Instead I found a chipper, focused and intelligent fellow brimming with confidence despite being 30 points behind in the polls. I knew only a little about him. He was a pro-life Catholic and former prosecutor, a successful investor and son of the former Nixon-Ford Treasury secretary. After talking to Simon and his aides for a while, I decided that he was indeed a cultural conservative, but one with a laid-back Left Coast manner: the candidate as dorm adviser, but one who would lecture you, rather than turn you in after curfew.
Simon and his tiny circle of aides told me that he was beginning to make his move, thanks to two TV ads. One was aired by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis’s campaign, attacking Riordan for a murky record on abortion. The other was by Simon, featuring an endorsement from his former employer—a certain former U.S. attorney named Rudy Guiliani of New York. “We’re going to win this race,” one aide said.
Now, with only a few days left before the GOP’s March 5 primary, Simon has roared past Riordan in the latest polls and now leads him by 6 points. It ain’t over till it’s over, of course, but the president—and his political right hand, Karl Rove—are facing the possibility of a humiliating loss, though, ironically, one that could help Bush by the time the fall election comes around.
Unofficially, Bush launched the 2002 campaign season the other day, flying to North Carolina to headline a fund-raiser for Elizabeth Dole, who briefly ran against him for the GOP presidential nomination. But while the president was down South, political insiders were focused on a race 3,000 miles away, in California.
As always, California is crucial: the Big Enchilada of presidential politics and American life. You can run the country without winning the Golden State, but it’s tough. Republicans yearn for the days of yore, when Ronald Reagan was king of the state, before Bill Clinton wooed and won it for Democrats. These days, in presidential politics, it’s the Democrats’ electoral fortress: Al Gore in 2000 was able to take this mega of all megastates for granted and funnel resources to other places.
Inside the White House, Rove is obsessed with only one thing: making sure that Bush Two in 2004 doesn’t suffer the loss that befell Bush One in 1992. As he studies the 2004 chessboard, Rove knows that to maximize the GOP’s financial advantage, he has to spread the Democrats’ defenses. And that, in turn, means forcing them to spend a ton of money and candidate time protecting the Golden State.
How? By electing a Republican governor again. And how best to do that? In the Rovian view, by moving to the middle, softening the sharp edges of a state party that seemed harsh and anti-Hispanic under the leadership of former governor Pete Wilson.
And who would lead the California GOP into the promised land called The Middle? Last fall, on the advice of their California friends Gerry Parsky and Brad Freeman, Rove and Bush settled on the former mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Riordan, a moderate Republican hard-to-categorize, was highly popular as mayor. Independently wealthy, he is pro-gun-control, and pro-choice, but, as a successful businessman, a believer in markets and bottom lines. Moreover, he is a guy with an attractive penchant for speaking his mind.
It was a shrewd move, perhaps, but an arrogant one—and, in retrospect, uncharacteristically sloppy. Primary voters have a way of choosing their own candidates, and aren’t necessarily willing to follow the orders of a president, even one as popular as Bush, especially in a “local” race. The early support for Riordan—anathema to conservatives—seems to have united what was left of the right in California … for Simon.
The White House may have ignored Simon out of concern for the third candidate in the race, Secretary of State Bill Jones, who is an ally of Bush’s nemesis in the GOP, Sen. John McCain. Turns out that Jones wasn’t the one they should have been worried about.
Nor did the Bush-Rove team count on the aggressive, early involvement of Davis in the GOP race. Riordan, on paper and at first, seemed by far the strongest GOP contender, potentially able to draw Democrats, Hispanics and pro-choice women to the cause. Recognizing that, Davis’s shrewd handler, Garry South, designed an ad campaign aimed at raising questions about Riordan.
The anti-Riordan abortion spot accused him of being a closet pro-lifer. In theory, that might have made the former mayor seem more attractive to GOP conservatives. But it had other effects instead, California political strategists told me this week. It gave pause to pro-choice Republicans who might have wanted to turn out for him. More generally, it raised questions about Riordan’s identity across the board. “That ad changed the whole dynamic,” said Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant who isn’t in the Davis camp. “It made everybody stop and say ‘Wait a minute, who is this guy?’”
Riordan, it turns out, had other vulnerabilities—at least in a faithfuls-only GOP primary. He had donated serious money to Democratic candidates over the years. A man who prides himself on a positive approach to politics and life, Riordan had said plenty of nice things about Simon—including that his foe would make a good governor—which made Riordan look like just another back-stabbing politician when he “went negative” on Simon late in the campaign. But, at least in the eyes of conservatives, the former mayor had committed one truly unpardonable sin: he once had praised Bill Clinton, and lavishly—and said that he wasn’t always brimming with joy to be a Republican. Bipartisanship is a wonderful thing, just not in a GOP primary in which Democrats can’t vote.
There was still time for Riordan to right himself in the final days. But the primary is expected to be a low-turnout affair in which only the most motivated show up—a situation that would favor Simon. And South and Davis might want to be careful what they wish for. If Simon wins, he’ll have the full if belated backing of a popular president, and Simon, as a genial neophyte with no official record to defend, may be a better contrast to Davis, a lifelong politician. Simon also will have the continued support of the most popular figure in America these days—not Bush, but Rudy.
So even if Bush and Rove pick the wrong horse, they may wind up with a winning ticket.
