Angelides Gets Crucial Party Endorsement

In a boost to his struggling campaign for governor, state Treasurer Phil Angelides won the Democratic party’s formal endorsement late Saturday -- and with it the promise of money and bragging rights as he seeks to reinvigorate his campaign against Controller Steve Westly.

The endorsement, announced to the roar of delegates at a party dinner, came after the two leading Democratic candidates for governor sparred over their partisan credentials while dropping hints that they would soon take their sniping to the television airwaves.

Just before 10 p.m., a beaming Angelides -- along with his wife and three daughters -- greeted cheering supporters in a convention hallway. In an impromptu press conference, he declared himself “proud and honored.”

“Today, this weekend was really the start of the playoffs,” Angelides said. “You know, a lot of teams make it through the regular season, but who wins is determined in the playoff season. And in the first game of that playoff season, I am very proud to have scored this victory tonight.”

Asked the importance of the endorsement to his campaign, he replied: “I need everything, every day, all along the way.”

As the man favored by organized labor and much of the Democratic establishment, Angelides has long expected the party’s formal endorsement to give a major lift to his campaign before the June 6 primary. For Westly, whose support among Democratic leaders is comparatively thin, the goal Saturday was simply to block Angelides from reaching the 60% threshold of delegates needed to win the party’s imprimatur.

In the end, it was not close, with Angelides winning 67% to Westly’s 28%.

Personal wealth -- gained as an EBay executive at the height of the dot-com boom -- has enabled Westly to outspend Angelides on television ads, propelling his candidacy and lifting him in opinion polls. A Los Angeles Times poll published Saturday showed Westly leading Angelides 33%-20%, but nearly half of Democratic primary voters remained undecided.

An Angelides endorsement threatens to slow Westly’s momentum at a time when a significant number of Democratic votes are still up for grabs.

In remarks earlier Saturday to the nearly 2,000 delegates, Angelides quickly went on the attack, branding his opponent “Arnold Lite” and portraying him as unworthy of the party’s support in the fight against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- even while avoiding mention of Westly’s name.

“When Arnold Schwarzenegger started whacking at education and healthcare like some budgetary pinata, I didn’t stick a finger in the wind,” Angelides shouted. “I didn’t weigh the politics of taking him on.”

He said there were “some in our party who tried to accommodate Arnold Schwarzenegger, to bow down to his early burst of popularity.”

Lashing back at Angelides, Westly reminded the crowd that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and other top Democrats had, like Westly, joined forces with Schwarzenegger two years ago to pass a $15-billion bond measure to ease the state’s fiscal crisis. “They know -- as I do -- that you don’t stand up to the governor by standing on the backs of school kids,” Westly said, saying failure of the measure could have shut down the public schools.

There was some divergence on issues, with Angelides renewing his call for higher taxes on corporations and the well-to-do. For the most part, however, the two candidates made similar pledges to preserve legal abortion, protect the environment and expand health coverage.

Despite that consensus, each candidate argued he was the more loyal Democrat. Like Angelides, Westly spent many years as a party activist.

The party’s support is no guarantee of victory, even if it offers extra campaign cash and a popular label for the primary. In 1990, Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp won the party’s endorsement in the Democratic gubernatorial primary against Feinstein, but he lost a bitter nominating battle.

Westly alluded to that after the endorsement was announced.

“Many times the state party has endorsed a candidate who has not gone on to win the nomination,” Westly said. “I hope that will be the case this time.”

The endorsement fight was the only element of suspense at a convention that often seemed surprisingly subdued, especially given the larger political climate. For all the party’s optimism this year -- with gas prices soaring and support for President Bush slumping -- there was a distinct lack of electricity among Democrats inside the cavernous convention hall.

Westly relied on a squadron of supporters, clad in orange T-shirts and bunched at the foot of the stage, to cheer at appropriate points in his speech. Angelides was heralded by his own shouting section, waving blue-and-gold signs and marching behind him, conga style, as TV lights captured his entrance and exit from the hall.

But beyond those designated rooters, most of the delegates offered a polite but restrained response to the two gubernatorial hopefuls.

There was far more enthusiasm for bashing the president. With a roar of approval, delegates endorsed an investigation of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- with an eye on impeaching the pair -- for their conduct of the war in Iraq and the administration’s domestic spying program.

Delegates applauded when one speaker referred to Bush as a “village idiot.” They leaped to their feet, cheering, when Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) characterized him as the worst president in the nation’s history. And state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, a candidate for treasurer, drew a roomful of guffaws by taunting Bush with an SAT-style analogy: “Jack Abramoff is to honest lobbying as George Bush is to spoken English.”

The gathering’s main focus, though, was the contest for governor. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said he feared the Westly-Angelides rivalry was on the verge of becoming a “circular firing squad, where everyone just knocks each other down, and we have a candidate who limps out of the primary.”

“I’m not naive to the reality of the campaigns, where you have one candidate who’s down in the polls and may not have a choice,” he said.

But he called on Angelides and Westly to avoid an ugly ad fight.

Still, not everyone was united behind the notion of unity.

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, the convention’s chairman and a veteran of countless political brawls, told delegates in his welcoming remarks that he, for one, looked forward to a few sparks. “Family feuds,” he said, give party activists and candidates “the opportunity to hone our skills.”

In his convention speech, Westly reminded delegates that he had signed a pledge not to be the first to hit the air with negative ads. “I want to focus on beating Arnold, not beating up each other,” he said.

Later, Angelides told reporters he hoped that Westly “starts honoring his own pledge.” He called Westly’s chief strategist, Garry South, “the king of mean” who had fired nasty personal shots at Angelides. Angelides said his campaign would draw “real contrasts” with Westly.

“If Steve Westly thinks he can buy his way into the governorship without a discussion of his record, he’s wrong,” Angelides said.

South, best known for the hard-charging campaigns he ran for former Gov. Gray Davis, responded to Angelides by poking fun at the treasurer’s confident personality. “A fat head and a thin skin is a very bad combination in politics,” South said.

Westly, he said, will respond immediately and aggressively to any Angelides ad assault. “There is plenty in Phil Angelides’ record that Democrats do not know that they’re not going to like, if it comes to that.”

While both sides had their partisans among convention delegates, the vote to name a preferred candidate left some Democrats uneasy.

“If we back the wrong guy too early, we spend a lot of money that won’t have a return on our investment,” said San Luis Obispo County delegate Zachary Hall, a teacher. Still, he didn’t mind the wooing by the candidates at parties for delegates Friday night, with Greek dancing at the Angelides gathering and hip-hop music at Westly’s.

Along with the two gubernatorial hopefuls, delegates also heard from candidates for several other statewide offices.

Among those sharing the stage were Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Los Angeles City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo, the leading Democratic contestants for attorney general.

The two pledged to fight to keep abortion legal, protect the environment and stand up for “the powerless,” as Brown put it. (Delgadillo referred to “everyday Californians.”)

The city attorney touted his work pursuing industrial polluters and shutting down crack houses in Los Angeles. “I can’t wait to do that across the state of California,” Delgadillo said.

Brown, a former two-term governor first elected to state office more than 30 years ago, alluded to his decades-long record by citing his support back in 1972 for impeaching President Nixon and fighting offshore oil drilling under President Ford. It was Ford, “or one of those Republican presidents,” Brown said off-handedly, to laughs from the crowd.