No Love for Simon in Republican Stronghold

Debbie Lueck winces when breakfast conversation at Zingo’s truck-stop diner turns to Gray Davis and Bill Simon Jr.

“They’re both slime,” she said over a plate of biscuits and gravy. “You can’t trust either one of them.”

Simon, the Republican candidate for governor, seems “sneaky” to the 42-year-old bank-vault registrar.

“He’s hiding stuff,” she said. “He’s got an agenda that he doesn’t just spit out and tell you what it is.”

In every election she can remember, Lueck voted for the Republican at the top of the ticket: George W. Bush, Dan Lungren, Bob Dole. But next week, she plans to skip the contest for governor and cast votes only in races lower on the ballot. To her, Simon is no better than Davis.

“Their integrity is in the gutter,” she said. “Both of them.”

Lueck and many other Republicans in this GOP stronghold knew little about Simon when they voted for him in the March primary, apart from his endorsement by former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Given what they have learned since then, many Republicans here view Simon as a flawed -- in some cases unacceptable -- alternative to the Democratic governor.

“They’re both clowns in my opinion,” said Sam Stewart, 40, a Republican motorcycle mechanic who plans to vote for Simon despite his low regard for the Pacific Palisades investment banker.

The lack of enthusiasm for Simon in Bakersfield illustrates the party’s difficulty in drawing a strong turnout of Republicans in the Nov. 5 election.

“I don’t see them voting for Gray Davis; I just see them staying home,” said GOP consultant Allan Hoffenblum.

Simon’s lackluster support within his own party mirrors the trouble that Davis faces with many Democrats, particularly liberals. Among likely voters, only two out of three Republicans support Simon, as just two out of three Democrats back Davis, according to a poll released last week by the Public Policy Institute of California.

But in a state with 1.4 million more Democrats than Republicans, tepid backing among party loyalists poses a more serious challenge to Simon -- especially with polls thus far showing Davis well ahead among independents. So a strong Republican turnout is crucial for Simon in Bakersfield and other GOP bastions in the Central Valley.

To gauge likely Republican turnout, Bakersfield GOP strategist Mark Abernathy keeps tabs on applications for absentee ballots in the area. So far, he said, the party’s share is falling below expectations.

“Republican enthusiasm seems to be low,” he said.

Simon’s campaign team is counting on a final spurt of TV ads bashing Davis to galvanize Republicans. Indeed, most of Simon’s firepower in the general election has hewn to the notion that if voters can be reminded that they dislike Davis, they will enthusiastically endorse Simon.

Yet, however unpopular Davis may be, it’s clear that much of Simon’s support is halfhearted in this Republican farm and oil region. Republican housewife Laura Lamas of Pumpkin Center, just south of Bakersfield, said Simon “doesn’t know what’s going on” in agriculture.

“What in his background gives him the knowledge of what’s going on in this valley, this breadbasket?” she asked as she climbed out of a pickup to buy dog food at Bugni Bros. Hardware and Feed.

Among party loyalists, what has most wounded Simon is a perception -- fed in large part by Davis attack ads -- that he is a dishonest businessman.

“I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him,” Republican hairstylist Christy White, 20, said while a co-worker did her nails at a Bakersfield salon. Outside the salon, Lori Christian, a Republican elementary schoolteacher, said: “I just don’t feel like he’s real honest.” Both White and Christian are tilting toward Davis.

Nonetheless, Simon is heavily favored in Bakersfield. Republicans -- even those who lose statewide -- typically trounce Democratic rivals here. In the 1998 governor’s race, Lungren lost statewide by 20 points, but clobbered Davis in Bakersfield, 58% to 40%.

Many Bakersfield voters are from the families of Dust Bowl farmers who migrated from the South and Midwest in the 1930s. Others are transplants from Texas, Louisiana and other oil states; they followed jobs to the Bakersfield area, where bobbing pumps are as common as crop dusters.

For the most part, Simon is philosophically in sync with the city’s conservative electorate, notably in his opposition to abortion rights and gun control.

“This is Kern County; everybody and their uncle’s got a gun,” said John Carlson, 56, a barber who manages a trailer park. “I’ve got three of them.”

At Carlson’s barber shop next to a lumberyard in hardscrabble Oildale, on the northern outskirts of town, a portrait of John Wayne hangs on the mirror next to a Veterans of Foreign Wars sticker.

Carlson, a Vietnam vet, is a loyal Republican who blames Davis for a spike in power costs during the energy crisis. The governor “bankrupted a lot of people over that energy stuff,” he said. “It was just awful.”

Elderly residents of Carlson’s trailer park relied on church handouts to pay their power bills, Carlson said, lathering the back of a customer’s neck and taking to it with a buzzing razor.

“Some of the seniors were really sucking wind over there,” he said.

To Carlson, the main attraction of Simon is that he “says he’s not going to be swayed by lobbyists and stuff like that.”

“Anybody’s better than Davis,” he said.

Republicans view that anti-Davis sentiment -- widely shared in Bakersfield -- as their prime motivator for party turnout.

“Simon’s votes are driven by the Davis haters,” said veteran GOP strategist Tony Quinn.

Those who dislike Davis most are conservative Republicans, Simon’s political base. Among them is Judy Davis, a former oil-truck driver having breakfast at Zingo’s with her husband, Bob Davis. What bothers her most about the governor is his endorsement by environmental groups.

“I check into who’s backed by the Sierra Club,” she said. “If they’re backed up by the Sierra Club, I vote against them, because I’m an off-roader.”

At a picnic table outside Zingo’s, Republican truck driver Lance Rosen, 36, said he was leaning toward Simon, but with misgivings.

Rosen, who hauls propane and butane around California, has lingering doubts about Simon’s “business dealings.” He also wonders why Simon’s proposals are so vague. Rosen watched the sole Davis-Simon debate. To him, Simon seemed too focused on attacking the governor.

“Have an agenda,” Rosen said as traffic roared along California 99 behind Zingo’s. “Tell people what you’re going to do.”

Simon has promised to cut state spending, reduce taxes and improve California’s road, water, power and school systems. But his TV commercials say close to nothing about his agenda; instead, they attack Davis.

For months, Simon has also tried to steer clear of abortion and guns. But his conservative positions on those issues continue to appeal here. Wanda England, 51, a Republican whose family runs a Bakersfield garbage hauling company, said Simon might not be “the most honest person,” but “the life of an unborn person is a lot more important” than a woman’s right to an abortion.

Jerry Bench agrees. A Republican minister at the nondenominational Riverland Church in Bakersfield, he only backs candidates who oppose legal abortion. Nonetheless, he refuses to vote for Simon.

“He’s inept, and he doesn’t know what the real world is like,” Bench said. “When you live that high up on the economic tower, I don’t think you have any concept of people losing their jobs, their savings.”

Bench has an equally dim view of Davis.

“He’d sell his grandmother’s bones for the key to the cash register,” Bench said after picking up mail from his postal box at a Bakersfield strip mall.

So Bench plans to vote for a write-in candidate whose name he could not remember.

“The wrong people are running,” he said. “It’s sort of like the last presidential campaign.”