The Scourge of the Amateur

James Michael Curley, running for reelection as mayor of Boston from prison, once famously said, “If I’m willing to go to jail for my friends, think of what I’ll do for the good people of Boston.” California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon Jr. is practically reduced to running on the theme, “If I’ll defraud a drug dealer, think of what I’ll do for the good people of California.”

The Simon candidacy, which could turn out to be one of the great fiascoes of recent political history, has all the characteristics of the amateur who thinks he should be governor and runs a campaign to prove why he shouldn’t.

Since his upset win in the March GOP primary, it has been mostly downhill for Simon. During the primary campaign, we learned that he rarely voted, had not even been a Republican until recently and gave a huge campaign contribution to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, a Democrat. Lately, we have learned that an offshore tax shelter used by Simon’s family may be illegal and that he refused to release his tax returns, an obligatory act for any serious candidate. When Simon relented and disclosed his returns, we learned, much to everyone’s shock, that the rich candidate wasn’t nearly as rich as everyone thought.

Amateur candidates often have skeletons in their closets but rarely a mortuary. Late last month, a jury levied $78 million in damages for fraud and other misconduct against Simon’s family investment company. For a candidate who touts his business credentials, the case is particularly embarrassing. Not only was the company’s investment in Pacific Coin ruinous, but Simon also personally lost $1.2 million. Furthermore, the plaintiff in the case and founder of Pacific Coin, Paul Edward Hindelang Jr., pleaded guilty in 1981 to charges of smuggling 500,000 pounds of marijuana into the United States.

But drug dealers are bipartisan this season. In Texas, the great Latino hope to restore that state’s frayed Democratic Party, multimillionaire businessman Tony Sanchez, has been accused of running a bank in Laredo in the mid-1980s that was used by Mexican dope dealers to launder millions in drug money.

Both Sanchez and Simon have denied knowingly doing business with drug dealers. That may be true. For example, Simon says he found out about Hindelang’s criminal past only after the deal with Pacific Coin was struck. But both candidates knew of the charges when they chose to run for governor. Apparently, Sanchez and Simon believed that the issue would never come up or, if it did, the voters would just overlook it.

This is the scourge of the amateur in politics: a tone-deafness to the intricacies of politics. For the Democrats in Texas, who today hold no statewide office, and Republicans in California, who are trying to avoid extinction as a major political party, this is bad news. But you cannot say both parties were not forewarned, for the amateurs who went before Sanchez and Simon left a well-marked trail.

The record for self-destructing rookie candidates for governor has to be held by an affable millionaire affectionately remembered as “Claytie.” Clayton W. Williams Jr. bought himself the Republican nomination for governor of Texas in 1990 and began the race far ahead of his competitor. Claytie then shot himself in the foot and, as a commentator later put it, continued right up from there. Best remembered was his comment about rape: “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.” After spending millions of his own money, he lost to state Treasurer Ann Richards.

California’s version of Claytie was Al Checchi, a former Northwest Airlines co-chairman who boasted a fortune of $550 million. He spent $38.9 million trying to buy the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1998 and is best remembered for a huge negative campaign that trashed “my principal opponent,” Rep. Jane Harman. The mudslinging opened the door for then-Lt. Gov. Gray Davis to win the primary in a landslide. Checchi’s millions bought him about 13% of the vote.

There’s a difference, albeit subtle but important, between the amateur and the experienced first-time candidate. Dwight D. Eisenhower started his political career at the top when he ran for president in 1952. But he had commanded the greatest military operation in human history. Democrats sneered at Ronald Reagan when he ran for governor of California in 1966, but they overlooked the facts that he had had a long career as a political activist following his stint in Hollywood and had made his political name when he gave a famous speech endorsing Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964.

Claytie’s failure in Texas opened the door for another newcomer starting at the top, one also underestimated by his Democratic foes. George W. Bush defeated Richards for governor in 1994. But again, Bush had been intimately involved with his father’s presidency and had been around politics most of his life.

The tough lesson that Republicans in California and Democrats in Texas are learning this election year is that a candidate with no ostensible political past cannot be vetted for skeletons. Simon became the darling of ideological right-wing Republicans by simply proclaiming himself a “proud conservative.” Texas Democrats placed their hopes in a candidate who was a big Bush supporter four years ago.

California Republicans are likely to rue the day they let an amateur win their nomination. The early favorite, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, led Davis by six points in early polling. Simon even led Davis for a while. But now Republicans seem destined to find that voters are unforgiving about a candidate’s involvement with a drug smuggler, especially when the candidate’s defense is that he did not know anything about it.