Riordan’s Bid Plagued by Missteps

When damaging details of Bill Simon Jr.’s political past surfaced 13 days ago, the brain trust of Richard Riordan’s campaign learned about them the same way everyone else did: by reading the newspaper.

The same with a 1991 videotaped interview in which Riordan condemned abortion as murder. The snippet was used to devastating effect in a Gray Davis attack ad; Riordan’s gubernatorial campaign learned of the clip, again, from a newspaper.

The former Los Angeles mayor spent $6 million on TV ads and handed out generous salaries to a few favored aides. But modest expenditures--like $25,000 for opposition research that might have dug up the revelation that Simon had once registered as an independent--were nixed as unnecessary. Most Riordan strategists were convinced the primary was superfluous and the real race was against Davis.

Simon’s 18-point victory over Riordan on Tuesday represents a turnabout of nearly 60 points from Riordan’s peak in opinion polls.

That breathtaking collapse by Riordan was a product of miscalculation, arrogance, naivete and foolish frugality, according to several observers who saw the campaign up close.

They describe a candidate who never internalized the campaign’s message, didn’t trust advisors and refused to engage in many of the rituals--like glad-handing fellow pols or financing basic research of an opponent--that are key to a winning campaign.

Insiders describe an operation fraught with mismanagement, laden with bureaucracy and overly cocky in dismissing the need to focus on Republican rivals Bill Jones and Simon.

Events such as a gay rights breakfast were placed on Riordan’s schedule at the whim of novice staffers who failed to appreciate the message such an appearance might send to conservative voters who would dominate the primary.

“Running a Republican primary campaign is pretty basic,” said one campaign aide who had such experience. “It’s Politics 101. But here you had people who’d never taken even that course.”

In the end, the historic belly flop of the Riordan campaign came down to a single, essential failure: a candidate and campaign that took the primary for granted and thus ignored the crucial first step toward a general election match-up against Davis.

“Riordan and his like-minded campaign strategists felt they were entitled to the nomination. In their hubris, they failed to define Riordan, so Davis did,” said Arnold Steinberg, a former advisor to the mayor, referring to the millions of dollars in negative ads the incumbent Democrat ran in the GOP primary. “‘If the Riordan candidacy had a rationale, his campaign had a strategy, its ads had a message for Republicans, then Davis would have been unable to seize the moment.”

Riordan declined to be interviewed Wednesday.

At bottom, according to several involved in his campaign, the former mayor and many advisors fundamentally misunderstood the race.

“His political experience was nonpartisan politics in Los Angeles,” said one Riordan strategist who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity. “That’s fine in a primary in which we could dominate the discussion. But once it became an ideologically based primary”--driven by the attack ads of Davis focused on abortion and GOP loyalty--”it became very problematic.”

Simon’s Team Far From Confident

If the Riordan campaign was run with a sense of entitlement, Simon’s effort was suffused with an air of uncertainty. Indeed, despite their expressions of confidence, some members of Simon’s team were privately looking past the primary--lining up jobs in anticipation of unemployment.

The candidate, who ran the West Coast office of his family’s investment firm, had only lived in California 12 years. He was largely unknown in GOP circles, despite his namesake father, a member of President Nixon’s cabinet.

It was the approach of Simon’s 50th birthday last year--and dismay at the state of one of his children’s schools--that spurred him into running for office, one aide recollects.

Riordan, a personal friend, encouraged Simon to run for governor. But others suggested that the novice candidate aim for a lesser job, such as state treasurer.

In late January of last year, Simon flew to Sacramento for a series of meetings with consultant Sal Russo, a veteran of more than 25 years in state politics.

During those sessions, Russo told Simon that there was no point in running a down-ticket race. “You can’t win a lower constitutional office unless you have the top of the ticket,” Russo recalled telling Simon. With only Secretary of State Jones in the race for governor at that point, Russo figured there was plenty of room for an alternative.

So by the time he left Russo’s office, Simon had decided to explore a run for governor. He announced his intentions in February 2001.

The fledgling candidate proceeded cautiously. There would be no final decision until summer, after seeing whether Simon could attract donors, staff and supporters. “There were lots of different points in the first six month when we would say, ‘Does it make sense to consider another office?’ ” Simon said in an interview Wednesday.

He began traveling the state, speaking wherever a handful of Republicans gathered. Simon flew to Washington to meet with the state’s GOP congressional delegation. By several accounts, most were unimpressed.

Looming large was then-Mayor Riordan. By that point, he had gotten a birthday phone call from President Bush, urging him to run for governor.

The White House, anxious to build a California base for 2004, saw the more centrist Riordan as the ideal candidate to reach out to disaffected women and minority voters.

On a Sunday in midsummer, Simon and Russo went to visit Riordan at his Brentwood home. Steinberg, then working for Riordan, recalled that Simon kept asking the mayor whether he was going to enter the governor’s contest. Riordan gave no clear answer.

“I walked away feeling that Riordan had lost an opportunity to persuade Simon to withdraw from the race,” Steinberg said.

Improvisation on Campaign Trail

In contrast to the deliberate approach of Simon and his team, the Riordan campaign was a perpetual act of improvisation.

The candidate embarked on his own tour of California, to get a sense of the issues he might face. He admitted how little he knew about the landscape outside Los Angeles; agriculture was important to California, he said at a stop in Lodi, but he didn’t know much else about the state’s No. 1 industry.

If elected, he went on, he would hire the best experts to solve farmers’ problems. The airy lack of specificity later hurt Riordan, especially compared with Simon’s programmatic approach.

Things went well enough, though, that Riordan decided to run. That left him to assemble his campaign team, something he undertook from scratch.

The problem for Riordan was that his most trusted advisors were all Democrats. Foremost among them was William Wardlaw, once Riordan’s best friend and most important confidant. Wardlaw, more than any person actually serving in the Riordan administration, was responsible for shaping the mayor’s political agenda and anticipating where problems might crop up.

But Wardlaw and others declined to follow Riordan into the Republican contest. Besides, Riordan was already being attacked for his close ties to Democrats and past funding of the party’s candidates and causes.

Riordan hired an assortment of Republican advisors, but many quit over a rocky summer. Several left because Riordan ignored their urging to run a more conventional primary campaign.

A large part of the problem, according to several people inside the campaign, was a lack of discipline by the candidate. Compounding that, they said, was the absence of someone strong enough to force a regimen on the willful Riordan.

In Wardlaw’s absence, the candidate brought in Ron Hartwig, one of Los Angeles’ best public relations executives but a campaign novice. As campaign manager, Hartwig approved things--like Riordan’s appearance at a West Hollywood gay and lesbian breakfast--that might have been red-flagged by someone more politically savvy.

Team Beefed Up in Late Going

Some experienced advisors finally came aboard, among them veteran GOP ad man Don Sipple, pollster Fred Steeper and the campaign’s political director, Kevin Spillane.

But often, campaign advisors said, Riordan seemed more captivated by the advice he received from Hollywood friends he and his wife brunched with on Sundays.

Inside the campaign, strategists spoke of “the triangle”--issues they saw as undergirding Riordan’s efforts. Those issues were the economy, jobs and fiscal management, and children and education.

Aides repeatedly emphasized to Riordan the importance of hewing to those issues. “But he didn’t ever internalize it,” said one campaign advisor. “Too often, [his message] became inclusion, abortion and women.”

That was the sort of message that played well among his Westside friends. It also held promise for the general election, when Riordan would have to reach beyond the Republican base to court the moderate and swing voters needed to win statewide.

But in a GOP primary, the message was perilous.

A turning point came at last month’s state Republican Party convention.

The event brought together more than 1,000 of the party’s most dedicated followers. A straw poll was set as a fund-raising benefit. The Riordan campaign, fearing embarrassment, worked behind the scenes to kill the popularity contest. When that failed, the candidate announced a boycott.

Simon, devoting exhaustive time and resources, won the straw poll and the headlines that followed. Perhaps more important, he energized hundreds of party activists--the kind who go home and talk to their neighbors, set up phone trees and stick campaign signs in their lawns.

“These are the people who get the word out,” said K. B. Forbes, a conservative Republican strategist. “These are the party’s political shock troops.”

Bad turned to worse for Riordan when he insulted former Republican Gov. George Deukmejian at a candidates debate. The two men had never been friendly; Deukmejian could not forgive Riordan for contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democrat, Tom Bradley, who twice tried to beat him.

The former governor, still a popular figure in party circles, showed up at the convention with three ex-state GOP chairmen who announced they would not support Riordan if he won the nomination. Asked during the debate about Deukmejian’s comments, Riordan said: “George has a bad memory. The only things he remembers are his grudges.”

Hundreds of party activists gasped.

By then, Riordan’s polling showed dramatic slippage. For weeks, Davis had pounded the former mayor over the death penalty, abortion, energy and crime in Los Angeles. The most damaging attack, using Riordan’s own words describing abortion as murder, was one the campaign should have seen coming.

Garry South, chief architect of Davis’ campaign, had worked for Mike Woo, the Los Angeles city councilman, when he lost to Riordan in the 1993 mayor’s race. During that campaign, Riordan’s abortion quote--from a cable television interview--had surfaced.

It had little impact in the mayoral contest. But in the governor’s race, with Riordan trying to straddle the divide between conservatives and centrists, the ad proved explosive. It also proved a surprise to the Riordan forces.

“On a symbolic issue like that, pro-choicers couldn’t trust someone who once held that view. Pro-lifers couldn’t understand an evolution from there to pro-choice,” said a Riordan strategist. “It puts you in no-man’s land.”

Candidate Pumps In Money

Simon’s team began to see his numbers rise. With just three weeks left, the candidate made his move on television, plunking down his first significant chunk of money--$850,000--for seven days of television.

Riordan began hemorrhaging support. He canceled a long-planned Sun Valley ski trip. He abandoned his above-the-fray position and began attacking Simon.

With a little over a week to go, the Sacramento Bee published a story revealing Simon’s registration as a political independent when he lived in New York in the 1980s.

Riordan strategists despaired; it was just the thing they would have loved to throw in Simon’s face at one of the gubernatorial debates, when Simon questioned Riordan’s party loyalty. But having dismissed the need for serious opposition research, the candidate and his campaign had left that stone unturned.

They seized on the revelation and made it part of their last-minute advertising.

At that point, it was too late.