Unprecedented TV Blitz Aimed at State’s Voters

If California politics doubled as an amusement park, voters would fast be entering Fantasyland, a place where perception means everything and reality very little. And it’s all because television, the biggest player in California campaigns, is now exercising its might.

With two months to go before California’s primary elections, the two richest candidates for governor are battling on the airwaves, and another expects to begin advertising soon. By sometime this week, an astonishing $20 million will have been spent on television ads in that one race.

Television always asserts its preeminence before the primary, because it is the only way of reaching California’s far-flung and disparate electorate. But especially notable this year is the sheer volume of ads and the strange alliances forged by free-flowing money.

Al Checchi, the Democratic businessman making his first bid for public office, has begun lobbing ads critical of Rep. Jane Harman, despite his public promises to stay on the high road. Harman, trying to keep that ground for herself, is loftily responding that she will focus on issues--despite taking the fewest stands of any gubernatorial candidate this year.

Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, whose campaign has spent months chewing out Checchi, is now cheering Checchi’s anti-Harman ads. Davis has been off the air because of money constraints--posing the boggling possibility that by the time he begins appearing in ads, the veteran of 24 years in California politics will amount to a fresh face.

Then there is the U.S. Senate campaign, in which one candidate, car alarm mogul Darrell Issa, has spent about $4 million on television and radio and is promising to spend more as the election nears.

*

Although the tone of the ads has been relatively bland so far, all of the largess has political professionals worried that there may not be enough prime commercial air time for all the candidates--or, worse, that voters will simply click off.

“You have this kind of money flying around for this long, and we’re concerned that it will, in effect, suck up the good air time,” said Ray McNally, a Republican consultant who is running several legislative races competing for attention with the top-of-the-ticket contests.

“Voters are going to be numb to political commercials at the same time most candidates start advertising,” he said.

The massive quantities of television ads stem from two intertwined realities: None of the candidates for governor is well known, and two have substantial bank accounts with which they are trying to change that.

Checchi, a major stockholder in Northwest Airlines, began airing commercials in November, a good two months earlier than candidates in previous years. Harman, whose husband, Sidney, made a fortune in the electronics business, began airing her spots in February, even before she formally announced her candidacy. Both had the same goal--to introduce themselves to voters for whom both were essentially unknown.

*

Each has tried to craft clear television images: Checchi has been selling himself as the true outsider in the race, a non-politician who wants to use business practices to free up wasted government money to invest in education and other problem areas. Harman has tried to split the difference between Checchi and Davis, arguing that she has both public and private experience and thus is more solid than Checchi and more inventive than Davis.

(Davis, of course, has contended that he is the best-prepared candidate, with decades of government experience. He underscores that theme in radio ads currently airing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego.)

Two weeks ago, however, the focus was different. On the heels of a Field poll that showed Checchi and Harman essentially tied for the lead among Democrats, Checchi began airing commercials criticizing Harman’s congressional votes.

“In Congress, Jane Harman voted with Newt Gingrich to raise Medicare premiums and to cut home health-care services,” Checchi’s ad states, invoking Gingrich’s name as a weapon. The reference is to a vote that increased premiums for elderly people making more than $70,000 a year.

She responded by replacing her introductory ads with one in which she says Checchi is “distorting my record.”

“Mr. Checchi can waste his money attacking me,” she adds. “I’ll spend my time on real problems--schools, crime, the economy--and protecting seniors who have worked hard for their families, like my 87-year-old father.”

*

To some extent, both Checchi and Harman have been successful in getting their messages across, political analysts say. But that success is limited by the overwhelming sense that voters don’t yet truly know any of the candidates. Support for all the candidates is considered soft and changeable.

According to San Jose State political science professor Larry N. Gerston, Checchi’s shift to Harman-bashing before his own image was cast in stone “blurs” his message. “That could confuse people,” Gerston said.

As for Harman, Gerston said her initial zoom in the polls may be illusory. “It doesn’t tell me so much that people think she’s the bee’s knees as much as nobody is inspired by the other two. It almost speaks in a way to the desperation of the Democratic voter.”

The bystander in this race, Davis, finds himself in the midst of an odd conundrum--the more his opponents spend, the better his chances may be. Davis is sitting on several million dollars, and is expected to be generally competitive in advertising in the campaign’s closing weeks. His campaign directors have suggested that his ads may begin soon.

Garry South, Davis’ campaign manager, relies on recent polls to assert that Checchi’s image among voters is more strongly negative than any of his opponents’--a sign that Checchi does not have a well of goodwill to draw upon when he bashes other candidates. And Harman, he believes, also has limited support.

“I could argue to you that Checchi and Harman both made serious mistakes not spending more time introducing to the voters who they are,” South said.

South acknowledges that voters’ sense of Davis is “not horribly deep.” But, he added, “they have a sense of him. They have a general take on him. . . . What people know about Gray is freeze-dried, and you have to hydrate it.”

Many contend that the Checchi-Harman fisticuffs could be a rerun of the destructive 1994 fight between U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and her Republican challenger, Michael Huffington. Huffington spent tens of millions from his own bank account to nearly bring down Feinstein, who at the time was the state’s most popular politician and far better known than Harman is today.

Mutual destruction would benefit Davis--if, at the end of the campaign, he can muster the money and the message to make a stand himself.

“The biggest question is Gray Davis, who is probably sitting on $5 million and therefore will be able to be competitive in the last weeks of the campaign, and, I think, be in the thick of it,” said David Puglia, director of Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s gubernatorial campaign.

*

Lungren himself is facing a strategic decision. He could sit on his campaign war chest--a rather thin $3.7 million as of March 17, the close of the last financial reporting period--and begin firing away in June, after the Democratic nominee is chosen. Or he could spend some money now to remind voters that he is also in the race, despite not having serious competition for the GOP nomination.

Among the arguments for airing ads is this year’s blanket primary, which will allow Republicans to vote for Democrats and vice versa. Some Republicans fear that if their compatriots stray from Lungren on June 2, they will remain estranged in November--and they contend that he should air ads now to entice them to stick with the GOP.

Others suggest that Lungren would have to spend a significant amount of money to break through the drone of campaign commercials this spring and would be best served by saving his money for the election that matters.

Lungren’s team declines to say which argument will carry the day. “There are some things we will reveal and some things we won’t,” teased Puglia. “This we won’t.”

Already, the 1998 race is destined for the record books, the only question being how much the previous record will be eclipsed by. In the 1994 governor’s race, Democrat Kathleen Brown and Republican Pete Wilson together spent $12.3 million on television between Jan. 1 and Labor Day, the traditional start of the fall contest. By last week, Checchi had spent $14 million on television, some of it in 1997, while Harman had spent $4.5 million.

So far, however, it is the abundance of ads that has stood out, not the tenor. The television campaign has been relatively tame, a status sure to be tested by June 2.

“If we are looking for standards of ugly campaigning, these guys barely make it,” said San Jose State’s Gerston. “We haven’t yet hit the last four weeks. That’s when we’ll get into desperation politics.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Spending Spree

The 1998 race for governor is destined for the record books.

Total spent so far on TV ads by major gubernatorial contenders in current race: $18.5 million (expected to hit $20 million this week)

* Democrat Al Checchi, $14 million

* Democrat Jane Harman, $4.5 million

Total spent on TV ads by major gubernatorial contenders in 1994 race: $12.3 million between Jan. 1 and Labor Day

*

In the U.S. Senate campaign, Republican Darrell Issa has spent about $4 million on television and radio spots and is promising to spend more.