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The timing couldn't be worse for Davis as it comes at a time when he's trying to leave one final, positive imprint in what otherwise has been one of the nation's most negative campaigns. Of course, it's a needed break for Republican Bill Simon Jr., who's behind in the polls and in need of last-minute salvation.
But does the "other shoe" turn out to be the glass slipper for Simon's Cinderella campaign? The cynic in me says no. Not because the charges sound phony. Sadly, it sounds like something we've come to expect of the money-obsessed Davis and his "pay-to-play" administration in Sacramento. The letters claim that Davis and the coastal commissioner in question, Mark Nathanson, met at Nate 'n' Al's restaurant in Beverly Hills, where they pored over lists of potential donors (Davis, at the time, was California's State Controller). Allegedly, the two would discuss how the Coastal Commission would rule on the developers' requests for permits. Davis would then seek money from the same developers, taking credit for the commission's action. How did Team Davis react to this? By refusing to get into the specifics of the accusations. Indeed, a Davis spokesman said the governor "will not get into a tit-for-tat response with a convicted felon and admitted perjurer." Talk about selective amnesia: this is the same Davis campaign that had no qualms over blanketing California's airwaves with ads condemning Simon as a business fraud — charges first brought forward in a lawsuit by a convicted drug felon. Tit for tat? Try, what goes around, comes around. You can expect both sides to exchange charges from now through next Tuesday. Simon will say it fits a pattern of a governor more interested in payola than policy. Davis will say its much ado about nothing, as evidenced by the feds' lack of interest (then again, it's the Clinton Justice Department we're talking about, so Davis may want to try another approach). Here's the problem for Simon. The allegations are shocking — a state official on the take, California's pristine environment in the balance. But they lack shock value. It's one more charge of Davis playing fast and loose with ethics. And to a blasé electorate, that may seem like just one more brick in the wall. Hardly a week goes by when some California newspaper doesn't report on the DNA trail between donations to the Davis campaign and state decisions. Just the other day, the Sacramento Bee (the same paper, by the way, that spent two years in court fighting to get the Nathanson letters made public and unexpurgated, without Davis's name being omitted from the documents), reported that the California Medical Association dumped $50,000 into the Davis kitty. Two weeks earlier, Davis had signed a signed a slap-dash bill canceling reductions in state payments to medical-care providers. The list goes on — indeed, Simon has stumped until he's blue in the face about Davis's actions and their benefits to donors. But the larger point is: California voters already get it. They don't like the way Davis has conducted himself in office. And it shows in the polls. According to the most recent survey by the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute, Davis leads Simon, 41 percent to 31 percent. Ten months ago, before he spent $65 million tearing down his Republican opponents, where was Davis in the PPIC poll? The same 41 percent. Davis has outspent Simon in ways that will make your head spin — according to the Los Angeles Times, from June to mid-October, Davis spots aired more than 26,000 times in California's five biggest media markets, compared to just 5,000 Simon ads. Yet while he's succeeded in suppressing Simon's numbers, Davis finds himself trapped under a glass ceiling. And here's where Republicans can find a reason for hope — and how the Nathanson letters might help. There's a parallel between the Davis-Simon race and a previous race in California: the 1982 Senate contest that pitted incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown vs. then-San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. Wilson emerged from the Republican primary bruised and bankrupt. While he laid low during the summer and raised money for the fall, Brown went on the attack (this was 1982, mind you, and the Democrats ran a generic "scissors" ad nationwide accusing Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security). Not surprisingly, the 14-point lead that Wilson enjoyed after the primary turned into a six-point deficit. However, something occurred in this contest — a dynamic also at work in the current governor's race. Brown, like Davis, found his support trapped in the low 40's. Try as he might, he couldn't shatter that ceiling (and eight years of trying California's patience). On Election Day 1982, voters decided they'd had enough with "Governor Moonbeam" — whose gubernatorial chief of staff, by the way, was none other than Gray Davis. Could Davis suffer the same fate as his mentor? Perhaps if, as in 1982, Californians have decided they've had enough of an unpopular Democratic governor. And that leads to the "x factor" of the California governor's race: turnout. The expectation is that next Tuesday's vote will challenge the midterm election of 1942 as the lowest attended in American history, when only 35.7 percent of eligible voters participated. California is no exception to this trend. Only one-third of registered voters took part in the March primary, and the forecast for November is not much better. If anything, those numbers might further drop after voters have pondered the Nathanson letters. The allegations may not encourage a large number of Californians to suddenly switch to Simon, but they might convince a good number of uninspired Democrats from holding their nose and casting their vote for Davis — switching to a third-party candidate, or staying home on Election Day. And that works to Simon's benefit: the lower the turnout, the better the third-party vote, and less enthusiastic the Democrat base, the better the Republican's chances for an upset. The clock's about to strike twelve in California. There's still time for Gray Davis to turn into a pumpkin. — Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. |
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inally,
the "other shoe" dropped in California's governor's race: A
federal judge released a pair of letters from attorneys representing a
convicted state coastal commissioner alleging that, a decade ago, he and
Gray Davis schemed to pull campaign donations from developers in exchange
for political favors.
