My first convention event was a Friday afternoon press conference featuring state party chair Art Torres. This was a new experience for me; I had attended countless computer industry press conferences, but never a political one. Yet here I was, the news editor of Macworld magazine, right at home among reporters from the L.A. Times, New York Times, and Sacramento Bee.

They wanted to hear Torres' views on next year's gubernatorial race. I wanted to know why the state party was using Windows PCs instead of Macs.

Was there a payoff from Intel? Did Bill Gates spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom? I thought about raising the issue, but figured I would wait until my investigation proceeded further...

In the meantime, Torres handled the reporters like the veteran politician he is. For every tricky question designed to trip him up, he had a quick and effective response.

Party chair Art Torres had the reporters eating out of the palm of his hand.

At one point, Torres discussed the ramifications of a recently passed ballot initiative that establishes an open primary in California. Under the previous system, you had to be a registered Democrat or Republican to vote in your party's respective primary. In an open primary, Democrats and Republicans can vote for the other party's candidates if they choose. Although the state party has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the proposition, Torres said that he anticipates many moderate Republicans would vote for Democrats in an open primary.

"That sounds like a case for dropping the lawsuit," one reporter said.

"No," Torres quickly retorted, "that's a case for realism. If you lose the lawsuit, you have to be prepared to deal with it. . . . As chair, I have to be prepared to deal with any eventuality."

The Republican Party, which also opposed the initiative, has talked about using alternative mechanisms for choosing nominees, such as a caucus system. But Torres made it clear that the Democrats will not follow suit. "I'm not into little games or clever actions for beating the system," he said. "If the judicial branch decides that our arguments are not persuasive enough, then we will abide by that decision and move forward with a strategy for open primaries."

One major topic of discussion was campaign financing. The state party is seeking to overturn Prop. 208, an initiative passed last year that limits contributions to candidates and party organizations. Torres contended that it's unconstitutional because it restricts his ability to communicate with his "members," California's registered Democrats.

The party's opposition to Prop. 208--the more moderate of two campaign finance initiatives on the 1996 ballot--inspired a group called the Alliance for Democracy to stage a protest outside the convention center.

Torres also discussed a controversy regarding fundraising by the Democratic National Committee in 1996. He said that the state party carefully scrutinizes all contributions, suggesting that the national party could have avoided the problems if it had followed similar procedures. For example, he said the state party refused to accept a $10,000 contribution from the tobacco industry in 1996.

Much of the DNC controversy was related to money raised by an Asian-American party operative, and Torres noted that as a result, all Asian-American donors have been stigmatized. "It's been terribly unfair to Asian-Americans who have been part of this Democratic Party for the last 20 to 30 years that I've been in politics," he said. "Many of them are former office-holders, many have been contributors both economically and through their own resources by being part of the process here as delegates. If there are problems with certain individuals, then punish those individuals, but don't paint the broad brush, which is so easy to do, and create a yellow scare."

Later, I spoke with Al Yano, a retired Long Beach State physics professor who is active in an Asian-American Democratic group. He confirmed that some of his friends have received rather unpleasant calls from the DNC--calls apparently made to any donor with an Asian surname to see if their contribution was somehow tainted.

Torres, who for years represented East L.A. in the State Senate, became party chair in 1995 to fill the term of Bill Press, who had left to join CNN's Crossfire. He seems to be a natural for the post, and it looks like he's done an admirable job of uniting the party's various factions.

Torres expressed concern that Asian-Americans were being stigmatized by fundraising controversies.

The Democratic Party in California has not had much of an ideological split--most delegates would call themselves "liberals"--but past conventions have featured bitter feuds between grassroots activists and political professionals over how the party is run. That rancor seemed absent this year, and Torres probably deserves much of the credit.

He certainly knows his delegates. Asked if he would try to tone down opposition to the welfare reform bill--signed by President Clinton but opposed by many Democrats--he said: "There is no way I'm going to orchestrate what happens on that convention floor. I just don't do that, and quite frankly, even if you tried, you wouldn't be successful, because we're the Democratic Party. It is our tradition to argue about issues, and to do that is very healthy."

The following day, Torres was re-elected without opposition, despite a rule in the party by-laws that the chair for this term must reside in Northern California. Although Torres' political base is in the L.A. area, he now lives in the north, so he was able to get around this pesky technicality. Still, if there had been doubts about his leadership, you can be sure some challenger would have emerged to make an issue of his southern origins. It never happened.

Now, about those Windows PCs. . . .