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<<Get ready for a dem governor of Ca for the first time in 2 decades! Thanks to Mr Starr!>>
Don't go buying those party hats just yet!!!
Green Party Could Play Spoiler
By DOUG WILLIS Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Former Rep. Dan Hamburg doesn't have a prayer of
becoming California's next governor, but the Green Party candidate could play spoiler by
emphasizing liberal causes and siphoning votes from Democrat Gray Davis.
Hamburg, on the Nov. 3 ballot with Davis and Republican Dan Lungren, is running against
the death penalty and the war on drugs. The one-term congressman is pro-environment
and supports universal health care and campaign finance reform.
Hamburg's only goal is to make people pay attention.
''I don't regard the election as the political equivalent of the Super Bowl. I don't think it's
all over Nov. 3. We're planting seeds for the future,'' the 49-year-old told reporters.
Every vote Hamburg wins will likely come from Davis, California's lieutenant governor.
And most votes that Libertarian Steve Kubby wins would likely have been votes for
Lungren, the state's attorney general.
The Green Party has only 93,000 registered voters in California, just 0.6 percent of the
state's 14.6 million voters.
The Green Party has never before entered a candidate in the race for governor, but Green
candidates have won as many as 248,000 votes in other statewide races in past elections
-- enough to tip the balance in the kind of close race that California traditionally has for
governor when there is no incumbent on the ballot.
Republican George Deukmejian, for example, was elected to his first term as governor in
1982 by a margin of just 93,345, and Democrat Jerry Brown won his first term by
175,000 votes.
This year's race for governor is shaping up to be just as close, with Davis and Lungren
rated as a tossup in the most recent poll of likely voters.
Davis' campaign manager, Garry South, says he isn't worried about Hamburg being a
spoiler.
''This guy wears a ponytail,'' South told The Sacramento Bee. ''Do you think Californians
are ready to vote for a middle-aged guy with a ponytail?''
Hamburg acknowledges the Catch-22 of his quest and that of other minor party
candidates: The better they do, the more they help elect the candidates least sympathetic
to their causes.
But, he says, ''You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and we may have
to break some eggs.''
Hamburg says he meets people every day who say they agree with him, but don't want to
throw their vote away on a candidate who can't win. So he tells them to vote their
conscience, but he has also come up with a gimmick that he believes will solve the
Catch-22.
In his plan, voters would list their first, second and third choices on their ballots.
If their first choice failed to make the cut, their vote would automatically go to their second
choice, or to their third choice if both their first and second choices didn't get enough
votes.
That way, Hamburg said, their first choices would be counted, advancing the issues of
their parties, and voters wouldn't fear that they were throwing their votes away.
''Most people who vote Green will vote Democratic as a second choice. It totally
eliminates this whole spoiler issue,'' Hamburg said.
For Hamburg, the spoiler image is nothing new.
Hamburg got his opportunity to go to Congress as a Democrat in 1992 because two years
earlier a Peace and Freedom Party candidate siphoned off 15 percent of the vote in a
Democratic-leaning district along California's northern coast, and that helped elect the
Republican whom Hamburg defeated two years later.
Hamburg says he will lead an initiative drive after his current campaign is over to place his
instant runoff proposal on California's statewide ballot in 2000. That task would require
gathering more than 500,000 signatures and could cost $1 million or more.
AP-NY-10-05-98 1549EDT
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