Media Change Calif. Campaign
Focus in Recall Is on News, Events -- Not Advertising
By Dan Balz and William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page A01
SACRAMENTO, Sept. 1 -- When the black SUV carrying Arnold Schwarzenegger cruised up to the main gate of the California state fairgrounds here this morning, a huge and boisterous throng of people was waiting for him. But it was the 16 television cameras, numerous still photographers and print reporters that signified how the recall election is changing politics here.
This is an election that has all the intensity, trappings and techniques of presidential campaigns, the type of campaign that will reward candidates who thrive on and manage the unpredictability of a fast-changing environment and punish those who do not.
California has never seen a political campaign like this -- and not just because of the presence of the action-film star as one of the candidates trying to become governor, if the voters decide on Oct. 7 to recall Gov. Gray Davis (D). Schwarzenegger draws a press pack wherever he goes, but what is noteworthy is that he is not alone.
When Davis delivered a speech two weeks ago urging voters to reject the recall drive, the local television stations in Los Angeles, which are more partial to car chases than political debate, carried it live. That is a dramatic departure in a state where no local television station staffs the state capitol on a full-time basis.
Davis spent Labor Day "barnstorming," as his staff put it, across the state in a chartered jet complete with traveling press corps billed $1,000 each for the trip. He began the day by attending Mass at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Los Angeles, and when he departed to participate in a campaign rally, he, too, was swarmed by camera crews and photographers from local and national outlets.
A decade ago, the New York Times described California as the incubator of a new and disturbing style in how candidates tried to reach the voters, dubbing the state the home of the "stump-free campaign."
Candidates rarely appeared in public, preferring to spend their time raising money that was poured into million-dollar-a-week television ad campaigns, all designed to control the message. When they did appear in public, the media often did not bother to show up.
Today, public events and news coverage drive the recall race as much as or more than advertising. "It reminds me more of a presidential primary in the hot season than a statewide race dominated by ads," said Mike Murphy, a senior strategist in Arizona Sen. John McCain's (R) 2000 presidential campaign and now a top Schwarzenegger adviser. "There's $10 million worth of free media exposure out there. That can either help you or eat you. You have to deal with it."
Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, said the contrast between this campaign and previous statewide elections is enormous.
Kaplan examined local television coverage of the 1998 gubernatorial election, logging the amount of time devoted to the race in its final 11 weeks in the state's four largest markets and the state's eighth-largest market. Total time on all stations during that period was just 37 hours.
"My sense this time around is that that much coverage occurred in the first few days," he said.
Schwarzenegger's celebrity appeal attracts more media attention to his candidacy than to anyone else's, but the extraordinary interest in the race means that Schwarzenegger's Republican opponents, state Sen. Tom McClintock and businessman Peter Ueberroth, are getting more coverage as well -- enough perhaps to keep them in the race despite a financial disadvantage.
"No matter how many millions he spends, he's not going to have an exclusive conveyor belt of information to the voters," Garry South, who was Davis's chief strategist in 1998 and 2002, said of Schwarzenegger.
Local television coverage has been extensive, and the print media have shown they can have a significant impact, too. Take, for example, the Wall Street Journal story in mid-August in which Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor who is a Schwarzenegger adviser, expressed his view that Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that limited increases in property taxes, was hurting the state and that property taxes needed to be raised.
Proposition 13 is for this campaign a settled argument in California. Buffett's comments caught the Schwarzenegger team by surprise; aides had to scramble to assure voters that the film star did not share Buffett's views.
Similarly, a Los Angeles Times poll of 10 days ago upended perceptions that Schwarzenegger had a clear lead over the field. That poll, which differed from other public polls, showed the actor trailing Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante by 13 percentage points, boosting attention on Bustamante and opening the door to more critical coverage of Schwarzenegger.
"I'm not sure all the free press is good for Schwarzenegger," South said. "Candidates like free media coverage because it's free, but you can't control where it goes."
That was evident when Schwarzenegger campaigned at the state fair today. The candidate wanted to talk about bringing change to state government in Sacramento, but reporters peppered him with questions about when he will debate, when he will start doing interviews, his reaction to a 1977 interview with Oui magazine in which he talked about his sexual exploits and why he says that campaign contributions from business do not constitute special-interest money.
"I will never take money from the special interests," he said, "the Indian gaming , the unions or anything like that. I get donations from businesses and from individuals absolutely, and other people that are interested in helping our campaign."
The intense interest in the race offers Davis a fresh opportunity to force voters to see him in a new light. "I don't think his paid media has ever made him look good," Kaplan said. "At least now there is an alternate set of images for the voters to experience Davis. So I think that's helping him."
Davis surrounded himself with supporters in Los Angeles today, where he began by saying he was campaigning to retain his job "under no illusions." He said he understood the voters were angry with him -- he called the recall "humbling" -- and promised to "do some things differently" if he remains in office.
Then, using a few words of awkward Spanish, Davis warned the crowd that Schwarzenegger had surrounded himself with staffers from the administration of former governor Pete Wilson (R). "You remember those eight years were not good years for working people," Davis said, reminding the union audience of legislation he signed for paid family leave, overtime compensation and health insurance.
His campaign director, Steve Smith, said Davis will begin a barrage of television commercials this week, featuring Sen Dianne Feinstein (D), but while TV ads will play a role in the outcome of the recall campaign, strategists on both sides agree they will not have the impact they often have in statewide races here and in other big states. To win, candidates will need more than slick ads.
"It really tests the skill of a campaign," said Democratic strategist Kam Kuwata. "You want to minimize a negative story to one day if you can, and you want to be aggressive and promote a positive story with a consistent theme. The closest analogue in American politics would be presidential politics, where a campaign staff has to have a theme and think, 'How do I communicate this today and make sure it's consistent with yesterday and consistent with tomorrow?' "
Balz reported from Sacramento, Booth from Los Angeles.
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