Decisive--but No Final Decisions : Issues like vouchers, and Clinton’s coattails, will return again and again

Election results back East provided no comfort for President Clinton’s political operatives. Democrats were defeated in bids for the governorship in Virginia and New Jersey and lost the mayoralty in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City. But the news media would be mistaken to conclude that such results suggest any final word on the Clinton presidency.

Nor was anything settled for all time here in California. When they weren’t fighting fires or fleeing them, voters, in a low turnout, made some high-profile decisions too. Most dramatically, the state’s voters buried the voucher proposition, which would have begun the process of privatizing public schools by subsidizing private ones with a $2,600-a-year voucher for each student. The margin of Proposition 174’s defeat--70% to 30%--was an eye-opener.

In part the landslide defeat was a product of the measure’s manifest imperfections. Even voters inclined toward vouchers were turned off by this particular proposal. But supporters of the voucher concept must understand one thing: Dismantling the school system is a worrisome step in a democracy committed to equal opportunity for all.

Says Joseph Alibrandi, chair of the Yes on 174 Campaign, “The other side will wake up and realize that they cannot maintain the status quo.” Please! Few who are seriously interested in public education are wholly satisfied with it. If this newspaper were satisfied, if the L.A. business community were satisfied, if Helen Bernstein, the head of the L.A. teachers union, were satisfied, if parents and teachers were satisfied, then why would so many people be bothering with LEARN, the complex effort to reform the L.A. public schools from within? That effort isn’t as sexy as vouchers, or as simplistic: It is a serious and determined reform.

Yes, Proposition 174 was supported by the California Republican Party--but not by the state’s Republican governor or by Los Angeles’ mayor, also a Republican, and it was opposed by more than a dozen Republican state legislators. (Indeed, only one statewide official--the attorney general--endorsed the measure.) And why is that? Because these are responsible officials who on issues of overwhelming importance put the public interest over partisanship or quick fixes.

Nevertheless, 174 was no more the last word on the school-choice issue than passage of Proposition 172 was evidence that the tax revolt is over. Indeed, while voters by a margin of 58% to 42% choose to keep the half-cent sales tax to fund public safety at current levels, they resoundingly defeated Proposition 170, which would have lowered the threshold for approval of school bond issues. But that issue--whether to preserve the two-thirds requirement for special revenue measures, thus allowing a one-third minority to control the outcome--will return another day, and perhaps for a different resolution.

Despite all the decisiveness, nothing was ultimately decided in Tuesday’s election.