A Shoestring Campaign Limps Along

This is where 30 years of service to the Republican party got Bill Jones: standing before a lectern in Reseda, flanked by his wife and seven UCLA fraternity members, delivering a speech into thin air.

It’s a common scene from Jones’ gubernatorial campaign, as the candidate remains locked in third place in fund-raising and the polls a week before the primary. There are few campaign rallies; often, as in Reseda, a lone reporter is his only audience. But he delivers the pre-written speeches anyway, invariably beginning with the words “Thank you for coming.”

Little more than a year ago, Jones--the only statewide Republican officeholder--had a clear field in the GOP primary. Then two multimillionaires with tenuous Republican credentials and no experience in statewide campaigns jumped into the fray, and Jones, an assemblyman for 12 years before becoming secretary of state, was buried beneath their avalanche of money.

“He’s got to be the most frustrated man in California,” GOP consultant Dan Schnur said.

Jones certainly sounds like it. Although he has a reputation for civility, Jones in the closing days of the race has leveled devastating daily attacks on his rivals.

He says they think the Republican party is “for sale.” He criticizes former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan for not controlling his Democratic wife, and financier Bill Simon Jr. for routinely missing primary elections: “There’s no excuse--being too busy making money to vote.” He ruminates on whether he should have passed up a chance to run for a safe seat in Congress instead of for governor--but quickly says he made the right choice.

On Tuesday, he entered the stretch run of his shoestring campaign--a seven-day plane tour of California in his Cessna six-seater, which Jones flies himself. He touched down in San Diego on Tuesday afternoon and devoted the majority of his speech to attacking Riordan, whose record he plans to criticize every one of the remaining days before the primary.

The secretary of state and his loyalists contend that he can still win, even though a Times poll released Monday showed him gaining no ground on Riordan and Simon, who are in a dead heat for the nomination. With the two multimillionaires bashing each other on the airwaves in the race’s final week, Jones insists, voters will be disgusted with the novices and look to his experience on primary day.

Following a basic rule of politics, candidate Jones does not even tolerate the idea of defeat. In seemingly every appearance, he declares: “I will win this primary.”

Six days from election day, the race is still volatile. But analysts say Jones’ talk of victory may be wishful.

“Anything’s possible,” said GOP analyst Allan Hoffenblum, who is backing Riordan. Still, he said, “It appears from what I’m hearing that it’s a two-candidate race” between the more moderate Riordan and the more conservative Simon.

UC Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain agreed. “It comes down to a real choice between a conservative candidate and a more moderate candidate,” he said. “Jones doesn’t add anything to that dialogue.”

That’s not true, Jones says: He has his experience in state politics--his entire adult life.

Active in Republican Politics Since College

The son of a Reagan appointee to the state water commission, Jones grew up on his family ranch outside Fresno. At Cal State Fresno during the turbulence of the 1960s, Jones was active in Republican politics. He headed the Fresno chapter of Young Republicans for Richard Nixon and was later recruited into a program to get farmers into the Legislature.

Jones lost his first race for the Assembly, but won a seat in 1982 and has not lost an election since. He served as minority leader, then secretary of state. But his standing in this race was complicated when, during the spring 2000 presidential primaries, he shifted his support from George W. Bush to John McCain, whose stance on campaign finance reform comes closest to Jones’.

The next year, the Bush White House talked to Riordan about running against Jones in the primary. He jumped in, as did Simon. The secretary of state found his campaign stalled, unable to raise money from bedrock Republican donors.

Jones’ distaste for his two chief rivals is evident, though he goes out of his way to call Simon “a nice fellow.” During the Republican debates, GOP consultant Schnur said, Jones’ expression reminded him of a famous “Saturday Night Live” sketch during the 1988 presidential election, when actor Jon Lovitz, playing Democrat Michael Dukakis, watched comedian Dana Carvey’s George Bush babble nonsensically. “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy,” Lovitz said.

The Reseda event earlier this month was a window into Jones’ underdog campaign. It was the opening shot of a bus tour, but the rickety yellow school bus was 90 minutes late pulling into the departure point, the parking lot of a Woodland Hills mall. During the delay, a security guard tried to chase out the reporter and photographers waiting for Jones to arrive.

The bus finally arrived, along with the candidate and his wife, Maurine--who rose at 3:45 a.m. to get from Fresno to Woodland Hills--and a Chevy Blazer jammed with seven members of the same UCLA fraternity to which Jones’ nephew belongs. The students slipped into Jones for Governor T-shirts and clambered upon the bus, followed by the secretary of state and his wife.

The contrast between Jones’ humble yellow school bus and one chartered weeks before by Riordan--with a leather couch, stereo system, VCR, DVD player--was lost on no one.

“That bus Riordan had,” Jones said. “I think we could fit our whole staff and still have room for the press.”

Ideas for State’s Transportation Woes

Unprompted, Jones began to hold forth, talking steadily for 30 minutes about the intricacies of the state’s water policy, its transportation woes--he favors using high-speed trains that were first used in Spain and now are utilized in Washington state--and the dynamics of the race.

He scoffed at the comparison Simon’s supporters make to another political novice who mounted a longshot conservative campaign for governor--Ronald Reagan.

“I remember Reagan speaking to Republican dinners two years before he started running,” Jones said.

He tried to recall Riordan’s schedule that day, and remembered the former mayor was speaking to a local Lincoln club--a Republican organization. Jones began to rattle off the Lincoln clubs he had spoken to just in the past week--Madera, Redding. He trailed off.

“Riordan’s done a couple of events,” Jones said. “I’ve done hundreds. I’m not looking for thanks for that. I’m just saying the party has to be more than a vehicle.”

He volunteered that he had a chance to run for an open congressional seat in the Central Valley late last year, one that he could have easily won. But he never gave it much consideration, he insisted.

“To desert your party and leave it to Simon and Riordan, who can’t beat [incumbent Gov. Gray] Davis, it’s not the right thing to do,” Jones said as his bus rattled through the San Fernando Valley toward Reseda High School. “This is the right race to be in.”