Mr. Lucky of California Politics

Here’s a riddle: How many consultants does it take to screw up a campaign?

Answer: Ask Bill Simon Jr.

Here’s another one: Who is the luckiest candidate in California’s modern political history?

Answer: It’s beginning to look like Gray Davis.

To be sure, politics has always been a matter of luck and timing. In 1958, GOP infighting helped state Atty. Gen. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Sr. to become the state’s first Democratic governor in almost two decades. In what one author called “a political suicide pact,” Gov. Goodwin J. Knight was pushed into a U.S. Senate race because Sen. William F. Knowland wanted the governorship to launch his bid for the presidency. Both lost.

Pat Brown’s luck ran out in 1966. Thinking that political neophyte Ronald Reagan would be easier to beat, Democrats dabbled in the GOP primary to help defeat moderate San Francisco Mayor George Christopher. They were wrong.

In the 1978 governor’s race, Pat’s son, Jerry, was the unpopular incumbent. But when his GOP challenger, Atty. Gen. Evelle J. Younger, took off after the primary for an extended Hawaiian vacation, Brown seized the political advantage. An opponent of Proposition 13, the property-tax-reform initiative that had passed overwhelmingly in the primary, Brown repositioned himself as a “born-again tax cutter.” Younger never gained traction.

Davis stalwarts wistfully contemplate the 1994 governor’s race. A year before the election, polls showed Gov. Pete Wilson some 20 points behind his likely Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown. The California Journal anointed Wilson “the most unpopular governor in the history of the state.”

But as the campaign wore on, the Journal marveled that “Wilson seemed almost effortlessly able to convince voters that, whatever their doubts about him, the alternative was worse. Brown helped by running probably the most mistake-prone campaign in recent history.” Wilson, whose job-approval rating was 38% in a late October Los Angeles Times Poll, won reelection with 55% of the vote, a 14-point margin over Brown.

The lesson? Never underestimate the importance of the opponent to a candidate’s success or failure.

Davis has tasted defeat in the electoral arena, losing twice to political powerhouses. In his first foray into elective politics, he ran for state treasurer in 1974. But former Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh stepped in and waltzed off with the Democratic nomination. And Davis blundered badly in 1992, the vaunted “year of the woman,” when he waged a disparaging campaign against Dianne Feinstein for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

Davis’ victories, on the other hand, have flattened obligingly weak opponents. In the 1998 governor’s race, Davis lucked out twice. Two well-heeled opponents in the Democratic primary spent millions taking each other down with negative ads, allowing Davis to break through the middle and win. It was lucky, too, that Proposition 226 was on the same ballot. Union members flocked to the polls to defeat the Wilson-backed initiative, which would have required workers’ written permission for unions to use their dues for political purposes. Davis, the labor-endorsed Democrat, benefited mightily from the fallout.

In the general election, the political gods really smiled upon Davis. His opponent, GOP Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, was the antithesis of what a successful California candidate should be. His personality was too “hot” for television, and his ideology too conservative for the state’s electorate. Davis won in a landslide.

After two rosy years in office, the governor’s luck seemingly soured. The reasons are familiar: the energy crisis, the Oracle software contract debacle, the budget stalemate over a gargantuan $24-billion shortfall, accusations of “pay-for-play” trade-offs of campaign money for policy decisions.

But luck wasn’t through with Davis. Revelations that Enron and other generators manipulated energy prices in California gave credibility to Davis’ charges that energy companies were the bad guys all along. Questions surrounding the egregious, no-bid Oracle contract have virtually disappeared from the political radar screen; the administration has succeeded in extricating itself totally from the controversial contract. Simon’s attacks on Davis for his aggressive--and sometimes questionable--fund-raising practices, accusing the governor of fostering a “pay-to-play governing culture,” may have lost potency when Simon got grief for a fine levied against his family’s firm as part of a New Jersey pay-to-play scandal.

The budget crisis still hangs over the governor, but Simon’s ham-handed attempts to deflect demands that he release his tax returns knocked Davis’ failings off center stage. Last week, the GOP challenger, after months of resistance, released his federal and California tax returns. But Simon’s conditions--a limited time for viewing, no copies and no experts allowed--were reminiscent of the strictures President Richard M. Nixon placed on his papers to make access difficult.

Since then, Simon has relaxed the strictures, but his handling of the tax return issue has only served to raise more unfriendly questions. For example, is something really bad buried in Simon’s returns? It’s safe to say that Simon’s klutziness has provided Davis’ campaign with a godsend of material for anti-Simon commercials.

Davis’ deluge of attack ads aimed at former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the moderate front-runner in the GOP gubernatorial primary, helped the governor secure an opponent he thought he could demonize, as he did Lungren four years ago. Lungren, chewing the scenery in televised debates, might have struck some as demonic, but Simon looks more like a mild-mannered Clark Kent than a right-wing Freddy Krueger.

Early in the campaign, Simon wisely tried to keep the focus off his conservative stances on social issues and on what he called Davis’ “gross mismanagement” of California. Simon sold himself as “one of the leading businessmen in the state”--in contrast with the career politician--with the “in-the-trenches business experience” needed to right the ship of state.

Oops. Voters’ trust in corporate America has fallen with each new post-Enron scandal, and the Simon people apparently have no Plan B.

Meanwhile, the ice-king governor, who once haughtily pronounced it was the Legislature’s job to implement his vision, is reinventing himself as “just a poor working stiff” who doesn’t “have any tax shelters.”

The governor’s race is far from over, but Davis is getting the breaks.

Like Pat Brown, Davis could benefit from continuing GOP internecine warfare.

Like Wilson, Davis faces an underfunded, mistake-prone opponent.

Like Jerry Brown, he has been able to manipulate the campaign focus.

And to do it, he’s amassed more campaign cash than any gubernatorial candidate in U.S. history.

As a result, one political wag says, “Gray Davis could become California’s first ‘30-30’ governor--winning reelection by 30 points and with a 30% approval rating.”

The electoral math may be off, but anxious Californians, dissatisfied with their candidate choices, may hold their noses and vote for the devil they know.

O, lucky man!