Simon’s Best Hope: Be a New Riordan

The man who made the biggest difference in last week’s primary was not Gov. Gray Davis, Bill Simon Jr. or even Richard Riordan. It was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Two years ago, Scalia wrote the majority opinion declaring California’s blanket-primary law unconstitutional.

In a blanket contest, any voter can vote for any candidate. Thus, the primary electorate for the GOP race for governor would have been 100% of the voters. But after Scalia and company ditched the blanket primary, that electorate shrunk to the 35% who are registered Republicans and the few independents who chose to vote in the GOP primary. Put another way, Scalia’s opinion changed the electorate from the 4 million-plus people who voted last Tuesday to about 2 million registered Republicans.

That fundamentally changed the dynamics of the election and, as much as anything else, dictated its outcome. Among the many mistakes the Riordan campaign for governor made was its failure to appreciate its shrinking universe. Riordan ran a campaign aimed at all voters; the victorious Simon campaign was keyed to voters who were going to vote in the GOP primary.

The Davis campaign also understood the changed circumstances. Davis ran well in the 1998 blanket primary, when he won the Democratic nod, and had strongly supported the reform because it meant more choice and a more engaged electorate. But when the court forced California back into a closed primary, the Davis campaign saw an opening to shape the nominee it wanted.

The blanket primary, in theory, pushes major-party candidates toward the center, giving Republican moderates a better opportunity to nominate a less conservative candidate for the general election. A closed primary, on the other hand, enables conservative Republicans to elect one of their own, but a candidate potentially less competitive in the general. Numerous polls buttress this view. For example, support among the general population for abortion rights far exceeds that among Republicans. Ditto for gun control.

This theory will be tested in the upcoming general election, because Davis got the opponent he wanted--the one most strongly supported by Republican conservatives. The heart of the problem faced by Simon is that 35% support doesn’t win general elections.

From the gubernatorial election of Ronald Reagan in 1966 through Pete Wilson’s victory in 1990, Republicans won all but two statewide races for governor and every statewide vote for president. That’s because the 35% Republican base--it has changed little over the years--could be combined with about 15% of the electorate that was nominally Democratic but quite conservative, the Reagan Democrats as they were known.

In the 1990s, however, Reagan Democrats disappeared. Although Democratic registration in the state fell--at 44.98% of voters, the lowest since 1934--Democratic-voting loyalty rose. Even more important, new voters tend to favor Democratic candidates even if not party members. Twenty years ago, 53% of the state’s electorate registered Democratic, 9% independent. But that 53% split their vote, and the independents did not really count.

Today, one of every five voters is independent or belongs to a minor party. They are the new swing vote. In the 2000 presidential contest, then-Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush held 90% loyalty among their party adherents in California, but Gore won the independents, 54% to 38%, and that contributed to his big win in the state.

Who are these independents? A lot of new and first-time voters, including many Latinos. As many as one in three Latino voters registers independent. Independents also include high-tech workers and wealthy women, who are fiscally conservative but socially liberal. If Simon is to break through against Davis, he must win over independently thinking voters.

Wealthy white voters have abandoned the California Republican Party. In November 2000, The Times national exit poll found that, among families earning $40,000 to $59,999, Bush received 46% of the vote. Among voters making more than $60,000, Bush got 43%. Newly wealthy working women--lawyers, doctors, executives, etc.--have voted Democratic, often against their own economic interests, because of social issues like abortion. As men move up the economic ladder, they become more Republican; this has not happened with women. The Republican Party’s image problem with women, crystallized in the abortion issue, has kept high-income women from moving to the Republicans.

So, the conventional wisdom goes that Simon, the “anti-abortion conservative,” cannot win in November because the independent electorate of high-techies, Latinos and rich women will vote against him. Problem is, Simon may not be that conservative. It turns out that this “conservative Republican” enrolled as neither Republican nor Conservative, but as an independent, when he lived in New York, where you enroll by party and could choose either the Republican or Conservative parties.

His sole foray into California politics, before running for governor, seems to have been a contribution of $10,000 to a liberal ballot measure making it easier to raise property taxes, done at the behest of Riordan. He also cannot be tied to the “great Satan” of Latino politics, the 1994 anti-immigrant Proposition 187, since it’s not clear how he voted on it.

Simon may be an improbable hero to the right-wing movement, who rallied to him more out of distaste for Riordan. He may also be the most improbable gubernatorial nominee since Reagan burst on the scene in 1966. While Reagan was unabashedly conservative, he had taken few stands on state issues before he ran for governor, and his campaign shaped an appealing figure who could not be demonized by the Democrats.

Simon should become what the Bush White House, 80% of GOP representatives and most GOP legislators thought Riordan was when they endorsed him--the guy who can reach out to independents and voters disaffected with Davis. He also needs to be seen as Reagan was--a candidate who’s philosophically conservative but not threatening.

Thirty-six years ago, Gov. Pat Brown’s handlers figured he would more easily beat a right-wing ex-actor than a liberal Republican big-city mayor, and intervened in the GOP primary to get Reagan nominated. Now Davis has tried the same trick. We’ll know in eight months if it worked.