Richard Bennett

— Arnold Steinberg explains how Gray Davis won the Republican primary, and how Riordan lost it on NRO:

Domino #7. Democrat Gray Davis starts TV ads in Republican primary. He spends $3 million for pro-Davis ads. He spends $7 million for hits on Riordan. The attack ads use Republican issues against Riordan. In one ad, Deukmejian says Riordan is unprincipled. That ad even hides Davis sponsorship. What’s the bottom line? Davis does what Simon would not. Davis, not Simon, hikes Riordan negatives…among Republicans.

My question for Simon is: “when are going to start campaigning, dude?” He had the primary handed to him by the cynicism and incompetence of the other candidates, not because he made a case for his candidacy. It’s a long time till November, but not so long he can afford to sit and do nothing. Gray won’t be his Sugar Daddy again.

— Gray Davis was in front the TV cameras tonight, smiling a grin so large the light reflected off his teeth damn near blew the cameras out. Davis is happy because his $10M gamble paid off: he gets the honor of running for re-election against a card-carrying member of the idle rich, Bill Simon, who’s never run for office before, let alone governed, and whose political playbook appears to have been written by Dan Lungren, the biggest statewide loser in California politics in the last 40 years.

Davis’ gamble might not have paid off if he hadn’t had the help of George Deukmejian, the nearly-senile former governor who was one of Lungren’s major backers in 1998 and appears to have already forgotten about that race. All Davis has to do is keep the lights on until November and we’re going to be saying “Governor Davis” for another four years. You’d think all these folks in the core of the paleocon wing of the Party who profess to love Reagan so much would practice the 11th Commandment (“Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican”), but the spirit of idiocy is alive and well, fueled by such things as the Free Republic web site, a de facto agent of the Davis campaign.

Simon benefits from the bad press against Riordan, and from the fact that he’s an unknown. One measure of his viability is the election returns from his home, Los Angeles County, where people presumably know him better than they do across the state (did he go anywhere and actually speak to real people during the primary?) LA County Republicans favored Riordan 48.2 to 41.6, so it’s going to be a long, uphill climb for the winner-by-default.

Voters rejected Prop 45, a gimmicky gambit to ease the constraints of Term Limits on the legislature, a flawed initiative that would have been a step in the right direction nonetheless. Voters don’t trust politicians, but at least experienced ones had a prayer of keeping the lobbyists in check; since TL was enacted, the normally chaotic state legislature has degenerated into a sad joke, which we saw last year when the power crisis hit the state. The legislature was still in tutorial mode when the weather eased and the crisis ended.

Republicans have a half-decent chance at three statewide offices, with Dick Ackerman running for Attorney General against the extremely unlikable Bill Lockyer, the articulate tax hawk Tom McClintock running for Controller against unknown Democrat Steve Westly, and solid Keith Olberg up against flakey Kevin Shelley of Frisco for Secretary of State. Lt. Gov. nominee Bruce McPherson is out of the Riordan mold, and Democrat Bustamente is one of the dimmer bulbs, so that’s a promising race as well. Other than the Big Office, November may not be too bad.

The only close races are three Assembly seats, one in Frisco between Leno and Britt. The defeat of the term limits extension means that Willie Brown will be going back to Sacramento to take John Burton’s seat, and to assume the leadership of the Senate, while Burton will run for mayor of San Francisco as he enters his twilight years. The irony of this is that Willie was the main spectre that motivated Californians to pass term limits in the first place, and all it’s accomplished is the creation of a third-rate legislative body with Willie more firmly in charge – two years from now – than he ever before.

Another odd campaign reaction is paleocon elation over Condit’s defeat. Yeah, I know, he had sex with that woman, and maybe had her snuffed, but the winner, Dennis Cardoza is in tight with the Gay lobby in Sacramento, and he’s most certainly up to cleaning Republican Dick Monteith’s clock in November. Monteith is one of the weak sisters that the party had to cover for and donate money to in order to keep some numbers in the Senate, but he was ineffective and unimpressive; the kind of guy that staffers laugh about. Paleocons should have walked precincts for Condit, because he’s the only breathing Democrat Monteith could have beaten.

— California voters legalized medicinal use of marijuana a few years ago, and nowadays many people take it for a variety of ailments ranging from glaucoma to stress. Patrick Ruffini appears to be a beneficiary of nature’s pharmacopoeia:

Primary voters have a finely tuned sense of which candidates can and can’t carry their party to victory in the fall. The likely result of the California primary is evidence that the political marketplace works, and that voters aren’t being irrational when they choose someone who appears less likely to win. If a candidate is riding high in the polls, but lacks the passion and grit of his opponent, voters will factor that in and consider that candidate less likely to endure the rigors of a general election. If you can’t win a primary, you probably can’t win the general either.

This has to be the most inane, naive, and bizarre theory about California politics ever posted outside the Free Republic web site. California’s Republican voters are notorious for nominating un-electable candidates, which is why there is only 1 Republican holding statewide office, Sec’y of State Bill Jones (the Spam King,) and why Reeps hold only about a third of State Assembly and State Senate seats.

Does anybody remember Dan Lungren, the anti-abortion drug warrior who raided the Cannabis Buyer’s Club during the Democratic Convention? How about Bruce Hershenson, the right-wing talk radio host Cal Reeps chose over Tom Campbell to run against Boxer. How is it that people like Boxer, Feinstein, Burton, and Pelosi manage to get elected and re-elected year after year in the state that passed an anti-affirmative action measure on a statewide popular vote, and also voted to ban Gay Marriage?

The politics of self-destruction practiced by the faithful who make up the core of the Republican Party is the only answer that makes any sense.

— The venal robot, Gray Davis, is governor of California today because Republicans nominated a hard-core, anti-abortion, drug-warrior conservative named Dan Lungren to run against him. As the sitting Attorney General, Lungren had great name ID (the AG’s job is generally regarded as the stepping-stone to the Governor’s office;) he had plenty of money, and he had a unified party. But Lungren ran a lackluster campaign and got totally creamed. If he’d run a magnificent campaign, he would have lost by a smaller margin, but he would have lost nonetheless. Pete Wilson changed the dynamics of California politics forever with his Mexican-baiting Prop 187 — the Mexicans and other immigrants applied for citizenship and registered to vote. Astute politicians know how to navigate these new political waters, as Riordan did in LA; the hard-core, religious right still dreams of Reagan and wishes for Happy Days. See Ken Layne on this issue, or, for perverse pleasure, Rand Simberg representing the knuckle-dragging Freeper point of view.

— Columnists Matier and Ross have their finger on the pulse of California politics like nobody else (except Dan Walters – he’s in a class by himself). They summarize the Davis strategy today (Big political fallout in S.F. regardless of election results)

CAT’S MEOW: No matter who wins tomorrow’s GOP gubernatorial primary, there’s one person who will be wearing a big smile:

Gray Davis.

“The primary went just as we’d hoped,” was how one top Davis operative summed up the governor’s mood.

“Either we come out of this facing a very badly damaged Richard Riordan or we face Bill Simon — a guy who is just too conservative for today’s California,” the operative said.

Even Gray probably didn’t count on the help he got from Deukmejian, the biggest and loudest of the Riordan-bashers. But this is democracy at its worst – single-issue voters who’d rather make a point than win elections and govern. Whatever their point was, the only thing anyone will remember about this election is the stupidity of it.