PART TWO: "All Politics are Loco!!!
First Guy: ''Let me tell you this. You're running for governor and you call and yell at one of our producers over something we said. . . . I don't have any use for that nonsense. 'Cause this thing was fueled by talk radio around the state. And I'm sure it was fueled more by our program than anyone else's, because I have the audience numbers to prove it. . . . ''
Second Guy: (calmly now, the voice of reason): ''Putting Darrell Issa on the air at any time is not a thrill for John or myself.''
I know before they tell me that this must be John and Ken, heroes to signature gatherers everywhere. I know this because I find myself wanting to do whatever they tell me to do.
John: ''If there is anything I don't like more than politicians, it's those wormy little nerds who act as campaign handlers and staff. . . . I -- I can't stand you. You have no idea how I can't stand you . . . . I have no respect for you. I have no desire actually to meet you. To talk to you. To shake your hand. I don't want to have a meal with you. . . . You're all creepy. Maybe it sounded like we jumped on board your bandwagon. No. We just happened to on our own decide that Davis was a rotting stool that ought to be flushed.''
Ken (cheerily): ''Yeah, thanks for the money!''
They go on in this vein for some time until John concludes, very matter-of-factly: ''I'd like someone in Issa's office to call Jason, our screener, and apologize to him. You oughta do that by 6:30. Thanks.'' And then they cut to a commercial
Forty-five minutes later. Same highway, new jam:
Ken: ''Well, we have U.S. Congressman Darrell Issa on the line calling in to us.''
Representative Darrell Issa: ''Hi, John. I apologize. This is going to sound terrible. . . .''
In the most conciliatory tones, Issa apologizes for each and every transgression. But when he's done, Ken gives him one last biff: ''Again, Darrell Issa. Four percent in the latest polls we saw. Your people should be aware that you need us more than we need you.'' Issa dropped out a week later.
John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, hosts of California's highest rated drive-time talk radio program, are having the most fun they've ever had in their 15 years together -and that's saying something. Their show is broadcast every weekday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. and reaches from Tijuana in the south to, on a clear evening, San Francisco in the north. The vast majority of the signatures to recall Davis were collected in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties, where John and Ken's ratings are strongest. Since late May the show has been all recall all the time, and its ratings are as high as they were during the O. J. trial, but for much longer. When Democratic politicians say, as they often do, that the recall is a conspiracy of Darrell Issa's money and right-wing talk radio, John and Ken is exactly the sort of show they have in mind.
But the Democrats have got it wrong. While John and Ken are unlikely to vote for a Democrat (though John occasionally threatens to), there are important distinctions to draw between them and ''right-wing radio.'' Actually, the market has already drawn them. In 1997, after five years on the air in L.A., John and Ken allowed the show to be syndicated nationally. They found themselves carried on the same stations as, as John puts it when I visit them, ''Oliver North, Michael Reagan and Gordon Liddy -- all those crackpots.'' In a couple of smaller markets -- Buffalo, Sacramento -- where the right and middle co-exist, they did well enough, but in most they were met with hostility. ''We couldn't possibly compete with the guys who wanted to kill Clinton,'' John says. ''And if you're one step off the reservation, you're shot dead as a traitor.'' Listeners routinely complained about their politics. Michael Savage, who followed them in San Francisco, ran a campaign to get them off the air. ''In Bakersfield,'' Ken says, ''we're regarded as socialists.''
That's one reason Davis and everyone else failed to see the recall coming: they misunderstood the anger. They were unable to see the long, porous border between the right and the middle. Had Davis ever accepted any of their many invitations to address John and Ken's audience, he might have learned that they were hardly of the far right. They weren't even especially political. When the drive to recall Davis began, John regarded it as ''a bunch of kooks. I didn't want to attach myself to a bunch of kooks. It wasn't until Issa put the money up that I saw it could be done. And then the car tax happened: and the thing exploded.'' (The ''car tax,'' which kicked in more or less automatically when the state ran out of money, simply raised the annual fee car owners already paid from 0.67 percent to 2 percent of the assessed value of their cars, which happened to be exactly what it was during the Wilson administration.)
That's when John and Ken started to care about state politics -- when politics finally accommodated what they call their ''tone.'' ''The challenge is to hold onto the tone,'' John says. Asked to describe the tone, Ken says, ''Rabid dogs.'' John says: ''I don't know that part of the brain that shouts all these things you aren't supposed to say in polite company, but that's the part of the brain we speak to.'' Ken: ''People relate to the shouts. What differentiates us from a crazy man is that a lot of people agree with the shouts.'' John: ''The line we get all the time is, 'You say exactly what I feel in the car!' '' Then he laughs. ''Some part of me always roots for chaos.''
Flirting With Order
n the day of the California Democratic convention earlier this month, Cruz Bustamante, the lieutenant governor and unlikely front runner in the race to replace Gray Davis, must have felt as warmly as he ever had toward his governor. Today he would make his first public appearance with Gray Davis since the recall became real. The world would see this as a show of unity or, at the very least, as comity: a meaningless little family spat had been patched up. All the little humiliations Davis and his people had visited upon Bustamante for the past few years -- shutting him out of every decision, taking away his parking space -- had been forgotten.
The trouble was, two hours before Cruz Bustamante clasped Davis's hand onstage, I spoke to him. He declined the invitation to argue that the recall was a hijacking. ''This isn't some right-wing conspiracy,'' he said. ''It's valid criticism of leadership.'' When I asked him what was wrong with ''leadership,'' his long answer, though it meandered a bit, had a nub: his personality. ''I don't know if it was style,'' he said, ''but it could be.'' He traced the politics of the current situation back to the state's energy crisis in early 2001, when he wanted to tell the energy companies to stuff it and take them to court, but Gray Davis did not. ''The governor's people said it doesn't make any sense, 'You're grandstanding, Cruz.' ''
The lieutenant governor told me that he hadn't met with the governor in ages and, since the recall, hadn't once spoken to him -- except for making a single courtesy call to let him know he'd be running to replace him. He tried to put this into perspective. ''If you look at California history, the lieutenant governor isn't usually even from the same party as the governor.'' On the other hand, he didn't want me to think that he had anything nice to say about Davis either.
The only thing to say for the professional Democrats' disunity is that professional Republicans, if anything, are even less unified. Republicans with money have been forking it over to Arnold. The party as a whole is torn between Arnold and Tom McClintock, a state senator and a man of fierce conservative principle. The head says Arnold (he can win!), but the heart says Tom (he actually knows something!). In late August, I met Darrell Issa and asked him about the Republican split. He asked, ''When's your story running?'' Assured I wouldn't scoop the convention, he said, with a knowing smile, ''It'll get much clearer at the convention.'' He planned to endorse Arnold on the first night. ''We'll see how Tom McClintock feels when he sees his political career going down the toilet,'' Issa said.
I thought Issa might be overestimating his clout, but he wasn't. In the convention's banquet hall, where the speeches are given, hangs a banner with letters six feet high: THANK YOU DARRELL ISSA. For the next three days, every time Darrell Issa's name is mentioned, the whole crowd leaps to is feet and chants Darrell! Darrell! Darrell! Arnold and McClintock both receive standing ovations, but neither is treated with such reverence as Darrell Issa. Issa has the single most important quality in a California politician -- a quality Arnold had at the outset but has quickly lost. He's not running for anything. Now, on the convention's first night, Darrell Issa, selfless servant of the people, faces a roomful of party faithful hanging on every word . . . and says nothing at all. Or, rather, he says that the party needs to get behind one candidate but stops short of saying which one.
That morning Darrell Issa called Arnold to let him know that he planned on endorsing him. Instead of getting through, he was told by Arnold's campaign people that Arnold was busy. Issa should sit down with some staff member. And that was that: no endorsement.
Arnold's people, like their boss, have a policy of not returning the phone calls of anyone who might ask them a question. So it's hard to know what they were thinking when they dissed Issa. Could it be that they -- like Davis -- misunderstand the recall's spirit? Do they, too, view it as the work of right-wing nuts and want to avoid getting too close to it?
I find Ted Costa striding the halls. He has the amused air of a man who owns the place but hasn't let the inhabitants in on the secret. ''Tell you something,'' he says. ''I've had people calling me to tell me that Arnold's people have been calling me a kook.''
Happy Jesus: A New Approach
t the center of California democracy is a perfect silence. The reason for the silence is that the moment someone gets up to speak, the people smell political ambition and shut their ears. But maybe there is hope. California democracy has, in this election, invented an entirely new kind of candidate: the candidate who refuses to speak. His name is -- well, it's hard to say what his name is, because he lists himself on the ballot only as ''S. Issa.'' Six weeks into the campaign, he has been spotted just once, in the county clerk's office. The person who spotted him was Heather Peters, another candidate. She turned up the first hour the filing papers were available. She assumed, not without reason, that she was the most organized and enthusiastic candidate. But she was not alone. S. Issa filed at the same time.
That morning, S. Issa did two things that struck Peters as fishy. He tentatively agreed not to spend more than $1,000 on his campaign, then he forked over the $3,500 fee on the spot, even after the clerk told him he should wait until he collected his 65 signatures and not risk losing his fee until he'd been certified. ''He spoke with a thick accent,'' Peters says, ''and didn't say much.'' His next move was even stranger: he vanished.
Why does a man so keen to be on the ballot remain hidden once he's on it? The Darrell Issa campaign has an answer: S. Issa's sole purpose was to confuse voters who initially supported Darrell. His ballot listing -- no first name, Republican, businessman/engineer -- was designed to maximize the confusion. Before Darrell Issa quit the race, pollsters estimated that the presence of S. on the ballot might cost him three points. ''How much it cost obviously depends on how well you're doing,'' Darrell says. ''But we would have been lumped together.'' At any rate, the existence of S. factored into Darrell's decision to withdraw. S. had achieved his goal.
Who is S. Issa? The question is not easy to answer. Like all candidates, he was required to file a phone number and an address with the California secretary of state. But the address is a small mail box at a mini-mall in a suburb called Arcadia, east of Los Angeles, and the phone is answered by a beep. I leave a dozen messages and write him a note, and never hear back. The Arcadia directory lists an ''S. Issa'' -- without a number. The Darrell Issa campaign unearthed an Arcadia address for S., and so one Sunday evening I visit the place. Cobwebs hang from its outdoor lights; grime-stained blinds obscure the windows. Outside there are signs of a disorderly life: a fly-specked cat-food dish; a rusty bike; a trash can with an empty jug of cheap wine. I poke around long enough to upset a large hairy man next door. He says that no one named Issa lives there.
The Darrell Issa campaign has investigated S. Issa. He emigrated from Syria eight years ago, they say, used the Syrian Embassy as his mailing address, but then quickly became a U.S. citizen. He has a wife named Semeen who works for something called the Muslim Women's Organization. S. works for Caltrans, the state transportation agency. This last fact closes the circle of their suspicion: public employees had fed huge sums to the Davis campaigns and been given fat pay raises. ''Let's not kid anybody,'' Darrell Issa tells me. ''This is an opposition technique. The governor isn't so stupid that you'd ever trace it back to him. But this is a classic opposition technique.'' Exactly the kind of thing people have come to expect from Gray Davis.
Darrell Issa knows just one other strange fact: S. Issa called the pollster John Zogby. Darrell tells me, ''He's making the traditional Middle Eastern assumption. 'Oh, he's Middle Eastern, he'll help me.' '' To Darrell's delight, his friend Zogby told S. to get lost. But that raises the question: why would a hidden candidate hire a pollster? ''Who knows?'' Darrell says.
It's not easy to find a live human being inside the California Department of Transportation. After an hour of asking people to connect me to S. Issa, I find an operator who says, ''Hold for that number.'' She makes unhappy noises. ''Seems like he doesn't have a phone number,'' she says.
''Don't they all have numbers?''
''They're supposed to!'' she says, and searches a bit more. ''He's in this building,'' she says triumphantly, then goes looking for an e-mail address. After five minutes, she says, ''This guy really doesn't want to be found.''
I leave my sixth message at the Muslim Women's Organization, where Mrs. S. Issa presumably works, then drive down to Caltrans's office in downtown L.A. I tell the receptionist I have an appointment with S. Issa. Somehow she finds a number for him and calls it. She listens, she frowns, she rechecks her directory. ''Yeah, that's the right number,'' she says, then, as much to her colleague as to me, ''Listen to this.'' She calls again, on speakerphone. A recorded voice says: ''On vacation until Oct. 8'' -- the day after the scheduled election.
With that, I phone the secretary of state's office, describe the situation and listen as a helpful woman says, ''It sounds like this may be fraud.'' She faxes me S. Issa's papers as well as a lot of barely legible addresses of people who signed S. Issa's ballot application. I'm walking out the door to track them down when Mrs. S. Issa calls. ''Saad's at home now,'' she says. ''He'd be happy to talk to you.'' I tell her how improbable that sounds, given his remarkable reclusion. ''Oh,'' she says. ''He's just started his campaign.''
The man I meet the following Sunday, just days before the recall is thrown into turmoil by three Appeals Court judges, is round and jolly. A neatly trimmed white beard frames his red cheeks. If you described Saad Issa physically to the police, you'd start a manhunt for Santa Claus. If you described him simply by his manner, they'd forget about Santa and go looking for his biggest elf. He is shy and diffident and curious and thoughtful and completely obsessed with his three children, who, dressed for their soccer games, pour out of the car behind him.
Maybe because of all the thinking he has done about the long term -- his job is to consider the distant futures of California Highways 23 and 170 -- or perhaps because of the way life has changed for Muslims since 9/11, his mind turned to politics. ''Do you know how many hours people lose each day on the freeway? 315,000. Road capacity is up 30 percent, while the population is up 70 percent and drivers up 140 percent. This is a social issue. We don't realize if those two hours you spend in the car was spent with your kids, they would be much better kids.''
He explains that, as obliged as he felt to run for governor, he very nearly did not, for fear of his children's privacy. He explains further that when the campaign began, and he saw that minor candidates like himself weren't being taken seriously, he was mortified at the thought of being one of them. ''I saw the media was making fun of the process itself. I didn't see it that way. I think it takes guts to be one of the 135.'' Fear of ridicule, coupled with his lack of time, compelled him to lie low for a while. But when the coverage became more serious, he went into his boss and said he wanted to take all his vacation at once, to focus on his political aspirations. That's when I, for the 400th time, called again. ''I really appreciate you trying to find me,'' he says, then he laughs. ''Tell me, Michael, do you think I've lost my chances of winning?''
Saad Issa is now ready to run. Trouble is, he hasn't the first idea how to begin. ''I'm like everyone, an ordinary John Doe. A soccer dad. I know I'm not going to win. I just want to give one message to help the state of California.'' His message: Your society is falling apart. Your problem is not your money; it's your priorities. You have forgotten what is important in this short life. What is important is family. What is important is love and duty. You must learn to sacrifice your immediate wants for long-term happiness. He offers many specific proposals, but beneath them all is that simple gist.
To get his one message across, he has printed up a press release. He has exactly three campaign buttons -- S. Issa for Governor -- which he had made at a souvenir stand at a local mall. His first thought was that the only way he'd be taken seriously and take part in the debates was to have his name included in the polls. ''I'm asking myself: what should I do for publicity? What should I do to get in the polls? I have no money. I don't know anybody. A friend gave me this name: Zogby. He says he's an important pollster. I found his number on the Internet.'' So he called and left a message for Zogby. Just to talk to him, it's usually a hundred grand, but S. Issa got lucky. The very day he called, Zogby called him back. '''Darrell,' Zogby said, 'this is John.' I said: 'I'm sorry, this is not Darrell. This is Saad.' ''
S. Issa had something to say, but the idea of saying it frightened him. That first day when he went to pull his papers, when the lady told him he didn't need to write a check on the spot, he was sure if he didn't hand over the money, he would chicken out. ''I said to myself, if I don't submit that day, somebody or something will pull you out.'' He scribbled out a check and hurried away. Then came the question of how to list himself on the ballot. Political party? His wife was a noisy Democrat, but he'd always been a Republican. (He opposes abortion.)
Occupation? He owned his own contracting firm but found the hours interfered with his duties as a father. So five years ago he took his 9-to-5 job at Caltrans. When he nervously told his superiors at Caltrans of his intentions, they weren't happy, so he could hardly list himself as ''Caltrans employee.'' ''Businessman/engineer'' seemed about right.
Name? ''My name is Saad Issa,'' he says. ''That means in Arabic 'happy Jesus.''' He swells a bit at this statement. ''But so many Americans, when they see my name, they pronounce it 'sad.' Sad is a very bad feeling for me and for others. So I say to them, 'Can I use an abbreviation?' ''
S. Issa: Republican. Businessman/engineer.
I ask him about the home address I visited, the one with the creepy feel about it. ''That's an old, old address,'' he says. I ask him about the Syrian Embassy. He says he never had anything to do with it. He has been married to his wife, a U.S citizen born and raised in Marin County, for 21 years. He grew up in Kuwait and Paris and came to the U.S. in 1979 to study engineering at North Greenville College, in South Carolina. From there he went to U.S.C. . . .
Why am I so interested in the picayune details of his life, he wants to know, rather than his specific policy proposals? Why do I and others have all this bizarre information about him? (He has just had a call from The San Jose Mercury News asking him to confirm that he served in the Lebanese Army. He has never been to Lebanon.) I explain that the entire Republican Party and a lot of Democrats, too, assume he is a shill for Gray Davis. I tell him that the other Issa campaign has a file on him. The idea astonishes him. ''Why wouldn't they just contact me?'' he wonders. He likes Issa. ''I wish Issa was still running. I was very unhappy when he dropped out. I had this feeling in my heart he was forced out.'' He pauses. ''We make the system so corrupt that we are suspicious of everything.''
S. Issa likes the effects of the recall -- ''I think it's a wake-up call for California'' -- but he admits that he's not going to vote for it. He's not sure any of the candidates are qualified to replace Davis, with one possible exception. If it came to that, he says, he could do the job, because he is guided by the sincere desire to leave the world a better place than he found it. ''Money, it comes and goes,'' he says. ''Fame, it comes and goes. Health, it comes and goes. One day I will die. There will be a judgment. I'll be asked: 'Did you do something good?' And I'm going to say, 'I tried to run for governor.' ''
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