Simon and Davis Prove It’s Time for a New Voice: None of the Above

Santa Monica City Councilman Kevin McKeown on California politics:

“When people laud the benefits of a two-party system, I tell them I wish we had one.”

Ain’t it the truth. At a time when it would be nice to move toward a three-party system, for the sake of adding a fresh perspective to the discussion, California seems to be headed in the other direction.

Both the Assembly and state Senate are overrun with Democrats, and the governor is a Democrat as far as anyone can tell. Meanwhile, the state Republican Party is clinging to a life raft that’s thrashing against the rocks, piloted by a man with tax shelter problems and a $78-million fraud judgment against his family business.

On the other hand, people are not taking to the streets and turning cartwheels over the work of Gov. Gray Davis. In a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, half the voters registered as Democrats said they’re not tickled with any of the choices in the fall election, and who can blame them?

“Democratic and Republican registration have both declined over time,” says the institute’s David Baldassare, whose latest book is “A California State of Mind: The Conflicted Voter in a Changing World.” “The biggest growth is in the number of people who describe themselves as ‘decline to state.’ ”

That number is 2.2 million, or 15% of the electorate, and growing. So maybe there’s hope, after all, for a third voice in California politics--the None of the Above Party.

It’s not as if there’s no difference between the two major parties, says Councilman McKeown, a Green Party member himself running for reelection. The problem is there is not enough of a difference.

All of which--on Labor Day weekend, the traditional start of the campaign season--is my way of saying you don’t have to vote “R” and you don’t have to vote “D.” Six people are running for governor, so look farther down the list, and set yourself free.

If I told you there’s a candidate who’s smart, funny, and burned up about all the sellouts in American politics, you’d be interested, am I right?

If I told you he won’t take a corporate nickel to finance his campaign, because he abhors the way both parties have been co-opted, you’d want to know more, wouldn’t you?

And here’s the capper. What if I told you Ronald Reagan once called him one of the most dangerous men in California?

“I’m very proud of that,” says Peter Miguel Camejo, the Green Party candidate who wears a button that says “Vote Green, Not Gray.” The Reagan smear goes back more than 30 years, by the way, to Camejo’s days as a UC Berkeley anti-war demonstrator. In 1976, he ran for president as a socialist.

These days the Bay Area resident mixes the pink with red, white and blue, running an investment house that favors companies with a social conscience. His political passions include universal health care, mass transit, zero population growth and a reversal of the widening divide between rich and poor.

“Very difficult,” he says after naming those and other tasks, then follows it up with, “Has to be done.”

And how?

“The first thing I’d do is take the for-sale sign down in Sacramento. I swear to God, if I got elected there’d be a party that would go on for days when people realize here’s a governor who’s not spending his days raising more money.

“I’d bring in professional expertise for long-term planning to protect our environment. We’d switch to renewable energy, build affordable housing, balance the budget. Very difficult. Has to be done.”

Unfortunately, the math on Camejo’s chances has to be done too. He came up with a scant 4% in last week’s PPIC poll, same as Libertarian Party candidate Gary David Copeland. But that’s not because voters don’t like him; it’s because they don’t know him.

Unlike the GOP’s Bill Simon and, in particular, Gov. Davis, Camejo doesn’t have the dough to beam his name into your living room. With his low poll numbers, he might not even be invited to the debates. And as you may have noticed--or not--the media are not monitoring his every move.

It’s that chicken-and-egg problem. Does he get ignored because he doesn’t have enough true believers and represents a party with just 144,000 registered voters? Or does he have so few true believers because he gets ignored?

It’s a little of both. And Simon’s disastrous campaign hasn’t helped raise Camejo’s profile. If Simon were in the hunt, Camejo might have stood a chance of scaring the snot out of Gray Davis.

For starters, the links between corporate greed and political prostitution have never been more clear, and Camejo is in a better position to connect the dots than either Davis or Simon.

Secondly, he’s a Latino candidate--Camejo was born in New York to a wealthy family from Venezuela--in a state where Latino registration has grown by 1 million in 10 years.

“He’s been getting roaring responses from mostly Latino audiences,” says Antonio Gonzalez, president of Southwest Voter Registration. “This guy is charismatic, and he gives a great stem-winding speech with a funny, biting wit.”

I used one of Camejo’s lines in my Wednesday column.

“How do you get Gray Davis to change his position on an issue? Tell him the check bounced.”

Since 1992 in California, the number of registered Democrats has fallen by 500,000 to 6.9 million. The number of registered Republicans has fallen by 300,000 to 5.3 million.

Can the None of the Above Party continue to rise?

Very difficult. Has to be done.

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Steve Lopez writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at steve.lopez@latimes.com.