Simon Offers Few Specifics as ‘the Candidate of Ideas’

Republican nominee Bill Simon Jr. pledges that as governor he would cut taxes, balance the budget, create child-care programs at every school and preside over a freeway- and reservoir-building spree.

But despite spending much of the last year touting himself as “the candidate of ideas” who will focus on the nuts-and-bolts issues Simon says Californians care about, he has put forward only sketchy plans on how he would achieve several of his ambitious goals.

On some issues, such as the budget, Simon furnishes long lists of proposals. In other areas, however, he offers fewer details.

Simon argues for relying less on state bonds to fund school construction and more on private companies, but has not spelled out how he would do that. He has not explained how to fund a child-care program that experts say would cost more than $2 billion. Nor has Simon issued an energy plan, though he has indicated he would rely more on the free market than has Gov. Gray Davis.

The Simon campaign said its candidate was not available to be interviewed for this article. Spokesman Jeff Flint said the campaign has a limited staff and cannot, for example, issue the lengthy budget document that one would expect from a governor’s office. Still, he said more detailed proposals will be rolled out over the next several months.

“We’ve got a 7 1/2-month general election campaign to run, during which you can count on us to provide more details,” Flint said. “We ran a pretty policy-based campaign [in the primary] and we will continue to do that in the general.”

Marshall Wittman of the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., said he is not surprised that Simon, a surprise winner in the Republican primary, relies more on generalities than detailed proposals.

“This is the difference between a longshot primary candidate and the one who actually has a chance to win the pot of gold,” he said. “That transition can be very painful and very arduous for a candidate.”

Davis Campaign Seizes on Lack of Specificity

The lack of specificity in some of Simon’s ideas has already been seized upon by the Davis campaign. The governor’s chief political advisor, Garry South, circulated a memo to political reporters after a Simon speech to a doctors’ group describing the Republican’s approach as “take few questions and don’t call me in the morning.”

What Simon has released are mainly broad-brush proposals that rely on traditional conservative ideas to attain what many say is an impossible goal--melding the expansionist legacy of former Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, who presided over a massive expansion of government to build much of the state’s public schools and roadways, with the small-government principles of the man who ousted Brown, Ronald Reagan.

“It sounds like an oxymoron,” Wittman said.

Simon, a wealthy financier, insists that the combination is possible, even during tight economic times. The public sector, he has repeatedly argued, is tapped out and now must rely on the private sector’s muscle to keep California growing. Saying the state needs $175 billion worth of new projects, Simon proposes an increased role for corporations in everything from running troubled schools to building new freeways.

“If you’ve got a $175-billion need and there’s no way any particular entity can satisfy that--in this case the entity is the government--you’ve got to look to someplace else to finance that need,” Simon said at a recent Los Angeles news conference. “Even if you did not think the private sector was the best, which I do in most instances, you’d still have to look at options.”

Bruce Cain, a former Democratic political consultant who now teaches at UC Berkeley, said Simon’s attempt to meld the two distinct views of government stems from his life in both small-government Republican circles and the business world, which sees the need for greater investment to spur growth.

“He’s clearly trying to do something different, and we have to give him credit for that,” Cain said.

Still, Cain added: “There probably, on balance, is far less of an explicit vision of his ideas than you would expect from the ‘candidate of ideas.’ ”

Simon has called his proposals “traditional Republican” ideas, and observers generally agree.

“His program,” Wittman said, “has pretty much been cribbed from the language of conservative thoughts you would get out of a bunch of propeller heads in Washington.”

In California, where Republicans have been pummeled in recent statewide elections, Democrats have pounced on that lineage.

On primary night, Davis called Simon “a true-blue think tank conservative”--a reference to the GOP nominee’s tenure on the board of the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. South, the governor’s chief strategist, argued in an interview that Californians will not back the financier’s proposals.

“I see ideas 100 years old--let’s go back to laissez faire and let the private market handle everything,” South said. “He wants to privatize schools and infrastructure and transportation. Do you think that’s going to sell in California?”

Simon’s strategists contend it will. Flint summed up Simon’s approach as “trust individuals, trust people to solve problems, and I think that’s very consistent with Californians’ philosophy.”

“What [voters] are going to reject,” Flint added, in a reference to criticism that Davis favors political contributors, “is people who make decisions based on something other than what’s good for this state.”

During the campaign, Simon boasted that he had assembled 17 policy groups to propose solutions for California’s ills. A disciplined candidate, Simon would repeatedly refer to his three favorite subjects rather than hot-button social issues such as abortion, on which he acknowledged that he disagrees with most Californians.

On the budget, Simon has accused Davis of permitting runaway state spending and trying to hide it through “fiscal sleight-of-hand.” The GOP candidate has proposed cutting all new state spending, though he has acknowledged he may reconsider that when he examines the specific new programs that have been approved.

He also has called for a 15% cut in all state operational spending--a part of the state budget that funds the bureaucratic support of agencies such as the state departments of Social Services and Finance. Simon would cut $1.6 billion more from the Health and Human Services portion of the budget and $936 million more from higher education funding than Davis proposed in January, before the state’s deficit grew. Simon has not identified what specific programs in those areas would be trimmed.

In future years, Simon would have to cut even deeper to fulfill two other goals: the creation of a reserve of 6% of the general fund for economic downturns and a $1.4-billion cut in homeowners’ taxes. He has not said how he would pay for those undertakings.

Finally, Simon wants to cut state capital gains taxes, a traditional conservative proposal that several economists say would decrease the amount of money available to the state, though Simon and other analysts argue that it ultimately would increase state funds by stimulating the economy.

Simon also proposes repealing several laws signed by Davis, including ones restricting development and requiring that more employers provide overtime to employees who work more than 40 hours per week.

Kim Rueben, an economist at the Public Policy Institute of California, praised some of Simon’s ideas, such as his proposal for the state budget reserve. “They are thinking about things and issuing numbers that go beyond what I think you see from most campaigns,” she said.

Still, Rueben said, it is difficult to evaluate the entire package.

“It’s hard to know what precisely he’s doing because there isn’t enough detail,” she said. “It might be possible he can do this, but until specific programs are laid out it’ll be hard to determine how viable it is.”

Simon also has been vague with respect to how he would address problems with education in California. Saying he is sick of politicians making promises on education and failing to deliver, Simon presented his own list of “10 commitments” during the campaign, but did not say how he would fulfill them.

The promises are ambitious--child care at all schools, for instance, and a commitment to teaching every child to read by the third grade. Simon calls for greater involvement by charter schools and less reliance on bond initiatives to fund school construction.

To cut down on the debt the state issues to fund construction, Simon has proposed that the state create incentives to get the private sector more involved in building schools. Failing schools, he said, may be turned over to private, for-profit corporations such as Edison, which runs a high school in San Francisco.

But other than a few general speeches during the primary and a suggestion of using more general fund money to pay for kindergarten through 12th-grade education, Simon has not issued detailed plans on how he would involve the private sector in construction or school operations, rely less on state bonds or improve student performance.

Kevin Gordon, executive director of the California Assn. of School Business Officials, said the amount of school construction needed in California reaches $40 billion.

“A problem that exceeds $40 billion in magnitude is not going to be solved through the goodness of the heart of private enterprise,” said Gordon, who dismissed many of Simon’s proposals as “Mom and apple pie stuff.”

Simon has argued that money for child care is spread among different state agencies and can be combined to fund an expansion.

Bruce Fuller, an education professor at UC Berkeley, said that may be so, but that the available money--most of which is dedicated to preschoolers rather than school-age children--will fall far short of Simon’s goals.

“It would be a monumental undertaking for the state,” said Fuller, putting the price tag of child care for students ages 6 through 12 at about $2 billion--more than the cost of Simon’s proposed property tax cut.

Simon’s policy director, Jesse Huff, said child-care expansion may have to happen slowly because of its cost.

On infrastructure, Simon has spent perhaps the most time talking about energy, relentlessly criticizing Davis’ handling of the state’s electricity crisis and blaming the governor for negotiating long-term contracts that cost $43 billion. “He didn’t exercise financial professionalism,” Simon said of the governor during a speech in Costa Mesa.

But Simon himself has yet to issue an energy proposal. He said he favors a more deregulated energy market in which utilities and power generators can freely trade electricity, is averse to price caps and that the state needs to explore alternate ways of providing electricity, such as wind power. Other than that, he has provided no details or proposals and spent most of his time attacking Davis and demanding that he renegotiate the long-term contracts.

There are more details in two other areas--water and roads.

Simon has proposed building additional reservoirs by allowing private companies to construct them and earn back the money over the years through water rates or other methods. But he said the method of repayment would vary from location to location, and has declined to say how independent projects would be built.

Highway Construction Plans Remain Vague

Simon has followed a similar approach on transportation. He criticizes Davis for a vow last year to build no new freeways, saying the private sector can build desperately needed roads. But other than a fourth lane in Contra Costa County’s Caldecott tunnel to be funded through tolls, Simon has not said what roads should be built or how companies would be compensated. Nor has he said which of the various models for private road construction he would select.

Flint, Simon’s spokesman, said private companies will set some of those priorities by proposing expansions in places they believe they can make money. “Part of that is not only attracting the capital but putting some of the risk on the private sector,” he said.

Transportation consultant Tom Rubin called Simon’s road proposals “good ideas.”

“Now let’s see some more detail,” he said. But then he reconsidered.

“Frankly, let’s face it--if he puts out more detail now, he makes himself vulnerable to attack,” Rubin said. “Politically, it’s very dangerous to put out more detail at this point. They [politicians] put out glittering generalities.”