—Hugh Hewitt is one of those purists who lives a world of carefully-constructed self-delusions:
By now many will have been persuaded by out-of-state reporters that a Simon victory will be a great win for Davis; that Davis poured millions into beating Riordan; and that a Simon nomination represents a replay of the losing candidacy of Dan Lungren in 1998.
Dan Walters, the Dean of the Sacramento press corps cited below, is very much an in-state reporter, and he makes these points because they happen to be true. Davis did in fact pour $10M into a primary race where he had no serious opposition; Davis did so in order to get Simon on the ballot; and Davis does in fact intend to play the same game that worked so well against Lungren. Californians will vote for optimistic Republicans in statewide races over incompetant Democrats; they’ll even vote for fairly mean ones, like Wilson, who can touch their insecure core. But there’s a limit, and the space where it can be found was best defined by Tricky Dick Nixon when he was embarassed by Pat Brown in the 1962 Governor’s race (prompting Nixon’s famous “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” whine.) Lungren was the son of Nixon’s doctor, so he had the Nixon curse. Simon is the son of Nixon’s treasury secretary, so he’s got it too. Convincing the voters he’s not the second coming of Nixon is going to be Simon’s number one job; number two is convincing them that the race is a referendum on Davis, and he’s just keeping score.