Note the term used to describe Ueberroth
Ex-Baseball Commissioner Dropping Out of California Race
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 9 — Peter Ueberroth, the former baseball commissioner, announced today that he was dropping out of the race for governor of California.
"We cannot see how the numbers work for this candidacy to get across the goal line," Mr. Ueberroth said in a news conference this afternoon.
He added, "I've taken a look at what we're doing, and I've said, `If I can't win — win all the way — I'm going to step out at this time.' "
Mr. Ueberroth noted that he had been accused of being a "one-note candidate" whose sole issue was jobs.
"Well I make no apologies," he said, "because I am a one-note candidate. Jobs are what's important to California."
He said he would offer his services to the next governor, whomever that may be, to work on a bipartisan group to work on the budget and look at ways to create jobs.
Mr. Ueberroth said he planned to meet with the major candidates in the coming days and "ask them my single-note question: How are you going to keep jobs in the state? How are you going create more jobs in the state?"
"Then I'll endorse a candidate, after we've had that discussion, and only at that time," he said.
The most recent polls showed Mr. Ueberroth, an independent, trailing Arnold Schwarzenegger by 20 points, or 25 percent to 5 percent. But Mr. Schwarzenegger, the leading Republican in the race to replace Gov. Gray Davis if he is recalled, trails Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, a Democrat, who had support from 30 percent of voters, according to the nonpartisan Field Poll, which was released today.
Republican officials said they expected Mr. Ueberroth's voters to back Mr. Schwarzenegger, reconfiguring the race to a neck-and-neck match with Mr. Bustamante. But the candidacy of State Senator Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican, who had 13 percent support in the Field Poll, remains a wild card.
Mr. Ueberroth plans to meet with all of the major candidates in the next few days, officials said, and discuss their plans for balancing the state's budget. As a candidate, he had emphasized appointing a bi-partisan crisis-management team, and officials said he would discuss with his rivals his possible appointment to such a team as a condition of his endorsement.
Republican officials said that neither Mr. Schwarzenegger nor the state's Republican establishment had pressured Mr. Ueberroth to drop out. In fact, one said, some of the state's Republican officials saw Mr. Ueberroth as a kind of "insurance policy" if Mr. Schwarzenegger's candidacy imploded.
But his campaign was gaining no traction. His one debate performance was lackluster. Mr. Ueberroth, a soft-spoken 66-year-old businessman, had tried to run a positive, substantive campaign but could hardly be heard over the roar of the Schwarzenegger machine and the cacophony of 133 other candidates.
Aides said today that Mr. Ueberroth had been unwilling to engage in the negative campaigning that some said would be necessary to raise his standing in the polls. They said he thought such tactics would demean the process and be at odds with the principles he had stood for.
Moreover, aides said, the whirlwind two-month campaign was too short for a relative unknown like Mr. Ueberroth to get his message across. "On a normal campaign cycle, we would have had more than enough time to re-tool," one aide said.
Mr. Ueberroth was best known for his successful stewardship of the Olympics in Los Angeles almost 20 years ago. Younger voters — many of whom have seen a half-dozen Arnold Schwarzenegger movies — had never heard of Mr. Ueberroth, according to focus groups conducted by his campaign.
He issued a plan to reward companies for creating jobs in California and proposed the creation of a cadre of job-creation officers around the state.
His plan to balance the state budget consisted largely of offering amnesty to taxpayers with delinquent tax bills. He said that such a program, if combined with a federal tax amnesty, could bring the state $6 billion over two years. He would also limit the growth in state spending to a formula based on population growth and inflation and crack down on Medicaid fraud, which he contends costs the state $1.5 billion a year.
Mr. Ueberroth's broader plan was to stick single-mindedly to his platform of economic revitalization, refrain from attacking his opponents and wait for the dynamic of the fast-moving campaign to change.
"Here's my simple strategy," he said in an interview late last week at his corporate offices in Newport Beach. "In the next five weeks, wheelbarrows full of criticism will be dumped on each candidate and on the current governor. I'm confident that enough voters are already sick and tired of this kind of campaigning and this will be the one place I can distinguish myself."
Mr. Ueberroth said he thought he would escape the brunt of the attacks because he had largely been out of the public eye for the past 15 years. However, he said, "As I start to move up in the polls, I'm going to take my share of shots."
Advisers to Mr. Ueberroth saw him as "Plan B," an insurance policy for moderate voters in the event that the Schwarzenegger balloon bursts. Mr. Ueberroth's advisers say that State Senator Tom McClintock is too conservative and two other top contenders, Arianna Huffington and Peter Camejo, too far to the left for the millions of California voters disenchanted with Governor Davis and Mr. Bustamante.
But he also had a poor showing in the first candidate debate, held last week, stumbling over his answers and appearing bored and distracted. Mr. Ueberroth, who was commissioner of major league baseball from 1984 to 1989, described himself afterward as "a rookie called up to the majors" and said he was unhappy with his performance.
He said he was at a disadvantage in a debate with candidates who had spent months or years honing their messages. "It was a great learning experience for me," he said. "I understand how the game is played now."
"His performance in the debate was lackluster," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior scholar at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California. "He was too much of a one-note candidate. He gave the same narrow response to a myriad of questions."
Ms. Jeffe also said that Mr. Ueberroth seemed to be running a race for a different time and a different state.
"It's not 1984," she said. "This state is so mobile and the demographics are changing so fast that there aren't that many people who remember he presided over the successful Olympics." She added, "There just aren't that many country club Republicans anymore."
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