Kashkari works up a sweat, but is fighting long odds in governor race

SAN DIEGO — After GOP gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari wrapped up his pitch to about two dozen young conservatives on the patio of a wing-and-beer joint, attorney Kerry Schlossberg had a question.

The 29-year-old said she found the candidate “charismatic” and his jobs-and-schools focus compelling.

“But we actually had not heard your name before, and that’s just awful,” she said, sitting alongside her husband, Nathaniel. A local GOP congressional candidate’s commercials air “every five minutes,” she said. “We have never seen one of yours.”

Kashkari blamed a lack of resources but said he did not begrudge burned-out Republican donors for a reluctance to contribute to his campaign. The last time a GOP politician was elected statewide was in 2006; the party is again at risk of failing to elect a single statewide official on Tuesday.

“It’s been a real challenge,” the former U.S. Treasury official told Schlossberg.

The exchange crystallized the enormous challenges facing the 41-year-old first-time candidate, with election day less than a week away. He remains unknown to many voters, some of whom might be amenable to his efforts to rebrand the state GOP with a mix of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism.

Candidates who know they are going to lose typically don’t acknowledge it, at least not publicly. But Kashkari comes close, presenting an optimistic face while nodding to the long odds for victory in this deep-blue state.

He doesn’t know, he said, if the $1 million he recently gave his campaign from his own pocket can affect the outcome of the race. (Nearly a fifth of the money funded a single 60-second ad during Tuesday night’s World Series game on Bay Area television). And he admits that he was advised not to part with the money.

“Look, when you’re in the Super Bowl , if you’re down in the fourth quarter, you don’t pull your starters,” he said in an interview at a recent appearance in Costa Mesa. “You blitz the quarterback, you attack the defense. And I’m going to fight hard till the last second with everything I’ve got.”

Is it enough?

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m doing everything I possibly can.”

Kashkari has poured more than $3 million of his own money into his bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and raised about $4 million from others. That’s a small fraction of what a gubernatorial candidate typically spends in a state of 17.6 million voters and some of the most expensive television advertising markets in the nation.

So this is how he has spent the last several months — pitching himself to just about anyone who would listen.

By contrast, Brown, who leads Kashkari by double digits in public opinion polls, has tens of millions of dollars at his disposal. The governor, seeking an unprecedented fourth term, finally hit the campaign trail Monday.

“This is the 40th year since I first began campaigning for governor,” Brown explained to reporters in Torrance on Tuesday. “I’ve had more speeches, more television appearances, more news stories and more advertisements and more rallies than any other candidate for governor probably in the 20th and 21st centuries. So I think people know, and I don’t want to overload the circuits.”

Once it’s all over, Kashkari said, assuming he doesn’t win, priority No. 1 would be to find a job. He was making $500,000 a month at his last job in the financial sector, but he said when he entered the race in January that his net worth was less than $5 million.

Well over half of that is gone now, but he does not seem concerned.

“I think I’ll be fine financially,” he said. “But I know I need to work, especially after this latest investment.... I need to go get a job.”

Kashkari started the campaign with broad goals — focusing squarely on jobs and schools, areas in which California lags much of the nation, and broadening the GOP ranks. As the son of Indian immigrants with liberal social views, he does not look or sound like GOP gubernatorial candidates of the past.

He hoped to “rebuild the Republican Party and to reintroduce us to people across the state,” he told his sparse young audience Monday. “I think of the Republican Party as the party of hard work — if you want to work hard, if you want a fair chance to get ahead, this is the party for you.”

“We’ve made tremendous progress throughout this campaign,” he said, “but we have a lot of work to do.”

He has spent much of his time stumping for Republican candidates across the state, appearing at campaign events and on radio programs. On Saturday, he spoke during precinct walks and at phone banks in the Central Valley for Reps. Jeff Denham and David Valadao, state Sens. Anthony Cannella and Andy Vidak, and congressional candidate Doug Ose.

Kashkari has also held a number of more unusual events — stunts, his opponents call them — that have attracted bursts of attention. The most recent was a visit this month to a Sacramento gym.

Most political candidates like to remain perfectly coiffed and collected in public. Former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the job again, travels with a portable fan to avoid sweating in the steam of the Sunshine state.

Kashkari had no such qualms as he invited reporters to tag along while he ran drills with an instructor at the gym in the state’s capital.

Wearing a gray Ultimate Fighting Championship T-shirt, he worked up a considerable sweat alongside the young students training there — most of whom were well under voting age.

Kashkari, who says he works out regularly but has never boxed, demurred from entering the ring, preferring to practice his one-two punch with a trainer and a punching bag.

“I’ve got a big nose. I’ve got a big target,” Kashkari said. “I’m a little nervous about some kid breaking my nose, because I’m not very good at this.”

Several adults present had no idea who Kashkari was. But Salvador Perez, whose 14-year-old son was training alongside the candidate, said he was rooting for the Republican.

Perez, a registered Democrat who said he’s more aligned with the GOP but “too lazy to change parties,” said he thought Kashkari outperformed Brown in the pair’s sole gubernatorial debate last month.

But he gave the Republican less glowing reviews on his boxing form, in what might be seen as a metaphor for his campaign.

“He doesn’t look agile enough to be out here,” Perez said.

Twitter: @LATSeema

Times staff writer Melanie Mason in Sacramento contributed to this report.