California Elections : THE CONTROLLER’S RACE : What Appeared as a Shoo-In for Gray Davis Has Become a Battle

Two months ago, when veteran state Controller Ken Cory stunned California’s Democratic Establishment by announcing that he would not seek reelection, Assemblyman Gray Davis was among the first to know.

With $1.1 million already in the bank and a powerful political organization at his side, many Democratic insiders assumed that the West Los Angeles lawmaker and one-time aide to former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. would have a free ride in the only primary election contest without an entrenched incumbent.

If that was the plan, it didn’t work.

Instead, Davis has found himself the target of two Northern California candidates in what has turned out to be the most fiercely fought race on the June 3 Democratic primary ballot.

He faces well-financed opposition from state Sen. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove and a biting campaign waged by Assemblyman Alister McAlister of Fremont, both of whom have hired aggressive political consultants and jumped into the race with the fervor of a grudge match.

While they have taken occasional shots at each other, Garamendi and McAlister have spent most of their time trying to tap into what they believe is a wellspring of bad voter memories from the seven years that Davis served as Brown’s chief of staff.

Lost 1982 Governor Bid

In press conferences up and down the state and in a bruising series of television commercials, Garamendi, who gained considerable name recognition and fund-raising contacts during his unsuccessful 1982 gubernatorial primary race against Mayor Tom Bradley, has sought to remind voters about some of Brown’s darker days.

One speech charges that Davis will have to answer for “freeways not built and Medflies not killed” during the Brown Administration. On other occasions Garamendi talks about the “obscene surplus” that piled up in the California treasury during the early Brown years, contending that it spawned the tax revolt that led to tax-slashing Proposition 13 of 1978 and, in turn, a $1.3-billion state budget deficit.

“The main point here is that Gray Davis mismanaged state finances when he was chief of staff,” Garamendi, 41, charged in an interview. “He had his chance, and he blew it.”

McAlister, a 16-year veteran of the Assembly who chairs the Finance and Insurance Committee, realized early in the campaign that he would lag behind his rivals in fund raising and so has resorted to gimmicks. In a play on his unusual name, for example, Alister McAlister has dubbed himself Honest McHonest. He also is preparing to launch the campaign’s most original commercial--a song by a Randy Newman sound-alike that speaks of his rivals’ “burning ambitions” and the “big boys” behind their campaigns.

Richard Ross, a veteran Democratic campaign consultant who is managing McAlister’s race, boasted: “We don’t have a lot of money, but what we do have will be spent memorably.”

‘Jerry Brown Clone’

McAlister’s sharp attacks on Davis, meanwhile, are carefully calculated to catch the attention of the media. Publicly, he calls Davis “a Jerry Brown clone” and a “party machine retread” whose reminder of the Brown years is likely to hasten a six-year slide in Democratic voter registration.

“Gray is an easy target,” McAlister, 56, conceded in explaining his strategy. “Who else are you going to shoot at?”

Meanwhile, Davis, 43, a two-term legislator known for his smooth, media-conscious style, has adopted the stance of a front-runner, brushing aside the attacks as “a left-handed compliment.”

“They saw me as the one to beat, so they started attacking,” he said. “My own sense is that the opponents are making a big mistake by running negative campaigns.”

By all signs, this is a high-stakes race.

Because the controller sits on some of the state’s most influential boards and commissions, the job, in the hands of an ambitious politician, can be a springboard to the governorship or a U.S. Senate seat. That is particularly true for Davis and Garamendi, both of whom have achieved high visibility among the 120 state lawmakers who constantly vie for the spotlight. Like Garamendi, Davis also has run unsuccessfully for statewide office; he was beaten by Jesse Unruh for the 1974 nomination for state treasurer.

Garamendi, a star football player when he attended UC Berkeley, will retain his Senate seat even if he loses the controller’s race. But he has less reason to hang on these days, having lost his influential committee assignments and other perks in an unsuccessful effort earlier this year to dislodge Sen. President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles).

By contrast, Davis and McAlister had to give up their Assembly seats to run. So a loss would mean a hiatus from public life at the very least.

At this point, no one is certain whether the bruising anti-Davis campaign is succeeding with Democrats.

Conflicting Poll Results

Voter surveys conducted in late March before the campaign had gone into full swing showed conflicting results. The Los Angeles Times Poll found Davis leading Garamendi 20% to 16% with 13% for McAlister. The California Poll, conducted about the same time, gave Garamendi 22% of the Democratic vote to Davis’ 16% with McAlister trailing with 7%.

In both cases, the largest number of Democratic voters were still undecided.

The jury also is out on just how voters feel toward Brown nearly four years after he left office and was defeated in his U.S. Senate bid.

Davis contends that “wine, prostitutes and politicians gain respect with age.” The Times Poll found that, indeed, many Democratic voters could be turned off by attacks on Brown. But while 54% of Democrats said they had a favorable impression of the former governor, a full third still viewed Brown unfavorably and 13% were unsure.

Should Davis win the nomination, Garamendi and McAlister said such statistics make it unlikely that he would capture the solid Democratic support needed to overcome a general election challenge by any of the three candidates in the Republican primary--Sen. William Campbell of Hacienda Heights, Assemblyman Don A. Sebastiani of Sonoma or former Fair Political Practices Commission Chairman Dan Stanford of San Diego.

Said Davis: “We’ll take the election one step at a time.”

In all, Davis is expected to raise and spend about $2 million in the primary while Garamendi said he is halfway to his $1.5-million fund-raising goal. McAlister is unlikely to end up with more than $250,000, far too little to wage the kind of statewide television campaign expected from his rivals.

Aggressive Consultants

Behind the scenes, the race also has attracted three of California’s most aggressive political consultants. Ross, who runs McAlister’s campaign, also is managing political contests for most Assembly Democrats and is on leave as chief aide to powerful Assembly Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco.

Clint Reilly, Garamendi’s campaign manager, was instrumental in Bill Honig’s 1982 victory over veteran state schools Supt. Wilson Riles and counts San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein among his clients.

Davis, taking advantage of his ties to the potent West Los Angeles Democratic political organization of Reps. Howard Berman and Henry Waxman, retained BAD Campaigns, the consulting firm run by Michael Berman, Howard’s brother, and Carl D’Agostino, a former aide to Cory.

All three candidates have carefully distanced themselves from Cory, whose 12-year tenure was marked by frequent controversy and suggestions of scandal.

Davis kept a low profile during the early part of the race, saving his money for a television advertising blitz in the final weeks before the primary election.

On the campaign trail, Davis stresses his endorsements by a long list of lawmakers, labor unions and Latino leaders. And rather than playing down his time with the Brown Administration, he boasts that it gave him managerial experience and a creative sense that he has been able to put to work, most recently in his highly publicized campaign to place pictures of missing children on grocery bags and milk cartons.

He says he also is particularly proud of his legislation that requires schools to remove cancer-causing asbestos from their facilities.

It is likely that those accomplishments and endorsements will be prominently featured in Davis’ television and direct-mail advertisements. But for now, he refuses to disclose anything about his commercials other than that they will come “at a time when we think voters are listening.”

Brown Connection

By contrast, Garamendi began early with a series of slick television ads that seek to take advantage of what he sees as his chief rival’s liabilities--the connection with Brown and his representation of Beverly Hills.

“The people of Beverly Hills probably worry about a lot of things, but one of them isn’t money,” declares one spot that also features a stretch limousine heading down a palm-lined street with a picture of Davis plastered on its side. Another shows photos of Jerry Brown sliding out from beneath pictures of Davis.

The ads were created by Carter Eskew, who produced commercials for U.S. Sen. Gary Hart’s “new ideas” 1984 presidential campaign, which Garamendi seeks to emulate.

“Davis gets his support from Beverly Hills,” Garamendi said in defending his commercials. Among Democratic voters in other parts of the state, Beverly Hills politicians have an “extremely negative” reputation, he said.

Garamendi and his wife, Patti, have been following a grueling campaign schedule, calling attention in appearances all over the state to Garamendi’s efforts to promote high technology, his seven years on the Senate’s budget-writing committee as well as his master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University.

McAlister, meanwhile, has been spending much of his time talking to newspaper editorial boards and looking for publicity to energize his money-starved campaign.

The most conservative of the three, McAlister criticizes both his rivals for refusing to take a position on the reconfirmation of Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, whom he opposes. And he predicts that Bird will emerge as a major factor in the November general election if either Garamendi or Davis wins the Democratic primary.

A former law professor and author of more than 400 laws, mostly dealing with finance and insurance, McAlister describes himself as fiercely independent and the “only Democratic candidate for controller who has never lost a statewide race.” This is also the first time he has run in a statewide race.