The outlook is dicey for Republicans in nation’s two largest states. Kevin Phillips calls Pierre Rinfret, choice of the New York GOP for governor, a “near joke-level” contender. Phillips thinks Mario Cuomo may win so big in November that the Democrats could take over the state senate for first time in 25 years, giving Democrats a free hand in 1991 redistricting. … Dianne Feinstein’s primary win in California makes that “clearly the most important state in American politics today,” according to Democratic National Chairman Ronald Brown. Republican National Chairman Lee Atwater agrees and says election of Pete Wilson as governor of California is the GOP’s top priority this year. Pollster Mervin Field believes Feinstein will give Wilson “a good run.” . . . At stake here, too, is redistricting. The two Republican propositions to curb Democratic control of redistricting were defeated by roughly two to one (67 to 33, 64 to 36 per cent). Political analyst Everett Ladd of Roper Center doesn’t believe California’s acceptance of doubled gasoline tax means the tax revolt is over. Americans, he says, want a high level of government services and are prepared to pay for them, but they don’t want their money squandered. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll indicates the public believes 46 cents of every dollar in taxes is wasted. In third important gubernatorial race this year Republican Clayton Williams leads Ann Richards by 14 points in Texas. … In senatorial races, Iowa Republican Tom Tauke is within nine points of Democratic incumbent Sen. Tom Harkin, not bad at this point in the electoral season, and in Rhode Island, Claudine Schneider trails Claiborne Pell by just ten points. Schneider has backing of NOW, the Women’s Political Caucus, and most environmental groups. Pell has considerable clout as chairman of Foreign Relations Committee, although that didn’t prevent electoral defeat in near past of chairmen William Fulbright, Frank Church, and Charles Percy.
summit residual: Media Monitor, which taped 144 summit stories on the CBS, NBC, and ABC evening news shows, found Mikhail Gorbachev got twice as much TV coverage as George Bush, but Gorby’s coverage was more negative than in past. The Soviet prez, it says, “was praised most frequently by U.S. Government officials and criticized most often by American reporters and Soviet citizens.” . . . Despite warm welcome Americans gave Gorbachev a fortnight back, a Boston Globe/WBZ poll shows that they oppose giving aid to the USSR by two to one. . Harvard Prof. Richard Pipes points out in Commentory that conditions are worse in Russia than anyone imagines. Soviet citizens in 1985 ate less meat than in 1913; they have one-tenth the housing space of the U.S. . . . Former Defense aide Richard Perle unhappy that U.S. leaders tended “to cater to Gorbachev like an anxious bride.” . . . Not so, North Korea’s unrepentant Kim Il-sung whose Radio Pyongyang described Gorbachev’s meeting with South Korean President Roh Tae Woo “as a disgraceful blot of flunkyist treachery.” … In Dublin last week European Commission president Jacques Delors urged fellow European socialists to rewrite the Treaty of Rome to increase the power of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, and the EC in Brussels. Meeting confirmed worry of Margaret Thatcher that gains made for the free market in Thatcher-Reagan revolution could be lost in establishing Europe ’92. . . . Interesting sidelight on Peruvian election. Free-marketeer Hernando de Soto, a onetime supporter of Mario Vargas Llosa, apparently broke with Vargas Llosa during the campaign in part over the novelist’s refusal to come to grips with important Protestant evangelical movement.
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