"I think the last time there was a statewide debate in Spanish was from the days of the Californios," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, an analyst at the Center for Politics and Economics at the Claremont Graduate School. She was referring to the days when the state belonged to Mexico in the 1840s.

The debate was entitled "Voto Latino '98: California Hacia El Futuro" (California into the Future). It was sponsored by La Opinion, one of the largest Spanish-language newspapers in the country, and KMEX-TV, rated one of the most popular stations in Los Angeles.

The audience for the live event was expected to rival, and probably exceed, that of the only other gubernatorial event this year, which was sponsored by the Los Angeles Times but broadcast only locally. Today's event was beamed to Univision stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Bakersfield and Fresno.

The debate pitted the three Democrats in the final week before the state's June 2 primary against GOP candidate Attorney General Dan Lungren.

In the state's new "blanket" primary, voters of any party can cross lines to vote for the candidate of their choice on a single ballot. The leading vote-getter of each major party will face the other in the November general election.

It will be Lungren for the Republicans against one of the Democrats: Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who led in the most recent polls, Los Angeles-area Rep. Jane Harman or millionaire-businessman Al Checchi.

The candidates were asked about their stands on the hot-button ballot initiative Proposition 227, which calls for the virtual end of bilingual education in a state where about 1.4 million schoolchildren are not proficient in English. Most speak Spanish.

All four candidates, including the Republican Lungren, oppose Proposition 227, saying that while they believe bilingual education is failing, the initiative sponsored by Silicon Valley software millionaire Ron Unz is too draconian, and that it takes local control away from school districts that are trying to meet the challenges of educating non-English-speaking students.

Proposition 227 would essentially end 30 years of bilingual education in the state where the practice began, limiting students to one year of intensive English immersion instruction and then placing most in mainstream classes. Usually, it takes as long as seven years for many schools to "transition" students into English.

Bilingual education is largely seen, even by its most ardent defenders, as "a failed experiment." However, opponents of Proposition 227 have cast the issue as another divisive wedge in California, as "immigrant bashing," following two recent controversial initiatives – the propositions that sought to end affirmative action in the state and to deny social services to illegal immigrants.

But the bilingual issue is different. While the initiative is decried by many Latino politicians and bilingual activists, it seems to have wide support among voters, including Latinos. In a Los Angeles Times poll released today, Proposition 227 was supported by 63 percent of likely voters. And among Latino voters, 62 percent supported the so-called "English for the Children" proposition.

This seeming disconnection between Latino voters and their elected officials has been perplexing, and the ramifications are still unknown. Many politicians, Latino and otherwise, until recently have tried to duck the issue.

Part of the reason is California's often divisive political climate, in which white voters, who turn out in the largest numbers, have been courted by politicians such as Gov. Pete Wilson (R). When Wilson came out in favor of Proposition 227 recently, even fellow Republican Unz said he did not want Wilson's support, that the former presidential candidate was too tainted by his anti-illegal immigrant stands to be an effective voice.

But others have come out in favor of ending bilingual education – not only Jaime Escalante, the state's famous high school teacher, whose efforts to teach calculus to inner-city Latinos was the subject of the movie "Stand and Deliver," but also Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan (R), who was reelected with strong support from Latino voters.

This week, Riordan put $250,000 of his own fortune into advertisements to run only on Spanish-language television, telling viewers that he believes ending bilingual education is the right thing to do. "My thinking," said Riordan in an interview this week, "is that bilingual education has been a total disaster."

The mayor said children are held in Spanish-language classes too long, and that children whose last names sound Latino are forced into the classes, even if they speak English. Riordan said he wanted his ads to run because he did not want the issue to become racially polarized. "I don't think the racial part has gotten that far yet," he said, "and I don't want it to."

Riordan's spending, however, is being overwhelmed by A. Jerrold Perenchio, the head of Univision Communications, one of the most prominent Spanish-language media moguls in the nation, worth an estimated $1.5 billion. Perenchio has pumped $1.5 million of his personal wealth to attack Unz's anti-bilingual initiative.

Unz charges that Perenchio's actions are a cynical ploy to keep as many of his viewers speaking Spanish as possible.