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The conservative shift starts at the top of the party. For President Carter, this represents not so much a change as a return to his original strategy. At the beginning of his presidential campaign, he portrayed himself as a budget balancer, then gradually moved to the left after his nomination. In his first year in office he supported a boost in Social Security taxes, a phased hike in the minimum wage, which will reach $3.35 in 1981, and spending programs to combat unemployment. But as inflation has become the No. 1 domestic economic problem, he can now revert to positions that appear to be more comfortable for him and give him a better chance of re-election in 1980. Although many critics have attacked him for fumbling and indecisiveness, the successful summit conference at Camp David has altered that public perception. Though many Democratic candidates try to avoid identification with the Carter Administration, the President himself is not an issue in the campaign.
Carter's shift of stance on economic affairs has been modest compared with that of his rival in California. Up to primary day, Jerry Brown opposed Proposition 13; when it was approved, he became an overnight convert and began to talk as if the whole thing had been his idea in the first place. People laughed and scoffed, but Brown seems to have survived the flip-flop with votes to spare. The latest survey shows him 25 points ahead of his lackluster Republican opponent, State Attorney General Evelle Younger, whose campaign style is unkindly compared to a mashed-potato sandwich.
While denouncing taxes with reborn evangelical fervor, Brown has skillfully muted the effects of Proposition 13 by distributing an accumulated revenue surplus of $4 billion to communities deprived of property tax revenues. He also signed a bill in August cutting personal income taxes by $1 billion next year, a move that will save each taxpaying family an average of $150. For this behavior, Brown has not won the endorsement but certainly the blessing of the most popular figure in the state, Howard Jarvis, author of Proposition 13. Jarvis originally appeared in a TV ad praising Younger for successfully opposing the legal challenge to Proposition 13. But then the tax cutter decided to help out the Governor as well. He cut a tape praising Brown: "Sure, I wrote Proposition 13, but it takes a dedicated Governor to make it work."
TIME'S Los Angeles Bureau Chief William Rademaekers followed Brown one day last week as the Governor took his message to varied groups of voters. Boarding the chartered Learjet at Los Angeles, Brown first flipped through the morning papers, stopping at a story that reported unemployment statistics down. Jabbing his finger at the item, he said, "Government is flattening out. The private sector is pushing forward." Noting that corporate profits in California are double the national average, he said he expects the 1979 state surplus to be as large as this year's. So despite all the grim forebodings, no sharp cutbacks in public spending are anticipated.