Senate Loner Speaks Out on Spending

It’s Friday afternoon at one of Northern California’s most popular conservative talk-radio stations and state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) is firing away on his favorite subject: the state’s free-spending ways.

McClintock is explaining to host Mark Williams of NewsTalk 1530 why Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to borrow billions of dollars to address a state budget crisis is a ticking time bomb for California.

“If it was a bad idea when Gray Davis proposed borrowing $13 billion to paper over the deficit, why is it now suddenly a better idea to borrow $15 billion to paper over the same deficit?” McClintock asks rhetorically, eyes locked on his host. “If this was Gray Davis proposing it, the Republicans would be throwing a conniption fit, and rightly so.”

As Tuesday’s election nears, and Schwarzenegger barnstorms the state to sell Californians on his budget plan, McClintock is waging the sort of lonely opposition crusade that is the hallmark of his career.

In a scrappy effort reminiscent of his campaign to succeed Davis in last fall’s recall election, he is making his case before newspaper editorial boards and civic groups and on talk radio, urging Californians to stand up to the governor and vote “no” on Propositions 57 and 58.

“I have to remind myself that the entire Sacramento political establishment, Republican and Democrat, was opposed to Proposition 13,” the 1978 measure that curbed property taxes, McClintock said. “The entire Sacramento political establishment, Republican and Democrat, was opposed to the recall when it was first begun. They’ve been wrong many times in the past and completely out of step with the people in our state.”

McClintock’s critics from both parties suggest that the senator’s views in favor of shrinking government and contracting for many state services put him out of step with a majority of Californians.

Although Sacramento politicians and powerbrokers tend to dismiss McClintock as an irritant with little legislative clout, he is respected around the state.

In fact, McClintock emerged from the recall as one of California’s most popular Republicans, according to an internal GOP poll.

“I think he could be a very strong [statewide] candidate once again,” said state Sen. Ross Johnson (R-Irvine), who has known McClintock -- and occasionally clashed with him -- since they served together in the Assembly in the early 1980s.

At the same time, reservations about McClintock run deep in Republican ranks. His blunt talk and rebel tendencies endear him to voters but often put him at odds with colleagues and party leaders. Those traits have limited McClintock’s ability to raise the big money needed to win statewide office.

“He’s not a popular legislator with his peers because he comes across as ornery and stubborn,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican strategist and publisher of the Target Book, a nonpartisan election guide. “That’s something voters like but his colleagues don’t.”

McClintock, 47, is coy about plans beyond his campaign to win a final term to the Senate in November, but many Republicans say he is positioned for another run at statewide office, probably treasurer or controller, in 2006.

Republicans and Democrats are watching to see whether McClintock will try to improve his chances by reaching out more to Republican legislators and Schwarzenegger.

McClintock says he isn’t interested in winning favor if it means compromising his principles.

“As I’ve often said, I believe if you stand by principle, ultimately you do win,” he said. “And if you don’t stand by principle, there’s no point in winning.”

In that spirit, McClintock has pointedly opposed Schwarzenegger’s plan to borrow $15 billion and has faulted the governor for not more aggressively slashing state spending -- McClintock’s solution to Sacramento’s fiscal chaos.

When Schwarzenegger’s financial team debuted before the Senate Budget Committee in November, McClintock joined with Democrats in critiquing the governor’s fiscal proposals. He zeroed in on a potential loophole in Schwarzenegger’s original proposal for a cap on state spending, which would have allowed a governor to circumvent the limit by declaring an emergency in a particular area of the budget.

“If there is an irresponsible governor who wants to exceed the spending limit,” McClintock thundered, “under this measure all he has to do is say, ‘Today I’m declaring a school emergency, or welfare emergency or health emergency,’ whatever it is I want to spend the money on.”

When amended versions of both proposals eventually reached the Senate floor in December, McClintock voted against them.

“Tom is not a compromising person,” Johnson wryly observed.

That has earned McClintock a reputation for not being a team player, a criticism he disputes.

“I’ve always been a team player,” he said. “I play on the team that supports freedom.”

Some legislators say McClintock is ineffective when it comes to getting legislation passed.

Other legislators say the real value of a maverick like McClintock is the point of view he brings to a debate.

“People like somebody who says what they mean and means what they say and will vote their conscience and be willing to buck their own party and buck the other party,” said state Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

McClintock’s penchant for bucking GOP powerbrokers may have cost him the office of controller in 2002.

In the campaign’s final days, the Republican Party contributed $1.2 million to insurance commissioner candidate Gary Mendoza, seen as the party’s best hope to prevent a Democratic sweep of statewide offices. Mendoza wound up losing to Democrat John Garamendi by more than 318,000 votes. McClintock lost to Democrat Steve Westly in the controller’s race by fewer than 26,000 votes, despite being outspent 5 to 1.

McClintock’s refusal to put party before principle resurfaced again last fall, when he wouldn’t withdraw from the recall race in favor of the more popular Schwarzenegger -- a position that angered Republicans who feared McClintock might throw the election to Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante.

Yet the decision may have provided him with a means of bypassing Republican leaders by putting McClintock in touch with thousands of conservative donors outside California, political strategists said.

“He still might not have more access to that establishment money after the recall, but he has developed a much broader base of political and financial support,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican political consultant.

McClintock did that by laying out his small-government prescription for returning California to the prosperous glory of his youth, sprinkling his speeches with quotations from Thomas Jefferson and Winston Churchill, recalling the democratic ideals of ancient Athens and the inspiration of American revolutionary patriots at Lexington and Concord.

Some legislative colleagues say his bold declarations often leave out inconvenient facts or arrive at unsupported conclusions.

“One of Tom’s weaknesses is there are times when he knows every word that our founding fathers have said and very little about what they meant,” said former state Finance Director Steve Peace, one of McClintock’s peers in the Assembly freshman class of 1982. “I think he’s sometimes quick to draw relatively simplistic conclusions,” Peace added, “but they’re genuinely and honestly arrived-at conclusions.”

Schwarzenegger wound up adopting many of McClintock’s positions in the recall, including rolling back a tripling of the vehicle license fee and scrapping a new law that would have given driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

Sitting in his Capitol office, gazing across his desk at a bust of Jefferson, McClintock said he continued to draw energy from the recall.

“I believe this was one of the great public policy debates to occur in California’s history,” he said in an interview.

“It was the highlight of my life to have had the opportunity and the honor to play a role in that debate.”

As polls show Schwarzenegger gaining ground in his campaign to persuade Californians to support his budget plan, McClintock is hearing the same frustrating comment he heard repeatedly last fall: We like what you have to say, but we don’t believe you can win.

“Let me ask you this,” McClintock persisted after hearing a radio show caller make the same argument. “Is California’s problem a spending problem?”

“I don’t think there’s anybody that doesn’t agree with that,” the man replied.

McClintock pressed a little harder: “Well, then, let me ask you this: Isn’t the answer to a spending problem to reduce spending, not borrow more so that you can spend more?”

Yes, the caller agreed.

“Tom is an optimist,” said his Senate colleague Johnson. “He believes the time will come when people will say, ‘Tom, you were right all along.’ ”