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 alifornia's
come-from-behind Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon is
the sort of candidate conservatives can get excited about. For nearly
a year, he's toured the Golden State calling himself a "candidate
of ideas," which is often what a newcomer vying for high political
office must be. But it's also a kind of code that signals his willingness
to challenge sclerotic liberalism.
Simon's got
the perfect pedigree for it. His late father was treasury secretary
in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and then went on to head
the John M. Olin Foundation, which has been vital to the conservative
movement for its steady and indispensable support of ideas.
Gov. Gray Davis
already appears to be making an issue of this. "Bill Simon
is a true-blue think-tank conservative. I am a practical problem-solver,"
he said last night. "I believe many of his ideas are out of
step and out of touch with most Californians. We need to keep moving
California forward. Not backward — and certainly not to the
right."
It will be
interesting to see how often Davis calls Simon a "think-tank
conservative." It's not exactly a pejorative, though it does
suggest a certain pie-in-the-sky eggheadedness that contrasts with
Davis's self-description as a "practical problem-solver."
Focus groups probably will decide its future.
Davis certainly
will attack Simon on abortion. Simon calls himself pro-life, though
he says there's really not much he could or would do as governor
to advance his views. Davis and his advisers will consider this
belief a weakness. They just spent $10 million on ads trying to
block former Los Angeles mayor Richard Riordan from the GOP nomination
— they accused him of flip-flopping on his support for abortion,
which he once called an act of murder.
The difference
with Simon is that he hasn't flip-flopped. Many voters, including
those who don't share his pro-life views, will nevertheless see
him as taking a principled stand on a controversial subject. It
will help them take a positive measure of the man. Of course, everything
depends on how Simon handles himself when the inevitable assault
comes.
Simon will
need some issues of his own, and he certainly doesn't lack ideas.
But there's one he hasn't taken up, and should: bilingual
education. It's something Riordan
did in the final days of his primary campaign. How about a commercial
in the coming weeks featuring these two men, and accusing Davis
of threatening the future of California's children by making it
difficult for them to learn English?
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