FLAILING ANGELIDES MAY PULL ALL DEMS DOWN.

Byline: JILL STEWART 

Four years after California Democrats swept all statewide offices for the first time since 1882, why are they struggling to win back the governor's suite and fighting to keep the jobs of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller and insurance commissioner?

With talk of a possible tidal wave against Republicans in contested congressional races nationwide, Democrats in California are gasping for air in their very own swimming hole.

Blame the wan and flailing gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, who I predicted last spring could not beat Arnold. He badly lags in polls and fundraising -- so badly that he threatens to take his colleagues down.

``It's possible Angelides will sour the down-ballot races,'' Republican consultant Mike Murphy, an Arnold Schwarzenegger confidante, told me recently. ``That's certainly a looming possibility,'' respected Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, agreed.

Angelides, the panicky swimmer, is starting to pull anyone near him under the water. Core Democrats will vote for Democrats for the statewide posts, but the outcomes on Nov. 7 will clearly be decided by tie-breaking, and thus influential, swing voters.

Swing voters will decide whether 2006 is a replay of 1994, when Democratic candidate for governor Kathleen Brown badly lost and dragged down her party in statewide races.

One extremely close race to watch on Nov. 7 is the lightly reported and fascinating contest for lieutenant governor.

Perpetual candidate John Garamendi, now the state insurance commissioner, has proved to be a weak candidate without Angelides to boost him. You may recall Garamendi as the guy who buckled to pressure from Democratic Party insiders during the 2003 recall, halting his run for governor to clear the field for Democrat Cruz Bustamante.

Talk about your miscalculations. Bustamante ran a predictably inept campaign for governor and got caught illegally transferring millions of dollars into his campaign. He went down in flames against Schwarzenegger.

Running against Garamendi on Nov. 7 is state Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks. In ironic contrast to Garamendi, McClintock made his mark by sticking to principles, refusing to bow out of the 2003 gubernatorial race to clear the field for fellow Republican Schwarzenegger.

McClintock infuriated Republican Party insiders, but won admirers across the board with his populist campaign. In September 2003, a whopping 62 percent of California voters rated McClintock favorably in a Los Angeles Times poll.

McClintock is an anti-spending, anti-regulation, old-school fiscal conservative. He supports a shift of state spending away from metastasizing social programs and back to the abandoned California infrastructure.

His views don't reflect most California voters' views. Voters like him anyway. Polls show McClintock tied with Garamendi.

Then there's the neck-and-neck race for secretary of state. Democratic state Sen. Debra Bowen of Marina del Rey is challenging Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, who was appointed to the job of elections czar by Arnold.

McPherson replaced disgraced Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, who resigned amid allegations that he directed public election funds into partisan Democratic Party activities. Despite doing an able job, the moderate McPherson would be losing to Bowen right now if Angelides weren't acting as a damper on fundraising for worthy Democrats.

Bowen, after all, is a national expert on high-tech voting, a skeptic who supports a return to paper ballots that are electronically scanned. McPherson, by contrast, insists California's current practice -- allowing electronic voting, then testing its accuracy and making a paper record -- is good enough. Clearly, Bowen has a more appealing message for anyone who fears election tampering. But she lacks the cash to get her message out.

I've previously described the race for insurance commissioner, in which bizarre Lt. Gov. Bustamante spent the summer publicizing his effort to lose weight -- I'm not kidding -- while the capable Silicon Valley Republican Steve Poizner focused on key issues facing the insured and the insurance industry.

If Republicans win these races, in a state dominated by Democrats, it should be a lesson to overly comfortable political parties that if you take voters for granted too long, voters rebel. That's the lesson unfolding in these surprisingly tight races. But it will be a miracle if the political establishment in California learns anything at all.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) State Treasurer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, right, points out the San Francisco skyline to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during Blair's visit to the city in July.

Noah Berger-Pool/Getty Images

(2) no caption (Phil Angelides)