California Insider
A Weblog by Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub
A campaign like no other
The recall campaign now underway will really be several campaigns in one. They will each operate in their own spheres but will also overlap with each other at times. Following it all, and analyzing it, will be extremely tricky. If it?s a close race, I think the polls toward the end will be worthless. We have never been to this place before. The experts can?t rely on the past to predict the future, this time.
One of the campaigns will be about Gray Davis. Should he stay or should he go? Davis is the underdog in that race. A majority of the state?s voters think he is doing a bad job and the state is going down the wrong track. But that campaign won?t be conducted in isolation. As we consider his fate, we will be thinking about question two: if Davis goes, who should replace him? The governor had wanted this question to give people pause. But now, as the field shapes up, we know that there are plenty of candidates on the ballot who we could plausibly imagine serving as governor. This hurts Davis, because he risks being forgotten as we rush to examine the shiny new alternatives in the political shop window.
But the ?race to replace? will be conducted on at least two different levels as well. One is within traditional political circles, the consultants, pundits, and analysts for whom politics is job one. This is the realm where most of the candidates ? Garamendi, Simon, McClintock, Ueberroth ? will be operating. But there will be another campaign, on television entertainment shows, on college campuses, in movie lines and elsewhere, in which one candidate ? Arnold ? will be trying to reach and motivate the 7.6 million California voters who are registered but did not vote in the last election. If Arnold can get just one out of seven of them, or 1 million people, to vote this time, for him, those new voters would probably provide the margin he would need to win.
Arnold has a huge advantage with these voters. He has universal name recognition and the ability to reach them with an attractive message: we need an outsider to ?clean up the mess? in Sacramento. These are people who cared enough to register to vote but did not vote last time. Most of them probably feel disconnected from their government. Arnold gives them a chance to plug in. And they give him a chance to turn the tables on the traditional political process.
Wealthy candidates have not fared well in California. And Davis and the Democrats have tried to paint the recall as tainted by millionaires seeking to buy a public office. But Arnold isn?t going to sit back and take that punishment. He has gone on the offensive, using his wealth to his advantage. He has enough money, he has said several times, so that he doesn?t have to take campaign contributions from the interest groups buying influence in Sacramento. He will make decisions ?for the people.? We can debate forever how he will know what ?the people? want or need, and whether ?special interest groups? aren?t simply collections of like-minded ?people.? But Arnold?s got a powerful line and a brilliant strategy for minimizing the wealth issue or even making it work for him. Especially with those voters turned off by the connection between money and politics, who think that every politician is in the pocket of the big contributors.
The other thing about these voters is that, being casual observers of politics, they probably care less about the nitty-gritty policy details than do regular voters. This plays into Arnold?s other strength. He can appeal to them not with policy white papers but with calls for new leadership, shaking things up, bringing people together. He can run as the outsider. The Democrats already are telling us that Arnold has only voted occasionally. This can be a liability in a traditional campaign. It makes the candidate seem irresponsible. But watch for Arnold to turn this one around as well. I predict he will not apologize for his infrequent voting but try to use it to his advantage. ?I have rarely voted because the candidates have all been terrible,? he will say. ?They have all been the same. Professional politicians who didn?t connect with me, didn't speak to me.? Thus he becomes the voice of the occasional voter, their poster child. He gives them cover for their own lack of participation and a reason to change that now. It wasn't their fault they failed to vote. It was the politicians' fault. Now we can punish those pols for their sins.
Only one other candidate, Cruz Bustamante, has much chance of reaching new voters, of expanding the base. He would be the first Latino governor in modern times. California has about 2.5 million Latino voters. But exit polls suggest that only between one-fourth and one-third of them voted in the last election. If Cruz connects with them, is adopted by them, becomes their hope and aspiration, he could generate significant new turn-out and benefit from it. And his campaign for those votes will be largely unseen and, perhaps, undetected by the mainstream media, and by pollsters. Like Arnold?s attempt to reach disaffected voters, we may not know if Cruz?s campaign is working until Election Day.
Despite the record number of candidates, I would not be surprised if this became a two-man race. Arnold v. Cruz. The immigrant against the son of immigrants. Both of them are going to be doing everything they can to expand the number of people paying attention to politics and participating in it. Combine that with the more traditional, between-the-lines game to be played by most of the other candidates, plus the work of mavericks like commentator Arianna Huffington, and you have the chance for a huge voter turnout, perhaps greater than last year, perhaps greater than any recent election for governor.
And I thought the recall was supposed to be anti-democratic.
sacbee.com |
