Dissection of ’94 Campaign Isn’t Pretty

A recent stormy weekend--emotionally and climatically--reminded me of the old saw about legislation and sausage: The squeamish shouldn’t watch either being made.

On this weekend, people watched and listened as the most essential ingredient of legislative sausage--the election process--was dissected, innards and all.

It often was not pretty and at times there was a stench. But rarely was anybody shocked or made queasy, because most of these people were themselves sausage makers.

“You do what you have to do,” noted political consultant Richie Ross. “I don’t wake up in the morning and think I have to fix the system. You’re trying to win. You’re not trying to be a reformer.”

This was a dissecting of the 1994 state elections sponsored by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. Some of the 75 attendees were pundits, but most were political hired guns.

There was candor, although not as much as hoped. Bitter aides of Democrat Kathleen Brown barely were speaking to one another. And you got the feeling this was their mood even before their candidate lost by 15 points.

Campaign manager Clint Reilly complained privately that Brown and the party still owe him $650,000. The deputy manager, Michael Reese, disclosed that Brown is auditing the books to determine what happened to the $24 million she raised and why the campaign went broke in the final week, forcing her to pull TV ads.

Reilly had looked forward to this Berkeley dissecting, he told the group, the way “a cadaver looks forward to its own autopsy.”

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Gov. Pete Wilson’s team was determined that nobody would leave thinking a Brown defeat had been inevitable. It demanded credit for a historic comeback, even if the governor was lifted by a Republican tide. Wilson’s was a near-perfect race and Brown’s stunk.

Nobody seriously disputed that, but the Wilsonites pounded it home unmercifully. Brown’s TV commercials were “horrendous,” her strategists were told. None really defended the ads.

Wilson campaign manager George Gorton said he was “always very, very concerned” that Brown might emphasize education, her natural issue. This would have given her “credibility.” But the Brownies replied that education was “not a winning issue.” It was only “a fourth-tier issue,” they maintained, and people worried about it were already voting for Brown.

In a surprise confession, Reilly said he “missed” the political impact of illegal immigration, and of Proposition 187, which Brown strongly opposed. Wilson clearly did not miss it. His pollster, Dick Dresner, said 95% of the electorate knew the governor supported 187--”more people than knew Sacramento is the capital of California.”

Deep down, Reese said, Brown felt she was “not ready” to run for governor. She would have preferred to remain state treasurer for another term to create her own identity separate from her brother, Jerry. But she succumbed to a cheering crowd.

Reilly said Jerry Brown had “torched the family name.”

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“The single biggest mistake” of Mike Huffington’s losing Senate race was endorsing 187 after his wife had hired an illegal nanny, said his strategist, Ken Khachigian. And yes, Khachigian said, the candidate had been asked by an adviser whether he’d ever hired an illegal immigrant and he denied it.

Once the nanny news broke, Huffington should have issued a written statement and shut up, the pro said: “When you have a fire, you take away the oxygen.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s ad-maker, Bill Carrick, said this was “a cynical, angry electorate more inclined to believe negative ads than any I’ve ever seen.”

The whole weekend was a reminder that politics today is an ugly circle of cynicism. Candidates run negative ads because voters are too cynical to believe anything positive. The negative ads sway voters while making them even more cynical.

But Khachigian charged that Democrat Tom Umberg “crossed the line” by running one tasteless ad implying that Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren was responsible for the death of Polly Klaas. Khachigian managed Lungren’s race; Ross handled Umberg’s.

Replied Ross: “If you watch baseball, the only way to hit a triple is to get close to the foul line.”

Provoking laughter, Ross told of proposing the ad to Umberg: “I said, ‘You’re going to lose. We can get in line and march to the firing squad (with other Democrats). Or we can run for the fences. The odds are you’ll get shot in the back. . . .’ He decided to run for the fences. Was it a huge risk? Yes. Did it have any effect? No. In the end, everybody died in the firing squad.”

Guffaws aside, this dissection left even some sausage makers feeling queasy.