Simon Error Enough to Send Him Back to the Minor Leagues

It’s one thing not to hit a home run. It’s disastrous to hit a weak grounder with the game on the line and fall down running to first.

Or, to switch metaphors: Bill Simon needed to land a knockout punch. Instead, he swung wildly and stumbled into the other guy’s corner on his butt.

Simon was cruising along in Monday’s televised debate at The Times, bobbing and weaving. He seemed relaxed and was landing an occasional jab, although Gov. Gray Davis clearly was ahead on points with his command of details.

Then Simon swung wildly. He should never have asked Davis the question: “Have you ever accepted a campaign contribution in the state Capitol or in any of your government offices? ... Yes or no?”

That would have been illegal.

Davis: “I have conducted myself within the law.”

Simon: “You didn’t answer my question.... “

Right there, two things came to mind:

* This is a question Simon strategists had been trying to plant with reporters for months. The reporters I know didn’t bite, realizing they were being set up. We aren’t into reckless accusations. If Simon had the evidence, let him produce it.

* So Simon must have the evidence, I thought, sitting there as one of the debate questioners. And he was about to lay it out. Why else would he suggest the governor was guilty of a crime during a debate?

Why? Because he was desperate and irresponsible, as it turns out.

The best you can say for Simon is that he and his advisors were delusional, believing what they desperately wanted to believe. The worst is that this former federal prosecutor realized his evidence was weak, but thought he’d let the jury sort it out and maybe get lucky. Irresponsible.

Simon might have gotten away with it. But, says one advisor, “he got a little bit out in front of himself.”

The candidate himself never should have accused Davis. Instead he should have deferred to the actual accuser, the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs. COPS would have thrown the first blow and, after seeing the impact, Simon could have decided whether to pile on and pummel away.

But at a post-debate news conference, Simon announced he did, indeed, have the evidence. An aide soon produced a letter from COPS to the state Fair Political Practices Commission. It alleged that in 1998, a former COPS executive gave Davis a $10,000 check in his lieutenant governor’s office.

Davis denied it. The former COPS exec denied it. So did Davis strategist Garry South, who also allegedly was there, but insists he wasn’t. Some case: no eyewitnesses.

But COPS claimed it had two pictures of Davis accepting the money in his Capitol office. Photographs don’t lie, Simon proclaimed. And right he was: Those were not pictures of the lieutenant governor’s office.

They were taken in the Santa Monica home of a Davis supporter, the governor said unequivocally Wednesday.

Simon didn’t know what he was talking about and never bothered to check.

One result: the California Prosecutors Assn. on Wednesday endorsed Davis. “With his reckless and unfounded accusations [Simon] exhibited the type of leadership that California does not need,” said Jim Shore, the prosecutors’ president.

COPS and its consultant have received nearly $445,000 from the Simon camp, presumably to promote the candidate. The outfit endorsed Simon after Davis rejected its demand for $100,000 to promote him on a “slate mailer” in the primary, South says.

Which is worse? Receiving campaign money in a state office or cops working a political protection scheme?

What was Simon thinking? Maybe not much. But his advisors were.

No. 1 strategist Ed Rollins, a veteran of many election battles, knew reporters would write that underdog Simon needed a home run--or a knockout punch--to catch Davis. But Rollins figured they’d see Simon as only holding his own, at best.

So he devised the Capitol contribution strategy. Shake things up. Focus more attention on Davis’ unsavory fund-raising. Back in New Jersey, after all, Sen. Robert Torricelli had just been forced out of his reelection race because of an ethics scandal.

“It’s the issue we have to drive,” Rollins told me before the photos fiasco. “In the end, people are going to say education’s cruddy, roads are cruddy, the governor’s cruddy. He’s cruddy because he spends all his time raising money.”

But in a debate, never ask your opponent a question unless you’re sure of the answer.

It was another self-inflicted wound by Simon, and this one’s probably mortal.

Simon had railed about wanting a debate in prime time, rather than at noon when it was held. But that unfortunate question--and post-game interview--showed he’s not ready for prime time.

He’s not ready for the bigs. Still needs work in rookie ball.