Davis Objects to Inclusion in Pro-Voucher Ad

Furious over his unwilling appearance in a commercial touting the school voucher measure on the November ballot, Gov. Gray Davis--a longtime opponent of vouchers--asked television station managers Friday to stop airing the commercial.

“In a desperate attempt to confuse the voters, the Yes on 38 Committee has taken footage of me out of context and pasted it into one of their commercials,” the governor wrote to every television station in the state. He added, “I will consider legal action if they continue to misuse my likeness in this way.”

School voucher proponents said they have no intention of pulling the commercials.

“I don’t know what Gov. Davis’ motivation is in trying to squelch our political speech,” said Chris Bertelli, spokesman for the Redwood City-based School Vouchers 2000 campaign.

He said every television station that began airing the ads Thursday is still doing so. One of those is KPIX-TV, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco.

“Short of gross untruth or possible jeopardy to public health, it’s risky to get in the business of what’s appropriate for an advertiser and what isn’t,” said Dan Rosenheim, KPIX news director. “If you start rejecting ads that someone could say are in any way misleading, the L.A. Times couldn’t make any money, nor could we.”

The voucher initiative, Proposition 38, would give parents $4,000 in taxpayer money each year to send their child to private school. It was launched by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Timothy Draper, who has said he is willing to spend $20 million of his own money on the campaign. Nearly every association of public school teachers and administrators opposes the measure. They say vouchers would drain the budgets of public schools and trigger the proliferation of unregulated, unaccountable private schools.

The disputed ad opens with a clip of Davis’ State of the State speech last January.

“Let me remind you,” says the governor in the video clip. “By all accounts California schools still rank near the bottom of the 50 states. That’s not good enough for me. And it’s certainly not good enough for the children of this great state.”

Classroom images of students and teachers follow, and the ad ends with a narrator saying that Proposition 38 offers “a real choice for every family, a fair chance for every child.”

Garry South, Davis’ chief political consultant and a veteran of more than 30 political campaigns, called the use of the governor’s image “dishonest, misleading and way over the top.”

Although political advertisements commonly include images of an opponent designed to “make a monkey of him,” said South, the school voucher ads deceive viewers into thinking Davis supports Proposition 38.

Davis appears in one of two anti-Proposition 38 commercials that began airing Tuesday. In that ad, the governor is surrounded by somber schoolchildren. He calls school vouchers “a giant step backwards” and says he is working hard to raise standards.

The governor has vowed to fight the ballot measure. If voters approve the initiative, California will be the first state in the nation to adopt such a sweeping voucher plan.

Asked Thursday about the use of his image in the pro-voucher ad, Davis said he had not seen it but that descriptions made it sound “disingenuous.”

“I don’t think it’s news to anyone that California has a long way to go,” said Davis. “What is news is that we have turned the corner. Test scores are up for two years in a row, and I believe we should stay the course.”