Bradley Again Scolds Foe for His Refusal to Debate

This time, it was radio talk show host Michael Jackson standing in, unofficially, for Gov. George Deukmejian--as gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley again hit the campaign circuit without a sparring partner.

Jackson on Tuesday hosted the Los Angeles mayor on his KABC show and sometimes “played” the governor to respond to Bradley’s criticisms of Deukmejian’s record.

But at least Jackson was a human substitute. At recent campaign appearances Bradley has resorted to talking to a cloth money sack and a large photo blowup as representatives of Deukmejian, who refuses to debate.

Bradley continued hammering on this theme Tuesday, treating it as a key issue.

“He’s a good invisible man,” Bradley said. “He sneaked in the back door of the Capitol and he’s hardly been seen or heard from since then. . . . That’s why it was critical that we have a face-to-face confrontation.”

During the Jackson show, Bradley took his advocacy of debates a step further than he had before. Bradley said “any candidate for major office . . . ought to be willing to debate.” Bradley did not say if he also had in mind fellow Democrat Sen. Alan Cranston, who has refused to debate his Republican opponent, Rep. Ed Zschau.

Bradley expressed frustration with the governor’s refusal to debate during a campaign swing last week in Santa Rosa and acknowledged that the absence of debates limits his message.

“There’s no way you can clearly . . . expose his record of failure without that kind of confrontation,” Bradley said. “We can put on commercials that tell stories, but it loses somewhat in the translation and in credibility. They (voters) say, ‘It’s just a commercial.”’

Some of those commercials, and their attacks on Deukmejian, are the reasons cited by the governor for his refusal to debate, reasons dismissed by Bradley as a “smoke screen for not wanting to try to defend his record.”

“We’re debating every day,” Deukmejian said recently. “I have no desire whatsoever to stand on the same platform with Mayor Bradley, especially in light of the kind of attacks he has made on me.”

Before about 250 students Monday at Los Angeles Valley College, Bradley unveiled a 3- by 4-foot black and white, unflattering photo of a wide-eyed, open-mouthed Deukmejian. Bradley addressed the prop, as he had before, as “Duck-mejian,” a reference to how Deukmejian has “ducked” debates. It is a play on Deukmejian’s name that is not always widely understood by audiences. Some have been heard to remark that they initially thought Bradley was mistakenly mispronouncing the governor’s name.

In other appearances Bradley has used the bogus bag of money and called it “George Moneybags.”

As he did with the photo and Jackson on Tuesday, Bradley asks “Moneybags” about various Deukmejian stands on toxic waste, insurance regulation and his campaign contributions from the toxic waste and insurance industries.

The questions from callers Tuesday on Jackson’s show were not of the civics-lesson variety about the importance of debates. They were of the practical, ideological, and the trivial, the things on which voters’ decisions often turn. They asked about his stands on state propositions affecting salaries of public employees and on elevating the status of the English language. Another chided him for his approval of oil drilling in Pacific Palisades. Another hung up on him after insisting that Bradley had once called Los Angeles a “third world” city, while Bradley insisted he had called it an international city.