His most recent splash in the national media had been a disaster: Davis announced that California’s bridges, including the Golden Gate, had been targeted by terrorists, a claim later hooted down by law-enforcement authorities. Most alarming of all to his handlers, only a third of California voters said the state was on the “right track” under Davis–a potential kiss of death for any incumbent. Davis’s campaign advisers watched warily as former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan–having been anointed by the Bush White House to reclaim California for the GOP–inched ahead of the Democratic governor in the polls. Riordan’s apparent popularity was all the more ominous, considering the fact that he hadn’t even yet won the Republican nomination.
Even though Davis faced no Democratic challenge in the primary, his campaign decided it was time to fight. Their target: Riordan, a moderate, pro-choice Republican whose positions on the issues were so similar to Davis’s own, that Riordan had even contributed to past Davis campaigns. Davis and his team feared that the avuncular, popular Republican would have crossover appeal with the very swing voters Davis needed to win. In mid-January, the Davis campaign launched its first television ad, criticizing Riordan for “flip-flopping” on abortion, a potent issue in overwhelmingly pro-choice California. Over the next eight weeks, the Davis campaign would spend nearly $10 million during the Republican primary, most of it on ads criticizing Riordan on everything from abortion to gun control.
The basic idea, says one Democratic adviser, was “to bloody Riordan’s nose” before the general election in November. Instead, the Davis team scored an inadvertent knockout. While Riordan committed a number of unforced errors–most notably alienating the California GOP’s conservative base through a series of verbal gaffes–the Davis ads knocked Riordan off message early in the campaign, and he never recovered. The winner was a virtual bystander in the mock Davis-Riordan battle: Bill Simon Jr., a conservative Republican businessman and philanthropist and former New York assistant district attorney under Rudy Giuliani who has never been elected to public office (although he had a pure Republican pedigree: his father was Nixon Treasury secretary William E. Simon). Simon, who as recently as January was polling at only 4 percent–yes, 4 percent–pulled off the biggest come from behind in California electoral history, beating Riordan 49 percent to 31 percent, to claim the Republican nomination.
While the resounding defeat of Gary Condit absorbed much of the media attention Tuesday, Simon’s rocketlike launch into California politics will play out for months–if not years–to come. First, there is the brazen cross-party meddling by the Davis camp. “We only wanted to soften [Riordan] up a bit,” said Davis pollster Paul Maslin. “We never dreamed at the time that he would lose the primary.” At the same time, Davis’s aides can scarcely contain their glee at having tipped an outcome that seemed impossible only two months ago, when Riordan held a 30-point lead over Simon. And the Davis-Simon matchup offers California voters the starkest ideological contrast in over a generation. Chiding Davis for intervening in the Republican primary–even on his behalf–Simon reminded Davis that the last Democratic governor to wish for himself a conservative Republican opponent was Pat Brown in 1966. His opponent, of course, was Ronald Reagan, whose mantle Simon invokes whenever possible. He even listens to Reagan speeches on tape while driving.
The Davis camp howls at the Reagan comparisons. “Bill Simon is no Ronald Reagan,” says Maslin. Davis aides are downright giddy over the prospect of a culture war. How, they ask, can a staunchly pro-life, pro-NRA, pro-school-voucher conservative Republican win in a state that has become solidly Democratic over the past decade? “This race is going to become a litmus test for how conservative California will go,” says Democratic strategist and former Clinton-Gore adviser Chris Lehane. “Who will be electable in a state that Democrats need to keep as a beachhead and that the Republican White House wants to reclaim?” In order to succeed, says Lehane, Davis will have to portray Simon as “off the grid” on social issues such as abortion, gun control and the environment. Simon, he predicts, will cast himself as the “fresh-faced, antipolitician,” to draw the contrast to Davis’splodding apparatchik style.
Simon, who made tens of millions on Wall Street, and later at the family venture-capital fund in California, is a vaguely Clark Kent-ish figure whose campaign literature inevitably shows him draped with his family. Still youthful at 50, Simon projects unbridled, almost goofy glee on the campaign trail. He even disarmed reporters demanding to know why he hadn’t voted in the last three California primaries–or bothered to register as a Republican while in New York–by admitting he had gotten too busy with work, but that “that was no excuse” for his civic lapse.
That natural charm will no doubt prove appealing to the White House. George W. Bush all but gave up in California in 2000, losing to Al Gore by a 12-point margin. Next time around, Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, intends to put the state in play. That’s why Rove–and his boss–urged Riordan, a bridge-building moderate, to run in the first place. And it’s also why, as Riordan’s campaign collapsed over the past two weeks, the White House was eagerly back-channeling to the conservative Simon camp, promising whatever aid and comfort was needed for November. Already, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Simon campaign and the White House are planning to have Bush make a campaign appearance with Simon in the next few weeks. And during his victory speech Tuesday night, Simon wasted no time in accepting the administration’s belated embrace. “The George W. Bush party is alive and well in California,” he crowed.
Should that line not play well with Golden State voters, Simon can tap his old boss and former mentor, Republican rock star Rudy Giuliani, who has already filmed commercials for Simon. Davis has a weaker hand in terms of star power: Bill and Hillary Clinton are standing by, but they may not be quite the draw anymore. By the time it’s all over eight months from now, Californians might find themselves wishing that everyone would just go home–and let them vote in peace.
