But the primary was a financial windfall for television, as self-financed candidates with immense fortunes bought every bit of available air time to make themselves known or to demonize their opponents. Total spending is likely to exceed $100 million. Businessman Al Checchi shelled out $40 million in his failed attempt to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, more than any previous nonpresidential candidate in U.S. history had spent on the primary and general election combined.

Among them, the three Democratic candidates for governor spent at least $65 million. Businessman Darrell Issa's losing bid to win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate cost him $10 million. Organized labor spent $20 million to defeat Proposition 226, a rare case in this primary where big spenders got their money's worth.

The national story, heartening to the political establishment across the land, was that money alone cannot buy nominations to high office even in a state with 33 million people--at least not in prosperous times when most voters are content.

Not that the winners would qualify for welfare assistance. Lieutenant Governor Gray Davis spent $9 million to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Although this amount paled in comparison to Checchi and Representative Jane Harman, a late starter who spent $16 million and ran third, it tied the previous record for primary spending. In the GOP Senate race, state Treasurer Matt Fong spent $2.5 million in his upset victory. Many previous candidates have won with less, but Fong's spending seemed insignificant because he was outspent four-to-one by Issa.

The upbeat analysis of the primary in the poilitical community was that voters demonstrated a healthy skepticism about financial excess and a respect for political experience. True enough, but the outcomes in the primary were determined by the small minority of Californians who felt concerned or informed enough to vote.

The 42 percent turnout of registered voters unimpresive on its face, was worse than it looked. Prodded by Secretary of State Bill Jones, many counties assiduously removed the so-called "deadwood" from voting rolls, purging habitual non-voters or people who had moved away or died. This increased the percentage of registered voters in the primary. But the percentage of eligible voters, including those who could have participate if they bothered to register, remained constant at about 25 percent.

There seems little doubt that the turnout would have been higher if television paid more attention to public affairs.

"In most democracies, the principal television channels give extensive coverage to the campaign for the two weeks before the election," said William J. Rosendahl, senior vice president of the Los Angeles-based Century Cable. "Here local television has abandoned this responsibility."

The long decline in television coverage of politics was particularly noticeable this time, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a contributing editor to California Journal, because of a "breathtaking imbalance between the commercial spending and the lack of coverage." Other observers, including Warren Olney of public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica, and John Jacobs, political editor for McClatchy Newspapers, found a suspicious relationship in this imbalance.

"This is a novel conflict of interest for the television stations," Jacobs said. "Why cover the candidates when they're going to spend the money with you if you don't?"

Television executives denied nefarious motives while acknowledging commercial reasons for lack of political coverage. In interviews with The Washington Post, news directors from two Los Angeles television stations and a producer from another acknowledged that political news held a low priority at their stations, especially during the May "sweeps" period, which ended 10 days before the election.

One of these news directors, Jeff Wald of KTLA, said he was surprised during the May 13th debate of the four principal gubernatorial candidates sponsored by the Los Angeles Times that Checchi came across as shaky and that Davis and Republican candidate Dan Lungren as witty and informed. And Wald was even more surprised that the debate, which KTLA had televised at his urging, produced higher ratings than its normal morning programs.

"Because of the May sweeps, we had been caught up in other things and hadn't realized that this is a very interesting race," Wald said. "I kind of regret that we hadn't done more to cover [the campaign]."

Wald and Larry Perret, news director of KCBS in Los Angeles, said that local television is unlikely to change its ways in a competitive market in which political news is seen as inherently dull. At KNBC, which holds the highest ratings in Los Angeles with a steady diet of crime-and-catastrophe news, spokesman Erin Dittman said in May that no one at the station could discuss the issue because "this is the final week of sweeps, and we're too busy."

But there may be more latent interest in politics than television executives realize. Two examples are KTLA's higher-than- expected ratings for the debate and the continued growth Of Century Cable, which now serves a million customers in west Los Angeles, and Orange County with a steady diet of public-affairs programs. Stations in smaller markets such as Eureka, Santa Barbara and Monterey continue to cover political news without diminution Of ratings,
KCOY in San Luis Obispo and KXTV in Sacrauicnto both sent reporters to Minnesota to do a useful pieces on Ciccchi, an act of journalism that no Los Angeles station duplicated.

The good-government argument for more television coverage of politics is made with eloquence by Rosendahl, who said the current situation is "dangerous to a democracy and added, "Television has an obligation to get beyond its greed and realize that our country's future is at stake and that it can fail if there's insufficient public participation."

But Olney believes that commercial television will cover public affairs only if a case can be made that such coverage is profitable. Olney, who left television in disgust several years ago to host the popular "Which Way L.A." on radio, is convinced that political coverage can attract ratings if stations become "willing to devote resources to politics and cover it creatively."

His words were echoed by a Veteran producer at a major station in Los Angeles who said he was afraid to talk on the record for fear of being fired.

"Anyone with access to a helicopter can point a camera at a car chase," this producer said, "it takes some thought to cover politics in an interesting way. We have decided that politics isn't interesting, and it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy."