Golden boy

In California, gubernatorial candidate Dan Lungren serves conservatism sunny-side up.

San Diego

The small propeller plane trailing a "Lungren for Governor" banner circled in the cloudless blue sky over the San Diego Convention Center an hour before the candidates' first debate in the most important campaign this year. If any of the Californians down below unlaced their rollerblades or docked their windsurfers to watch the face-off, they saw Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren handily trounce Democratic Lieutenant Governor Gray Davis in the first of five scheduled debates. The following morning, the San Diego Union-Tribune declared, "Dan Lungren wanted 18 debates. Gray Davis wanted only five. Now we know why."

Lungren and Davis both want the second-biggest prize in American politics: the governorship of California. Winning the top spot in the most populous state of the Union is particularly important this year. The contest has been called "the most important congressional race of 1998" because the governor will preside over California's re-districting following the 2000 census, with six to eight congressional seats in the balance. Current governor Pete Wilson bluntly states, "Without a Republican governor, there's no hope for a fair and honest reapportionment."

There is a second way in which the race has wider significance. Whoever sits in the governor's mansion in Sacramento also sits on his party's bench of possible future candidates for a national ticket. If Lungren, a pro-lifer, wins in one of the most pro-choice states in the country, it would defy the conventional wisdom about the politics of abortion. The race also offers one of the clearest philosophical choices this year, pitting a sometime chief of staff to former governor Jerry Brown against an articulate, committed conservative. Indeed, a victorious Lungren could become the most attractive national spokesman conservatives have had in years.

Already, he is frequently compared to Ronald Reagan. A recent profile in the New York Times described him as "the most nimble, upbeat politician the [California GOP] has fielded for governor since Mr. Reagan." Like Reagan, Lungren has absorbed the spirit of the Golden State. As a Californian, he says, "I was given the opportunity to believe that there were no limitations on my future . . . to believe that the blue sky we saw in California was a metaphor for my life."

Dan Lungren's California childhood seems to have been particularly sunny. He was the second of seven children in a close-knit Catholic family. The Lungrens gave their children a sense of duty and responsibility and taught them to respect the absolute demands of conscience. So did the Holy Cross brothers at Dan's high school. (His retired high- school debate coach, Brother Joseph, sat proudly in the San Diego audience for his star pupil's first face-off with Gray Davis.) Dan took -- and kept -- a Confirmation pledge that he wouldn't touch alcohol until he was 21. His former colleague Rep. Bob Livingston (R., La.) notes that Lungren is the only Catholic he knows who's a teetotaler; he typically asks for a glass of milk when friends are enjoying cocktails.

All three Lungren boys graduated from their father's alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, Dan in 1968. Their four sisters attended the neighboring Saint Mary's College in South Bend. Notre Dame's football schedule appears in bold print on the attorney general's calendar, and his own son went there. It is thus no surprise that Lungren quotes John Courtney Murray's We Hold These Truths in speeches and, to the distress of some GOP donors, spoke about the importance of religious values in public life at his campaign kick-off. Earlier this year he told a Republican National Committee audience that he is running partly to prevent Bill Clinton from being the political legacy of his generation.

The close embrace of his family and faith did not leave Lungren much room for self-doubt. He pleads guilty to a stubbornness on behalf of the causes he believes in, but he points out that his parents are each half-Swedish and half-Irish. Genetics also explain his dark Irish good looks and relish for spirited debate. In his campaign for re-election as attorney general in 1994, Lungren debated his challenger 11 times, despite his 20-point lead in a race he won by more than a million votes.

Lungren's interest in Republican politics also comes naturally. From 1952 through 1968, his father, a prominent surgeon in Long Beach, volunteered as personal physician to his friend Richard Nixon during his national campaigns. Dr. Lungren's phone calls home from the campaign trail gave his children a fascinating glimpse of presidential politics.

Dan Lungren, 52, got a medical deferment from his draft board in 1968. Gray Davis, 55, who served as an Army Signal Corps officer in Vietnam, has made an issue of it. Lungren accuses Davis of engaging in a "whisper campaign" to the effect that Dr. Lungren's friendship with Nixon explains the deferment (and indeed, after the San Diego debate, a Davis supporter suggested as much to me).