Clinton to Mix Business, Pleasure in Southland : Politics: He plans to meet with Reagan, see friends this weekend. He’ll also seek to firm up electoral base.

Is it the sun, the waves, the old friends, or the 54 Electoral College votes that brings Bill Clinton to California today for his first vacation since he was elected President earlier this month?

How about all of the above.

Clinton’s weekend visit to Southern California is primarily social: After a meeting with Ronald Reagan and a possible visit to the Glendale Galleria this afternoon, he will spend most of the next three days as the guest of his friends Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason at their Summerland beachfront estate.

But with Clinton, the social and the political are as indivisible as the ocean and the beach. Aides say this weekend’s trip also is intended to underscore a political point: Unlike President Bush, who was frequently accused of slighting California, Clinton will concentrate on fortifying his political base in the nation’s largest state.

“We will not make the mistake of ignoring California,” insists David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager and now the director of political affairs for the transition.

Despite those assurances, some in the state wonder if Clinton--the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry California since 1964--can fulfill the expectations his election has aroused in areas as diverse as South Central Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

And some California representatives on Capitol Hill worry that for all the promises of tending to California, Clinton may feel more compelled to steer federal dollars toward the state’s Sun Belt rivals of Texas and Florida--two rich electoral prizes that the Democrat failed to carry in the election.

“There are two ways to look at this,” says one California congressional aide. “Does he reward California for bringing so much to the table, or does he try to shore up Texas and Florida where he lost?”

But to many of California’s Clinton-watchers, the early signs are encouraging. To an unusual degree, Californians were well-represented in the upper reaches of Clinton’s campaign and remain so in his transition effort--starting at the top with transition director Warren Christopher, a Los Angeles attorney. And a long list of California business and political leaders are on the ephemeral short lists of potential White House and Cabinet appointments pulsing along the rumor circuit between Washington and Little Rock, Ark.

“On all counts, from friendship to political support, the California connection has been second only to the Arkansas connection,” says Derek Shearer, a professor of public policy at Occidental College and one of Clinton’s closest friends in the state.

By all reports, Clinton seems to genuinely enjoy California, particularly Southern California. “He likes the restaurants, he likes to run on the beach, he likes the weather--he likes the whole hustle and bustle of Los Angeles,” says Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s press secretary and one of the Californians on his staff.

Clinton has regularly visited California for more than 20 years. One early guide was Shearer; he became friendly with Clinton through his sister, Brooke, who married one of Clinton’s roommates at Oxford University.

Since the early 1970s, Clinton often stayed at the guest house in Shearer’s parents’ home in Brentwood. Sometimes he joined Shearer for pickup basketball games with city officials and police officers in Santa Monica. (When he returned to California earlier this year as a candidate, some of the men assigned to his security detail already had experience guarding him on the basketball court.)

Twenty years later, Shearer became part of Clinton’s inner circle of economic advisers in his campaign and the transition.

In his typical fashion, Clinton steadily expanded his network of personal and political contacts in California. In the late 1970s, Clinton became friendly with Mickey Kantor, a Los Angeles attorney and Democratic insider, who had met Hillary Clinton while they both served on the board of the Legal Services Corp. during the Jimmy Carter Administration.

Kantor, who ran former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr.’s presidential campaign in 1976, was chairman of Clinton’s campaign this year and is on the transition’s board of directors.

Over time, Clinton reached out to a cross section of Los Angeles largely through the door-opening efforts of Shearer, Kantor and the Bloodworth-Thomasons, Arkansas natives who had moved to California to pursue a career in television production.

With their help, Clinton through the 1980s learned his way around Los Angeles both gilded and gritty. He spoke at the inaugural meeting of the Show Coalition, a group of well-connected political activists in the film industry, and presented himself for inspection at a dinner of Westside doyennes convened by producer Norman Lear.

At the urging of Westside Democratic activist Stanley B. Sheinbaum, Clinton toured South Central Los Angeles in 1989 and met with community groups--a visit he cited repeatedly when he returned there after the riots last spring.

In his race for the White House, Clinton substantially widened his California contacts. Although his lead in the state was so large that he spent little time here after Labor Day, over the long campaign season Clinton established significant relationships in at least five diverse communities, several of them unfamiliar territory for Democrats:

Orange County. When a friend told Clinton that Roger W. Johnson, the chairman of Western Digital Corp. in Irvine and a lifetime Republican, had publicly criticized Bush, the candidate called the executive and began a campaign-long courtship of this Republican stronghold. Eventually, Clinton received highly publicized endorsements from Johnson and several other Orange County business leaders, including developer Kathryn G. Thompson, who contributed $100,000 to Bush in 1988.

Clinton repeatedly cited those defections as early evidence that his centrist appeal could fracture the GOP coalition. “To him it was another piece of evidence that his message could bring people together,” says Johnson.

Los Angeles gays. At a private meeting last fall, Clinton impressed a group of Westside gay and lesbian leaders with a staunch defense of equal rights for homosexuals. With that starting point, Clinton tapped into a substantial fund-raising network led by Los Angeles political consultant and gay activist David Mixner. Last spring, in Hollywood, Clinton held his first public fund-raiser with gays--an event that established a new visibility for homosexuals in presidential politics.

South Central Los Angeles. Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents South Central in Congress, provided Clinton with one of his key early endorsements from the black community. It was after he toured the area following last May’s riot and met with local community activists and entrepreneurs in Waters’ home that Clinton first detailed his urban policy agenda, a plan built primarily around encouraging inner-city business development.

“I think his experiences in South Central weigh on him in terms of urban policy,” says John Emerson, who managed Clinton’s California campaign in the general election.

Hollywood. Clinton enjoyed early support from this crucial financial resource for Democrats, even though he was more moderate than the candidates usually preferred in Brentwood and Bel-Air. But he had built personal relationships with such key executives as Peter Guber, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Mike Medavoy, who runs the studio’s Tri Star Pictures subsidiary, and producer Dawn Steel.

By Election Day, Clinton attracted broad support in Hollywood--as symbolized by the star-studded gala in September headlined by Barbra Streisand at the home of Ted Field, a producer, investor and prominent Democratic fund-raiser.

Silicon Valley. Although other Democrats--significantly Gary Hart--had broken their pick trying to quarry support in the Republican-leaning high-technology industry, Clinton punched through and found a rich vein of defections. With Apple Computer Vice President Dave Barram, who had known Hillary Clinton from their work together on an educational commission, as the initial contact, Clinton laid siege to high-tech leaders with a series of meetings and consultations.

Clinton’s persistence was rewarded last fall with a head-turning list of endorsements topped by two lifelong Republicans: John Sculley, chairman of Apple Computer, and John A. Young, chief executive officer at Hewlett-Packard Co. In the last weeks of the campaign, with Bush ferociously trying to portray him as a closet liberal, Clinton brandished those endorsements.

With so many points of access into the Clinton camp, expectations are high in the state for significant representation in the new Administration. “There are a lot of people who have a lot of names,” says the senior congressional aide.

Californians already hold many key positions in the transition. As transition director, Christopher is supervising the search for Cabinet officers and other top officials. Kantor and Doris Matsui, the wife of Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento), sit on the transition board of directors. Kantor also is organizing the economic conference that Clinton will convene in Little Rock, Ark., next month. Attorney Gerald Stern, now back in Los Angeles, helped design the transition apparatus.

In addition, Myers, a former press secretary for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, plays that role for the transition. Robert Boorstin, who grew up in Beverly Hills, is a chief deputy to communications director George Stephanopoulos.

Two other Californians--John Emerson, who directed Clinton’s California campaign in the general election, and Mary Leslie, who headed his fund-raising efforts here--are working with Kantor to coordinate the economic conference.

Shearer is directing work on labor-related issues for the transition’s economic policy group, while Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a professor at UC Berkeley, is charting options for high-technology policy. Harry Thomason has a lead role in planning the inauguration.

Many of these advisers are expected to compete for top jobs in the Administration. Christopher, for example, has been touted as a leading candidate for White House chief of staff.

Other California business and political leaders also are in the mix. Clinton insiders consider high-technology executives Young, Sculley and Roger Johnson serious contenders for secretary of commerce or other economic posts. Although Sculley has indicated he intends to stay at Apple, both Young and Johnson appear open to entertaining offers.

“If the President of the United States asks you to do something,” says Johnson, “I think you have a very high responsibility to listen.”

Several California elected officials also have seen their names swirl through the media wind tunnel: Waters, State Treasurer Kathleen Brown, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina have been discussed for domestic policy jobs. And Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) has been cited as a potential director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Not all of these Californians will emerge with significant positions. But with California so central to Clinton’s political future, and the example of Bush’s failure here so fresh, many expect the incoming President to focus more attention on the nation’s largest state than the man he is replacing.

“Clinton understands that California will still have 54 electoral votes in 1996 and that it has become a central part of the Democratic electoral map,” says Phil Angelides, the state Democratic Party chairman.