With nothing his campaign is doing really working, trailing in private tracking polls for both parties by 15 to 20 point margins, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides is resorting to character attacks against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that failed in the 2003 recall election. This alarms some key Democrats associated with Angelides’ down ballot ticketmates.
Four statewide offices won in the 2002 election by Democrats — lieutenant governor, insurance commissioner, secretary of state, and controller — are up for grabs. “If he loses by 20 points,” says one top Democrat, “our campaign won’t win. He needs to stop pretending he can win and conduct his campaign respectably, get up to 40 or 42 percent and hold the base. He can still decide how history judges him.”
But Angelides, who has had more themes than you can shake a stick at, yesterday started talking about the groping allegations against Schwarzenegger in the 2003 recall. This came after his claim the previous day that Schwarzenegger had supported apartheid in South Africa was forcefully and, for anyone knowledgeable about Schwarzenegger, predictably refuted.
On Tuesday, speaking before a group of African-American ministers in Sacramento, Angelides claimed that Schwarzenegger had supported apartheid in South Africa. He offered little to back up the claim, which Schwarzenegger’s reputable biographers have dismissed. It was not part of the kitchen sink tossed at Schwarzenegger by then Governor Gray Davis and his supporters in the 2003 recall campaign.
Yesterday the head of the International Federation of BodyBuilders, Ben Weider, issued a statement through the Schwarzenegger campaign, recounting how during the height of the apartheid era, Schwarzenegger, the dominant figure in the sport, went to South Africa with Weider to meet with the country’s minister of sport to insist that the Mr. Olympia competition be conducted under fully integrated conditions. He also sent along a letter from the official agreeing to the conditions. (The statement is available here on New West Notes.)
Schwarzenegger, as it happens, is a personal friend of Nelson Mandela, having met him through Special Olympics, with which Schwarzenegger became involved under the tutelage of his mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. South Africa’s most famous political prisoner later became South Africa’s president. Mandela called Schwarzenegger to congratulate him on his election as governor in the 2003 recall election.
Schwarzenegger biographer Laurence Leamer, who I came to know well, sent this comment to NWN by e-mail: “I’ve criticized Arnold for many things but I find it a disgraceful assertion to suggest that Arnold supported apartheid. One of the most profoundly moving moments of his entire life was meeting Nelson Mandela in South Africa and with him visiting Robben Island where Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison.”
Angelides’ plight and behavior drew scorn from Democrats associated with statewide campaigns that are in trouble and that are free from trouble. But the most scathing public comment came from someone who does not have to deal with the Angelides campaign, Democratic strategist Garry South. The architect of Gray Davis’s two winning gubernatorial campaigns, as well as Steve Westly’s near miss in the June Democratic primary for governor is in full I-told-you-so mode, mincing few words.
“Yes, the Angelides campaign and the candidate himself have now gone from merely inept and ineffectual to downright embarrassing and pathetic,” says South. “I can’t imagine knowing Democrats aren’t ashamed that this guy is our nominee for governor of the biggest state — and a deep blue one, at that.
“I predicted publicly, I think on your blog, that Angelides would turn out to be the Democratic Dan Lungren. Both of them had, among other things, a disease I call downballot-itis. Holders of down ballot offices often start to think they were brilliant in their winning of those low-profile offices (often via one-sided campaigns against hapless, underfunded opponents) and, hell, if they could get elected attorney general/treasurer twice, certainly they know how to run for governor. Angelides is proving again that it just ain’t so. His campaign is just abysmal.”
In another blow to Angelides, the liberal San Francisco Chronicle endorsed Schwarzenegger today. The paper spelled out some problems with Angelides in the editorial: “In his meeting with us, many of his (Angelides’) answers gave no indication that he either heard or cared about the question — time after time, he defaulted to his wind-up stump monologues about education or closing tax loopholes.”
I’ve had similar experiences with Angelides, who tried to slough off questions about his vague tax program by saying the details were “on the web site.” Which they were not and never will be, since after months of promises from his campaign he announced that he would say which corporate tax loopholes he would close only after he is elected.
As the spectacle at the top of the ticket unfolds, with Schwarzenegger and company conducting an excellent campaign complete with a sophisticated voter mobilization program for the entire ticket, only two Democrats running for state constitutional office look like winners today. Those are the two savviest and biggest names, former Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Bill Lockyer, for attorney general and treasurer, respectively.
The rest of the ticket has to hope for some steadiness at the top. And for more resources as they hope to state their cases in what is becoming a media cacophony on television.
UPDATE: Schwarzenegger biographer Laurence Leamer, who I came to know well, sent this comment to NWN by e-mail:“I’ve criticized Arnold for many things but I find it a disgraceful assertion to suggest that Arnold supported apartheid. One of the most profoundly moving moments of his entire life was meeting Nelson Mandela in South Africa and with him visiting Robben Island where Mandela was imprisoned for eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison.”
IT’S THAT TIME OF YEAR. In a Monday meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, which was filmed and webcast live, trailing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides was asked if he would engage in character attacks against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. With the camera on, he seemed uninterested. Shortly after the meeting, he called Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius, saying he just might do that after all. “You gave me something to think about,” he told the columnist, a very fine sportswriter who seemed unaware of Angelides’ past campaign practices. “It is an issue that has troubled me, and I believe that it is relevant.”
Yesterday, speaking before a group of African-American ministers in Sacramento, Angelides claimed that Schwarzenegger had supported apartheid in South Africa. He offered little to back up the claim, which Schwarzenegger’s reputable biographers have dismissed. It was not part of the kitchen sink tossed at Schwarzenegger by then Governor Gray Davis and his supporters in the 2003 recall campaign.
Today the head of the International Federation of BodyBuilders, Ben Weider, issued a statement through the Schwarzenegger campaign, recounting how during the height of the apartheid era, Schwarzenegger, the dominant figure in the sport, went to South Africa with Weider to meet with the country’s minister of sport to insist that the Mr. Olympia competition be conducted under fully integrated conditions. He also sent along a letter from the official agreeing to the conditions.
“In 1975 during the height of apartheid in South Africa, the country wanted to host the Mr. Olympia competition and the world amateur bodybuilding competition. Participants from 60 countries were set to compete.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger was so opposed to the racist apartheid government in South Africa that he asked me not to allow the Mr. Olympia competition to be held there. Arnold asked to join me in South Africa for a meeting with that country’s Minister of Sport, Dr. Piet Koornhof, to discuss the event.”
“Arnold Schwarzenegger forcefully explained to Dr. Koornhof that the bodybuilding championships would not be held in South Africa unless black and white athletes participated together, black and white athletes stayed at the same hotels, black and white athletes ate at the same restaurants, and black and white fans were all allowed in the audience together. In short, Arnold would not participate if the competition was segregated.
“The Minister was impressed with Arnold’s forceful argument, and agreed to respect the conditions.
“I have known Arnold since 1965 and he has never expressed any prejudice against any race or religion. For someone to suggest otherwise in the middle of a political race is outrageous.”
Schwarzenegger, incidentally, is a personal friend of Nelson Mandela, having met him through Special Olympics, with which Schwarzenegger became involved under the tutelage of his mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver. South Africa’s most famous political prisoner later became South Africa’s president. Mandela called Schwarzenegger to congratulate him on his election as governor in the 2003 recall election.
** Here is a question. Should I report all the, um, brilliant schemes I hear about? My natural inclination is to dismiss things that seem less than well-advised. For example, tomorrow a pair of Republican county chairmen are announcing a lawsuit to have Jerry Brown thrown off the ballot, on the theory that he is not qualified to be state attorney general.
I heard about this weeks ago, thought it foolish, looked into it, and did not change my mind. It’s a campaign move born of desperation, with Republican Chuck Poochigian in extremis, not unlike what we are seeing in the governor’s race, on the other side of the aisle, with the Phil Angelides campaign in its ever interesting attempts to take down Arnold Schwarzenegger. By the way, Angelides is not getting on the Tonight Show, nor will he get “equal time” from NBC. But he is getting on a well-known radio show with a host I’m not terribly familiar with. I would tell you more about it but I’m already forgetting.
** Former President Bill Clinton is appearing in another new TV ad for Proposition 87, the oil extraction tax to fund alternative fuels. The ad is running statewide in rotation with the other Clinton TV spot unveiled on Monday. Here’s Clinton’s new message to California voters: Imagine if we can stop being dependent on foreign oil. Brazil did it. They made a simple change to their cars. Switched to ethanol, grown from their own crops. And it’s 33% cheaper than gas.
Now, with Proposition 87, California can lead the way to our own energy independence. With Prop 87 we can switch to cleaner fuels, wind and solar power. And free ourselves from foreign oil. If Brazil can do it, so can California.
** The OTHER giant California initiative battle, Proposition 86, the new tobacco tax for health care measure, is reheating with the proponents going back on the air. Big tobacco companies have spent nearly $30 million on media; the proponents a little under $3 million. But the measure is holding on to a lead, although proponents have been off the air for three weeks. Now proponents are going back up, with a pair of 15-second spots by consultant Don Sipple. Here’s one of them, called “Fuse,” focusing on a teenager starting smoking and the big money made off the habit, plowed back into the No campaign.
California state Treasurer Phil Angelides, his campaign trailing badly in its uphill bid against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, has dropped his short-lived anti-Iraq War crusade in favor of something else. “It wasn’t working,” confirmed an Angelides advisor. Angelides began a series of anti-war rallies last month, the largest of which drew 200 students at a community college near the treasurer’s Sacramento home, casting the war and his determination to bring the National Guard home as the central issue of the campaign.
It was an interesting move, in that Angelides would have no legal authority as governor to withdraw National Guard members on active duty in time of war, although he began by intimating that he would. In addition to trying to identify with the biggest national issue, a war highly unpopular with Californians, Angelides sought to use Iraq as a way to further his drive to identify Schwarzenegger with unpopular President George W. Bush. This, as his senior strategist Bob Mulholland said at the beginning of the year, was the key to his candidacy, the notion that the California electorate was very activated and engaged in a hyperpartisan sense against Republicans. And that Californians would come to see Schwarzenegger as a very partisan Republican. This is the notion that drove months of campaigning against Bush Republicanism.
But on Monday, Angelides sought to cast his campaign in a different light.
“I mean, thank God I’m in this race. It’s the only reason we’ve gotten three months of any kind of action from this governor that makes sense for Californians,” Angelides told The Associated Press.
Angelides claimed that Schwarzenegger’s bipartisan accomplishments were all on issues that he had championed in his campaign. And he dismissed Schwarzenegger’s warm relations with Democratic legislative leaders, saying: “They totally out faked him.” The warmth of those relationships is seen in this NWN video of the former action superstar with former Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, and Nunez’s wife, Maria Nunez.
In reality, Angelides has focused his campaign on a series of issues like the Iraq War and trying to cast Schwarzenegger as a Bush clone, rather than fighting global warming, raising the minimum wage, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, promoting renewable energy, and so on.
On global warming, for example, now perhaps the signature issue of the Schwarzenegger governorship, Schwarzenegger’s interest far predates his even meeting Angelides, much less this campaign.
As far back as at least 2002, while then Governor Gray Davis was leaning against signing LA Assemblywoman Fran Pavley’s first landmark global warming bill, to sharply reduce tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases, Schwarzenegger spoke of making global warming one of the key issues of a future governorship.
But this is what happens with campaigns in extremis, as the Angelides campaign is. The candidate seeks to rationalize its existence. And to lash out at the opposition. Angelides did this, too, yesterday, when he claimed before a group of African American ministers that Schwarzenegger had supported apartheid in South Africa.
This would come as news to Schwarzenegger’s friend, Nelson Mandela, who called Schwarzenegger to congratulate him the morning after his election as governor of California in the recall election of 2003.
Meanwhile, the fate of down ballot Democratic candidates, and of major ballot initiatives, hangs in the balance.
** In that dead-heat U.S. Senate race in Virginia, it may just come down to who has the better Warner. Former Navy Secretary and highly decorated Vietnam War hero and Marine Corps platoon leader James Webb, with former Virginia Governor Mark Warner. Or embattled incumbent Republican Senator George Allen, son of a famous football coach, and Senator John Warner, ex-husband of movie legend Elizabeth Taylor.
Ironically, Webb served on the staff of John Warner when he was was Secretary of the Navy himself. The current head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, speaking of motivation in this struggle for control of the U.S. Senate, John Warner once urged Webb to seek the Senate himself. As a Republican. But Webb, who also served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan Administration, finally broke with the GOP over the Iraq policy of President George W. Bush. And over the administration’s use of the military in the Terror War.
** Indian casino tribes look to be gearing up to intervene with an independent expenditure campaign for some Democratic down ballot candidates for California statewide office, say political consultants. But one points out that the tribe that has kicked in the first money to “Team 2006, an effort of California Sovereign Indian Nations,” the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, with an $800,000 contribution, has already contributed to Republicans Bruce McPherson (secretary of state), Tony Strickland (controller), and Tom McClintock (lieutenant governor) and to Democrats John Garamendi (lieutenant governor) and Cruz Bustamante (insurance commissioner.
** UPDATE: AND JUST LIKE THAT, ANGELIDES CLAIMED SCHWARZENEGGER BACKED APARTHEID. A charge for which he has no serious evidence whatsoever, but which will come as a surprise to the governor’s old friend, Nelson Mandela.
Nevius is a very fine sportswriter who is now writing about politics. He’s new. As many readers know, attacks on his opponents’ character are a staple of Angelides-style campaigning. Aside from calling Schwarzenegger a “liar” last week — and, oh, yes, purloining tapes of his private conversations and peddling them as evidence of Schwarzenegger’s badness — he attacked his narrowly defeated primary rival Steve Westly‘s character last spring. And, in a private whispering campaign, well before that. In fact, as many readers know, Angelides is famous for this. I somehow don’t think he needed to “consider” the suggestion as a new idea. Needless to say. A mudbath born of desperation is coming. Can you stand the suspense?
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices are up around sixty dollars a barrel after Kuwait’s oil minister said that OPEC will agree to cut production at a meeting Thursday in Qatar.
** Here is the new TV spot by former President Bill Clinton. Urging a yes vote on Prop 87, using lines inserted in his big LA rally speech last Friday for the purpose, he says to Californians: “Do what you’ve always done, claim the future.”
Here’s the Clinton transcript: Prop 87 will move California toward energy independence. With cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power. Think of how you can change it all. How you can make the air clean for the children, the economy secure and strong, the nation more safe from assault. America has to change, but you can lead the way.
There is nothing more important. Do what you’ve always done. Claim the future.
** Later today, the Yes on 87 campaign will begin running a TV ad by former President Bill Clinton. In the ad, which will run statewide, Clinton urges a yes vote on Proposition 87, the initiative on California’s November ballot to enact an oil extraction tax to fund alternative energy. As previously reported here, the ad uses footage from Clinton’s rally with 5000 supporters in Los Angeles last Friday morning.
Here’s a link to the book by former CIA officer Gary Berntsen. Beginning with the Al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in the late ’90s and the attack on the USS Cole, it focuses on the special ops invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 and the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Former Navy Secretary John Lehman writes the mostly glowing Washington Post review.
** Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will today issue an executive order linking California with a Northeastern states greenhouse gas reduction consortium. Schwarzenegger is in New York City now discussing greenhouse gas cap-and-trade programs and meeting with Mayor MichaelBloomberg and Governor George Pataki. The RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative system consists of seven Northeastern states planning to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at power plants. Beginning in 2009, it will set up a system of trading emission credits as a way of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions. Schwarzenegger will link California and its landmark global warming law with this scheme to jumpstart the Golden State’s program.
** A business coalition focused around the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided to skip the California attorney general race. The business group, which I reported on months ago, came together around the issue of “Spitzerism;” i.e., concern that state attorneys general can make too much trouble for big business after the fashion of New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. There was a lot of talk that the group would do a major independent expenditure campaign on behalf of Republican Chuck Poochigian in order to fend off the threat of Jerry Brown. I reported that would not happen.
Among other things, Spitzer’s litigation played the key role in forcing Wall Street firms into a $1.4 billion settlement payment and agreement to provide independent research to investors. With the anti-regulatory environment in Washington, the action has in large measure switched to the states. It was also spurred by the big tobacco settlement of 1998, in which Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore played a central role, later depicted in Michael Mann‘s film, The Insider.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices, at around $58 a barrel, slipped a bit as one of two Norwegian offshore platforms closed for safety reasons went back online and traders speculated that OPEC, meeting Thursday in Qatar, may not enforce a production cut.
** Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is winging his way east to New York City. Tomorrow morning, he will preside over the opening bell of the NASDAQ stock market. Then he and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will go to Credit Suisse to tour the greenhouse carbon emissions desk on the commodities trading floor. Following that, Schwarzenegger and New York Governor George Pataki will discuss California’s new global warming law and the Northeast’s more limited carbon emissions market and tour a new residential high rise qualifying for New York’s new green building tax credit. Then Schwarzenegger will raise some big New York money for the campaign, with Bloomberg’s help.
The California Department of Justice, which the state’s attorney general heads, in addition to being a law enforcement agency is essentially a vast and multifaceted law firm, easily capable of direct intervention in virtually any of the leading edge issues before California. Since in many respects, California’s leading edge issues are among the leading edge issues of the U.S. and the world, the Yale Law grad and two-time Democratic presidential runner-up would be afforded much more than a bully pulpit.
** The only two daily newspapers to endorse Treasurer Phil Angelides in his narrow Democratic primary win over Controller Steve Westly, the treasurer’s hometown Sacramento Bee and the paper that tried to destroy a certain moderate Republican action movie superstar in the 2003 recall election, the Los Angeles Times, have both endorsed Arnold Schwarzenegger for re-election as Governor of California.
** Famed San Francisco Democrat and former California Senate President Pro Tem John Burton on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: “It’s human nature. I think he came in from the middle. Then last year he was listening to whoever those guys were who told him he had to move over to the right. And then this year, he went out and found out that was wrong, so he moved back to where he was in the first year.”
** … Is Carmen Sandiego? Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides was not at the Willie Brown breakfast in San Francisco. Of course, where he really should have been this morning was not at a breakfast where a leading Democrat or two would take pot shots at him, but in the other half of the state. Where? At UCLA, where former President Bill Clinton, accompanied by Oscar-winning actress (and Olympic Trials archer) Geena Davis, who lately played the first female president on an ABC TV series, came out for Prop 87, the oil extraction tax for alternative fuels initiative on California’s November ballot. Clinton’s visit was revealed on NWN. Unlike Arnold Schwarzenegger, Phil Angelides has endorsed Prop 87. But Angelides, who learned late of Clinton’s visit, was not in LA with Bill Clinton, either. Or the 5000 people who turned out for the rally. Lines were inserted into Clinton’s speech for use in a future TV commercial for Prop 87.
** Willie Brown, who served a record-setting 15 years as California Assembly Speaker and eight years as San Francisco Mayor, held his annual political breakfast today in the City by the Bay, attended by a host of Democratic stars. And Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. (I would have been there were I 100%, which I decidedly am not.) Not in attendance was trailing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, who was, despite what some of his staff has said, invited. Brown made a host of predictions, which will not be entirely unfamiliar to NWN readers. He ripped Angelides in the process, as did, to a much milder extent, Mayor Gavin Newsom, who found Angelides’ absence unwise.
Some think Brown, who counts Schwarzenegger as a personal friend — as my longtime readers are very well aware — is down on Angelides because he failed to back him for the presidency of California’s public pension fund. But, in addition to the fact that he knows Schwarzenegger’s capability and has a demonstrated ability to count, those folks always forget to mention something else. That Phil Angelides would never have become chairman of the California Democratic Party, the post which provided him with the cornerstone of his career as a statewide politician, without the backing of Willie Brown. History always matters in politics. That’s one reason it’s important to know it. Click here for video clips of Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom.
** Several people have asked why, unlike a few others, I am not going on about Claude Parrish, the hapless Republican nominee for California state treasurer against the redoubtable state Attorney General, Bill Lockyer. Well, it’s like this. When I find a candidate, and in this case an essentially unknown candidate, who says he graduated from college summa cum laude, but won’t say where he went to school, and also won’t say what city he lives in because he doesn’t want to be stalked, that candidate disappears from my radar screen. Especially when he is running against a very smart, very well-known career professional with over $10 million in the bank. I prefer to shoot at people who have at least some ability to shoot back.
** Track global and national energy prices in near real time via Bloomberg. Crude oil prices are up slightly to $59 a barrel on signs of a small increase in U.S. demand and the closure for safety reasons of two oil platforms off Norway. The price is down nearly $20 a barrel from the record high on July 14th.
Despite weeks of concerted advertising by the Democratic Party and public employee unions, private polls in both parties show Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger continuing to hold a commanding lead over his Democratic challenger, Treasurer Phil Angelides. During this period, the news focus of Angelides’ campaign has shifted from Schwarzenegger’s private tapes to a short-lived anti-war crusade, the debate, and now the Tonight Show’s refusal to let him on. On the Democratic side, only Bill Lockyer and Jerry Brown are in command in contested down ballot statewide races.
As a result of Angelides’ marginal approach and late in the game failure to ignite support among Democrats and independents, the Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor, insurance commissioner, secretary of state, and controller are all in danger of losing. None is outside the margin of error. The most formidable of those candidates, state Insurance Commissioner and former U.S. Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi, has actually been running behind in recent Democratic polling. Labor, which has been pouring millions into the Angelides effort, is just now beginning to pull together a relatively small independent effort on Garamendi’s behalf.
Private polls show Brown, the former California governor and current Oakland mayor, with a virtually unassailable lead over Republican Chuck Poochigian in the race for state attorney general. Brown, shown here in this NWN video visiting Advanced Cell Technology (located in Alameda near Oakland Raiders headquarters), where he goes over the future of stem cell research with advocates including company chairman and stem cell innovator Dr. Michael West, has a huge financial edge as well. Keen-eyed viewers will note the tightly-choreographed and heavily produced way in which Brown approaches events, as well as the armada-like motorcade, all positively Schwarzeneggerian in scale and conception. (With tongue firmly in cheek.)
Poochigian has been running scathing TV ads, but is now focused on radio. A talked about independent expenditure committee for the Fresno area state senator has filed with the state, after it was reported here that it had failed to do so, but Republican sources have limited expectations.
While Brown, who has worked with Schwarzenegger on several projects, had to fend off Poochigian’s spirited campaign, Lockyer, the current attorney general and former state Senate president, drew political cypher Claude Parrish as his invisible opponent. Like Brown, Lockyer is a formidable character who could probably beat any of the Republicans running who are not named Schwarzenegger.
Elements of organized labor have seemingly begun shifting their assets in the elections. ABC7 in Los Angeles reported last night that $1.3 million in pro-Phil Angelides for Governor TV advertising paid for by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA, the state’s vaunted prison guards union) and the Alliance for a Better California (ABC, public employee union coalition) has been pulled from the station. The ABC labor coalition says it is continuing its new positive Angelides ad, which just began running around the state with a $1.2 million buy.
CCPOA released $1.3 million of the $5 million in TV airtime it had reserved for the final two weeks of the campaign. “We never said we were on a suicide mission,” said CCPOA executive vice president Lance Corcoran, according to the LA TV station.
ABC labor coalition chief strategist Gale Kaufman said this in an e-mail last night about the withdrawal of advertising from the LA TV station: “We changed (TV advertising) traffic and changed where we are running based on strategic objectives we have.” Noting their new positive ad for Angelides, she denied a change in plan by the public employee union coalition.
Meanwhile, a public employee union coalition under another name, Taxpayers for Responsible Government, is going to spend about a million dollars promoting John Garamendi’s campaign for lieutenant governor.
The labor coalition may well not have changed its overall plans. However, what is clear is that earlier news reports of a massive union plan to lift Angelides and carry him to victory were incorrect.
Garamendi can definitely use the help. Republican Tom McClintock, the state’s leading conservative politician, once trailing by 10 points, surged into a very slight lead on the strength of improved fundraising and TV attacks on Garamendi’s handling of the state’s takeover of the failed Executive Life insurance and junk bond empire during his first go-round as insurance commissioner in the early 1990s.
Garamendi has a strong new positive ad on the air, literally depicting the rancher as a man on horseback, and will today begin a negative ad. The spot will simply characterize McClintock as a right-wing extremist by quoting him “in his own words” on key consensus issues in California.
As for fundraising, never a particular strength for the former gubernatorial candidate, Garamendi “got the bit between his teeth” according to a friend when he saw recent polls. But it remains to be seen whether his late-breaking effort, and what we know now about the labor effort for him, will be enough to beat McClintock, who is well-liked and respected by many voters.
As a shrewd politician, Garamendi has been aware of the downdraft potential from the top of his party’s ticket. Garamendi has declined to support Angelides’ still vague program of tax increases. Lockyer and Brown have declined as well, understanding clearly that Angelides’ decision to emphasize tax hikes, and his subsequent failure to spell out his actual program, had all the earmarks of a disaster.
In contrast, Schwarzenegger and his new team — led by Democrat Susan Kennedy in the government and Republican Steve Schmidt in the campaign — have acquitted themselves masterfully, again finding the sweet spot of California politics which Schwarzenegger occupied prior to his disastrous “Year of Reform.” They deprived Angelides and his hyperpartisan allies of political oxygen.
Angelides has responded by marginalizing himself with a series of moves that are not central to the governorship of California. Yesterday, he was outside the NBC studio, holding another small rally, complaining about not being on the Tonight Show with Schwarzenegger. Since the Federal Communications Commission has previously deemed interviews on Howard Stern and Donahue to constitute “news” events — hence not triggering of equal time provisions for entertainment programs — and Schwarzenegger certainly created news by criticizing the Iraq War policy, it’s unclear what Angelides expected to accomplish aside from cultivating a petulant image.
While Angelides flails, most his ticketmates contemplate their future, now onrushing with Election Day just three-and-a-half weeks away. Garamendi, at least has the twin advantages of being a longtime big name in Democratic politics and having an opponent in Tom McClintock who most Democrats wants nowhere near the governorship. But the other threatened candidates have not yet drawn that sort of attention.
Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, crushed by Schwarzenegger in the 2003 recall, is in very deep trouble in the race for insurance commissioner against Republican fresh face and Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a very wealthy moderate who is a great Schwarzenegger favorite.
LA area state Senator Debra Bowen has a decent chance against Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, a Schwarzenegger appointee after the Democratic incumbent was forced to resign in disgrace after misusing his office. But McPherson, another moderate, actually has some labor support. If Schwarzenegger intervenes heavily, he is in good shape. Nevertheless, as the only woman running for a statewide constitutional office, she may get a hidden edge.
State tax board member John Chiang is well-qualified and is running against a conservative in former state Senator Tony Strickland, but he is little known and has not been a big fundraiser. There are some signs that Chiang’s campaign is picking up, but you could not tell that by talking to any Californian on the street.
In this supposedly bluest of blue states — it isn’t really, that’s a convenient myth — and in this generally poor year for Republicans nationally, the fate of those who would be expected to constitute much of the future Democratic leadership of California is still up in the air.
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