Campaign for Obscure Post Wanders From ‘High Road’

As political strategists picked through the results of June’s primary elections, they discovered a common trait in the winning campaigns of the Democratic and Republican nominees for state controller: Each had taken the “high road,” shunning personal attacks on his rival.

But with less than a month before the Nov. 4 elections, the contest between Democratic Assemblyman Gray Davis of Los Angeles and Republican state Sen. William Campbell of Hacienda Heights has turned into a mud-slinging free-for-all.

Both sides have dug deep into the political backgrounds of their rivals to emerge with some sensational allegations of financial bungling, abuse of power and even links to criminals.

Davis, conjuring up images of smoke-filled rooms, has tried to paint Campbell as the stereotypical back-slapping, wheeler-dealer, a “big spender” who is trading on his name to help cronies and entrenched special interests.

“Nobody has spent more of the taxpayers’ money on himself and nobody has shown up less often to vote than my opponent,” Davis charged.

Campbell, meanwhile, is seeking to tie Davis to what he calls the failed policies of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., for whom Davis served seven years as chief of staff.

“All our polls indicate if we can get that message out, our chances go up dramatically,” said Campbell, who recently launched the first statewide television commercials of the campaign focusing on the Brown years.

Most statewide voter surveys show Davis running 7 to 12 percentage points ahead of Campbell, even though Davis has yet to begin his expected television advertising blitz--a $1.3-million effort in the final three weeks of the election.

With those same polls showing more than a third of the voters still undecided, and apparently uninterested in the race, political strategists say the contest will not be decided until the final days.

Three other minor-party candidates are running but have failed to raise much money or score in any of the political polls. They are American Independent Nicholas W. Kudrovzeff, Libertarian Carolyn Treynor and Peace and Freedom Party candidate John Haag.

For all the candidates, the relative obscurity of the office has become a major irritant. Although the controller has vast authority to oversee spending of California’s $37.4-billion budget and serves on 34 policy-making boards and commissions, the office traditionally has not attracted much attention.

Said Davis: “It’s not easy to tell someone you’re running for controller. Their eyes glaze over.”

Campbell quipped: “As controller, people constantly want to know what airport I will be assigned to.”

Among politicians, however, the contest has become one of the most closely watched of this election year because the occupant of the controller’s office has the potential for building wider544104813governor someday.

Campbell and Davis are the survivors of bruising Democratic and Republican primary contests waged by a half-dozen major candidates who jumped into the race after Controller Kenneth Cory decided not to seek another term. It is the only open statewide office on the ballot.

Nearly $3.4 million was spent in the primary campaign alone and both camps expect to at least equal that sum before Election Day. That would make it the political season’s third most costly543517797governor and U.S. senator.

Contrast and Style

Their political futures aside, Davis and Campbell exhibit sharply contrasting styles, yet are among the most colorful and intriguing politicians on California’s political landscape.

Slim, boyish looking, a bit stiff and formal, Davis, 43, whose hair seldom is mussed, is most strongly identified as the man who forged former Gov. Brown’s “small is beautiful” image. At fund-raising dinners and receptions, Davis loves to remind audiences that he was the one who dreamed up Brown’s trademarks of austerity--his blue Plymouth sedan and a Sacramento apartment furnished in so Spartan a style that “it would make an ascetic nervous.”

Long regarded as a workaholic with few interests or close friends outside political circles, Davis became the loyal agent of Brown’s sometimes enigmatic policies, virtually running the executive office while the governor spent months away in two unsuccessful presidential bids.

Considering the Administration’s austere tone and the contempt Brown and Davis often showed for the legislative process, there was a certain irony in Davis’ abrupt departure from Brown’s staff in 1981. Not only did he run for the Assembly, he did so from the state’s most opulent area--the Westside district that includes Beverly Hills, Bel-Air and Sherman Oaks.

Good Years or Bad?

Davis’ exit from the Brown Administration came one year before the effects of tax-cutting Proposition 13 and a deepening recession left the state with a $1.5 billion deficit--a legacy that has figured prominently in Campbell’s anti-Davis commercials.

Asked about the Brown years recently, Davis said: “Those were basically good years for people, there was plenty of employment and taxes were reduced considerably.”

A master of media and image, Davis succeeded in putting many of the negative aspects of that era behind him in his four years in the Legislature by keeping a low profile and concentrating on several politically popular projects. They included legislation forcing schools to remove cancer-causing asbestos from classrooms and creation of a network to place pictures of missing children on paper bags, milk cartons and billboards.

Those efforts became the centerpiece of his primary campaign and are likely to figure prominently in his television ads once again.

While Davis was acting as “shadow governor” in Brown’s absences, Campbell was traveling the state as the Republican Party’s chief critic of the Brown Administration. It is a role he is more than happy to revive now that Davis has emerged as his chief opponent.

Close to Power Centers

Gray-haired and rotund, Campbell, 51, has used his jovial personality to win friends in high places while securing a reputation for being able to pull the levers of power in Sacramento.

First elected to the Assembly 20 years ago, Campbell left in 1972 to run an unsuccessful campaign for Los Angeles County supervisor, losing to his one-time Sacramento roommate, Supervisor Pete Schabarum.

After spending the next two years as a health care lobbyist, he won back his Assembly job and then moved to the Senate in 1976 where he became minority leader, succeeding George Deukmejian. It was a post he held for five years before being ousted in a move led by archconservative Sen. H. L. Richardson of Glendora.

Considered among the Legislature’s wittiest and most skilled public speakers, Campbell found himself in the center of a political storm in 1981 when he held up passage of Brown’s proposed budget, contending it was too generous to welfare recipients.

Author of Reform Bill

Today, Campbell says his proudest legislative achievement was authorship of the state’s 1972 Medi-Cal reform. But he also succeeded in pushing through dozens of bills for influential constituents--and several of the bills have become fodder for Davis’ campaign.

Among them was legislation to repeal laws setting standards for raw milk. It was sponsored by Alta-Dena Dairies, which is located in Campbell’s San Gabriel Valley district. Davis charged that the effort endangered public health, although Campbell maintained that he was reared on raw milk and saw the issue as “a question of freedom of choice for consumers.”

He has found it more difficult, however, to dismiss charges of political cronyism stemming from his 1982 authorship of a bill meant to strip cities of power to ban the sale of fireworks. That measure originated with fireworks magnate W. Patrick Moriarty, another Campbell constituent who was later convicted on political corruption charges.

Campbell continues to defend that bill as “good legislation,” adding: “I’ve carried a lot of bills. All of them have been on behalf of someone, but hopefully they also have been in the best interests of California.”

Absenteeism an Issue

As the election draws near, Davis has begun to home in on recently compiled statistics showing that Campbell failed to vote 45% of the time during the Legislature’s recently completed two-year regular session and was the Senate’s second biggest spender on travel and office expenses.

The same figures show that Davis cast votes 86% of the time and had travel and office expenses that were about average for the 120 members of the Assembly. But he, too, was criticized recently for allowing his vote on a controversial Los Angeles prison bill to be cast by a colleague while he was out of town.

Campbell maintains that Davis raised the voting and spending issues to distract voter attention from his own potential liabilities, particularly recent disclosures that Eugene La Pietra, Davis’ campaign finance chairman, was convicted in the mid-1970s on federal and state obscenity charges. La Pietra, who resigned his post, had contributed $15,000 to Davis’ race.

Said Campbell: “I think we may have to put this out to the press, saying ‘Gray Davis lives in a glass house, and those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’ ”