By David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 1, 1997; Page A25

Looking ahead to what is by almost any reckoning the most important election on the horizon – the choice of a new governor for California in 1998 – Republican operatives who flocked here for last weekend's state GOP convention face a classic good news-bad news situation.

The good news is that, as the state's economy regains the momentum it lost in the early years of this decade, Gov. Pete Wilson, the party leader, is rapidly recovering from the ravages of his failed 1996 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

The bad news is that, thanks to term limits, that popular Republican nostrum, Wilson can't run for a third term next year. Wilson's aides say their private polls show that, if he could run, he would beat any challenger, Republican or Democrat.

GOP hopes of maintaining a 15-year grip on the governor's office rest on the shoulders of Attorney General Dan Lungren. With Democrats in control of both houses of the legislature, retaining the governorship is essential to preventing a Democratic-designed redistricting plan, after the census of 2000, that would virtually guarantee the Democrats majority status in the legislature well into the new century and would greatly boost the chances of Democrats regaining their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Lungren is probably more popular than Wilson among the Republican activists who dominated the delegate rolls at a Disneyland hotel here. He has a strong record on crime, an issue that is perennially important to California voters. But the pros I talked to here worry about the baggage Lungren carries into a race against Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, the current Democratic front-runner, and the much tougher challenge he would face if Sen. Dianne Feinstein should come home and seek the governorship.

As a conservative member of the House, Lungren cast a number of votes that easily can be targeted by liberal interest groups. And, unlike Wilson, he is a staunch opponent of abortion in a state where voters consistently through this decade have favored presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial candidates supportive of abortion rights.

Lungren is rated a better campaigner than Davis and has a better grip on state issues than Feinstein or millionaire businessman Al Checchi, now Davis's only challenger for the Democratic nomination.

But Lungren will have to overcome not only his Democratic opponent but also two powerful political and demographic trends, which, in the words of one GOP consultant, "have made California no longer the Republican bastion it was in the days of Earl Warren, Dick Nixon and Ronald Reagan."

One shift has been well-publicized: the rapid growth in the number of Latino voters and the concurrent collapse of Republican support in the Hispanic community. California is well on the way to being a majority-minority state, and within the array of minorities, Latinos are poised to supplant African Americans as the single largest voter bloc.

Exit polls by the Los Angeles Times show that the GOP share of the Latino vote, which was as high as 40 percent in a 1992 Senate race, plunged to 18 percent for Bob Dole last year. The direct cause was the Wilson-backed Proposition 187, which bars any education or health assistance to illegal immigrants or their children.

"Outreach" to Latinos and other minorities was a major theme of this convention. But Rod Pacheco of Riverside, the lone Latino Republican in the state Assembly, told me that "just as 187 drove Hispanics away," a new initiative ending bilingual education – which conservatives are likely to place on next year's ballot – "is bad policy and not a good thing for our party."

Less well-known is the erosion of Republican support among the "New Economy" workers, the highly educated people in the software, multimedia and film industries that are replacing defense and other manufacturing as the backbone of the California economy. A memo by Bernd Schwieren, a consultant to Assembly Minority Leader Curt Pringle, spells out the danger.

The Information Age workers, mainly young, single and male, are politically moderate and independent. Their views on abortion and social issues generally are not those of Lungren or the religious right. In the areas where they are concentrated – the San Francisco Bay region, San Diego and Los Angeles counties – Republican registration and voting support have been declining and Republicans have lost four Assembly seats. Democrats now hold 14 of the 20 most highly educated districts while 24 of the 37 Republican districts are at or below the median schooling level. Even Wilson was weakest among these well-educated workers.

In a race that is vital to the Republican future in this nation, Lungren has a lot to overcome.