Posted on 03/19/2002 6:20:08 AM PST by ElkGroveDan
Simon Did It Right
One campaign understood and cultivated the GOP electorate. The other drove it away.
You rarely see two record-breaking performances in the same election, let alone in a contest for the same office. But it appears the Riordan campaign set a new record for largest lead lost (40 percent), while Simon's effort gets honors for largest improvement from initial polling (4 percent) to election result (49 percent).
How it happened makes fascinating politics. It's a story of a very poorly run campaign versus an effort that had a game plan and a timetable and stuck to both. It is also a story of Gray Davis' meddling. But contrary to what some in the media want to believe, that meddling was effective only because of the ineptitude of the Riordan managers.
From the start, Bill Simon's campaign knew that the California GOP - hungry as it is for victory - is still at heart a mainstream conservative entity. They also knew that while Dick Riordan was many things (and many of those laudatory), a "mainstream conservative" he was not. Early polling showed that Riordan's record repulsed a large majority of all GOP voters, not just "high propensity" voters.
Let me repeat that - it is key to debunking one myth the press and the remnant of Riordan campaign spinners are pedaling: that a small turnout gave Simon his victory. Riordan's liberal stands on social issues and his large donations to Democrats made him vulnerable across the entire Republican electorate.
Of course it was more pronounced among conservatives, but the Riordan record was a turn-off to moderates and even most self-described "liberal" Republicans. This is not rocket science. Any shade of Republican is going to look skeptically at a candidate who declares Bill Clinton the "greatest leader in the free world" and who gave $500,000 to defeat George Deukmejian. The low turnout increased Simon's victory margin, but by election day Simon beat Riordan in every turnout model - high, medium, and low - used by pollsters.
So the Simon campaign knew from the get-go that Riordan's positions and Democrat panderings were powerful issues. The remaining question were whether enough money would be available to communicate that message, and whether newcomer Simon could capture the Party's "heart and soul" - its activists.
The campaign answered both questions in the affirmative. The budget question was answered early on I suspect, with the infusion of necessary cash being predicated only on surveys showing a reasonable chance to win. The "heart and soul" question was also answered early, as Simon set about assiduously courting GOP activists, bringing many of them - mainly conservatives but also Republicans of hues across the board - into his campaign.
With that solid foundation - dollars to communicate the message and overwhelming support among the Party's "core" - the Simon campaign went about methodically executing its plan and waiting for the Riordan juggernaut to misfire. It was a short wait. However many cylinders Riordan had running, all were misfiring.
The Riordan operation resembled a bus carrying no one who knew how to get where it was supposed to go. The campaign hierarchy, filled with partisan Democrats, had no idea how to appeal to Republican primary voters. It is drilled into Democrats from their youths that Republicans, especially those terrible "right-wingers," have neither hearts nor minds - that they are idiots devoid of "compassion." So it should be no surprise that those driving the Riordan bus lacked directions for reaching GOP voters' hearts and minds or that, in the end, they came nowhere close to their destination, winning a Republican primary.
The Republicans present were, by and large, moderate to liberal malcontents, with almost as little insight into the thinking of the average GOP voter as Susan Estrich. These folks can't win Assembly primaries except in the most liberal districts; why did anyone think they could appeal to the broad range of registered Republicans?
With that lethal combination of advisors, the Riordan campaign set its initial strategy, which, from all appearances, was to insult, defame, and vilify the Republican voter base at every opportunity. If you didn't agree with Dick Riordan you were obviously anti-woman, anti-immigrant, and probably antediluvian. Riordan appeared fixated on the abortion issue and constantly harped on it. A Democrat woman friend of mine made a telling observation about two weeks before the election. She said Riordan was appearing to be not just "pro-choice", but positively "pro-abortion," and that was turning even her off.
And just in case any casual Republican missed the message that they were stupid, bigoted, and hopelessly behind the times, Riordan went out of his way to insult former Governor George Duekmejian at the GOP state convention. Keeping with the bus analogy, I'm reminded of an old Rolling Stone epithet, "we're all bozos on this bus."
With that background, entering stage left was Governor Gray Davis and his bulging campaign coffers. The conceit of the Riordan loyalists and their media megaphones is that the Davis anti-Riordan commercials swung the election to Simon. They did not. Simon had shown dramatic movement in the polls before the Davis commercials started. What the ads did was take unwitting advantage of the ultimate Riordan Achilles' heel - having nobody in charge who knew the GOP electorate.
Had a seasoned GOP hand held the Riordan steering wheel, the response to the Davis attacks could have been swift and devastating. It would have been denouncing the Democrat governor's meddling in a Republican primary, and calling upon all Republican elected officials generally, and Bill Jones and Bill Simon specifically, to join Riordan in condemning this interloper's interference.
Had that happened, both Simon and Jones would have had to agree with Riordan and denounce the Davis ads. Additionally, such a call would have given an opening for the White House or Riordan's Congressional supporters to bash Davis and rally Republicans of all stripes against the common enemy - all the while portraying Riordan as the victim of this dastardly Democrat plot. That would have focused Republican voters' attention on what we going on, and would have made Riordan the object of sympathy from these same voters every time they saw or heard the Davis spots. It never happened.
What also never happened was talking about the few orthodox Republican views Riordan actually holds. He did in fact contribute to the campaign against Rose Bird. He led and won a nasty fight with the L.A. School Board against bilingual education. And he did indeed submit eight budgets for L.A. that were balanced and contained no tax increases. Only a tone-deaf campaign brain trust would ignore these issues in favor of highlighting pro-abort, anti-gun, and pro-gay marriage stances.
But as Walter Cronkite used to say "that's the way it was." Combined with the savvy direction of Bill Simon's handlers, it produced a landslide of historic turnaround proportions March 5. The results give a pretty accurate reflection of the GOP. The two conservative candidates received 70 percent of the vote. The liberal pulled 30 percent. This is not at all out of the ordinary; it's really a "dog bites man" result for a Republican primary.
Those results were not foreordained of course, and even a month before, looked most unlikely. But Bill Simon ran a campaign that emphasized traditional Republican values in a way that neither pandered to nor insulted his audience. Dick Riordan ran a campaign that would have been considered liberal in a Democrat primary, spitting in his audience's eye at every chance. Simon won because he and his campaign did it right. Riordan lost because he and his campaign did not.
Saracino hit the nail dead-on. Of course he's a movement conservative so that is to be expected.
And just in case any casual Republican missed the message that they were stupid, bigoted, and hopelessly behind the times, Riordan went out of his way to insult former Governor George Duekmejian at the GOP state convention.
The conceit of the Riordan loyalists and their media megaphones is that the Davis anti-Riordan commercials swung the election to Simon. They did not.
I don't live in the state, but this is a pretty comprehensive analysis of what transpired in last month's primaries. From a political prospective, whoever ran Riordan's campaign is a total idiot. This piece labels the Riordan camp as (paraphrase) myopic liberals who are out of touch with the average Republican and it seems likely this is true. I agree that if Riordan emphasized his past efforts on ending bilingual education and getting rid of Rose Bird, the worst judge ever in California's history, would have sealed the primary for him.
(Did you know Rose Bird commuted every single death sentence before her? The numbers of communations, which totaled over 60, is bad, but the circumstances surrounding some of the cases showed a clear disregard for the law by her. The most striking one was a case where an employee walked into his old office with a gun and a list of "People to Kill". No premeditation here folks! The point is that I don't even live in CA but a mention of this in Riordan's campaign could have swayed the average GOP vote like myself)
It is past time for conservatives to field and fund solid conservatives in the primaries and put the RINOS out of office and replace them with good people that reflect the beliefs of the voters.
Yes. Now the real test. Are the state's democrats out of touch? With 61% of the voters voting against teaching math and history in Spanish, and 61% of the voters voting against gay marriage, and 63% of the voters voting for the legalization of medicinal marijuana... and with Davis squandering $20 billion in a corrupted energy boondoggle and trying to take credit for the conservation efforts that the citizens themselves initiated to save our power, and his unwillingness to remove MTBE from the gasoline as it poisons our water supply, it should be pretty easy to cast Davis as a hard-core tax and spend special-interest liberal who doesn't care about the will of the voters.
Is the Simon camp up for kicking Davis while he's down? I sure hope so.
The maggots in the left wing media will never print anything that is true and not a prop spin for their head maggot Herr Davis!
Those who scream the loudest about intolerance are the most intolerant.
The RINO line goes, "If you vote for us, it is that many more republican votes you can count on. If you vote against us, you are an extremist bigot." Of course, once elected they prove they can't be counted on and that they are power hungry extremist bigots.
Something I did not know, but suspected, and has now been confirmed. Thank God that Simon prevailed.
This is the key to the election now isn't it? Do the libs hate Davis more than the evil, hate-filled, homophobic bigot, Simon.
It's a reach for the Kalifornia socialists. It would take a powerful level of revulsion of the libs to jump ship and go with Simon in November. And I fully expect to see media video footage of Simon shaking hands with Hitler before this one's over.
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