Posts Tagged ‘Pete Wilson’

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Calbuzz Interview: How Poizner Courts Conservatives

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

stevepoiznerSteve Poizner faces two key challenges in seeking the Republican nomination for governor: appeasing the GOP’s social conservative mullahs while convincing its anti-government jihadists his economic views fit more with their absolutist ideology than Meg Whitman’s.

An erstwhile Silicon Valley moderate, Poizner now positions himself as an Arthur Laffer-like disciple of economic growth through tax cuts and roll-backs in regulation, while finessing his pro-choice stance on abortion for the pro-life, cultural right-wing of his party.

The 52-year old Insurance Commissioner also has joined the crusade for a part-time legislature, a move that recalls how former Gov. Pete Wilson assuaged conservatives with his embrace of term limits in the 1990 gubernatorial race. All the while, Poizner keeps pounding chief rival Whitman, portraying her as a Schwarzenegger-like, neophyte squish whose vow  to run government like a business is no match for the Democrat-dominated Legislature.

“This is going to come down between Meg Whitman and me,” Poizner told Calbuzz in a sit-down interview, “(Voters) don’t want a career politician for sure, but they also don’t want a rookie, and I really do think that voters understand that politics is different from running a company.

“Being in a board room, I can just tell you, is different. There’s no hiring, no firing, no stock options (in government). The tools are different,” he added. “Between Meg and me, only one of us…has a track record.”

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First exchange: For the first time, Poizner and Whitman in recent days have exchanged sharp fire in an effort to paint the other as too liberal to represent the hard-line conservatives who dominate the Republican primary electorate.

Whitman struck first, distributing a video of Poizner’s 2004 Assembly campaign, when he advocated early release of some state prisoners, in sharp contrast to the tough stance he has taken against such a policy in the governor’s race. At the same time, Steve Harmon of the Contra Costa Times reported how Poizner’s “past support of taxes could haunt him” in the primary, detailing his record of backing a measure that made it easier to raise taxes for schools, among other past fiscal positions anathema to the GOP right-wing.

The attacks exposed Poizner’s vulnerabilities among conservative voters, as John Wildermuth showed in an analysis called “Poizner apologizes for being a moderate.”

megonvanyoutubePoizner quickly countered Whitman’s attack with a You Tube video that sent the message his rival is a liberal, cultural elitist; it featured Whitman singing the praises of Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs guru. Jones resigned over the weekend under conservative pressure, following disclosures of portions of his leftist record that included diatribes against Republicans and claims that the Bush administration was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

“This is an epic battle,” Poizner said of his campaign. “This election will be the most important election in the country in 2010, maybe the most important gubernatorial race in California history, given the mess that we’re in.”

The interview: Cautious and wary, Poizner recently sat down with Calbuzz to talk about the race, his platform and the mess in California. Sitting in an outdoor cafe, he munched from a bag of potato chips after pushing away the nastiest-looking egg salad sandwich in the history of the world, which an aide had bought for him to eat during the late afternoon interview, after a day of campaigning.

“You had to get egg salad,” he said. “You think there’s anything more difficult I could possibly eat?

Here are some weed-whacking excerpts from the interview

ECONOMIC ISSUES

Taxes: “If you want to raise tax revenue the best way to do that is by reducing tax rates.”

“We are looking at broad-based, across-the-board tax decreases to make California more competitive, job-wise. In the next few weeks, we will put out a detailed proposal that will go into specifics of which taxes, how much. We’re going to combine some of our ideas about tax decreases with some reforms of the regulatory system as well. It’s really going to be a jobs proposal, jobs package.

“I went to one of those meetings (Commission on the 21st Century Economy) and, of course, there’s no consensus in that group…

“The (business net receipts) tax has the feel of the sales tax. The thing that worries me…is that people will perceive a major tax cut just happened – they won’t see the impact of the business value-added tax because it will be built into the price of the product. I’m afraid that politicians will want to ratchet up the sales tax over time because people will think it’s so low…

“I oppose a split roll (property tax) and a carbon tax. This is not the time to be adding new taxes.”

EDUCATION

Cuts in education: “I’m very concerned that we’re under-investing in education but the answer is not to increase taxes, because then you get into this accelerated death spiral. It’s going to be painful for the next year or two or three in order to get out of the mess we’re in, there’s going to be pain…

“I support higher tax revenues through lower tax rates and I want to invest these higher tax revenues in higher education and K-12…

“People from universities in other states are creating raiding parties of the UC system, our professors are going to get pilfered left and right here.”

Teachers unions: “(Teachers) are the ones that told me there’s so much money that never makes to the classroom. There are 600,000 people who work in K-12 and over half of them aren’t in the classroom…

“I want to empower teachers. People ask me this all the time – you’re a Republican, how are you going to deal with the unions? My education reform platform is going to appeal to teachers. There’s 300,000 members of the CTA and I’m going to communicate with all of them…

“There are 5,000 schools that report to 1,000 schools districts that report to 58 county boards of education that report … to a whole mixture of…bureaucracy and overlap…We’ve got to totally flatten that out.”

Dysfunctional state-schools financing: “We have to fix that.”

THE CAMPAIGNpoizner

Platform: “How I run for governor is going to be critical to my strategy. I’ll be issuing more and more details – I’m going to be very specific. I will drive my political consultants nuts. Political consultants don’t want you to be specific – ‘don’t let them pin you down.’ But that’s not the way I’m going to be running this campaign.”

“Some of my TV advertising may say the following – ‘please do not vote for me unless you agree with me’…I’m hoping I get elected by a landslide.”

Part-time legislature: “From 1850 to 1967, California had a part-time legislature. I want people who have been successful in their community and then they’re sent to the Legislature to make wise decisions…I want to figure out a way to attract a different kind of person.”

Gov. Schwarzenegger: “I think (he’s) been scattered. Sometimes he’s working in this direction, sometimes he’s working in that direction. I really do admire that he’s gotten the reform movement started…but he doesn’t have necessarily my same devotion to a set of core principles.”

Jerry Brown: “I look forward to running against Jerry Brown. He’ll be a tough, formidable candidate – he’s crafty, it will be a tight campaign. He is the epitome of someone who has never had any experience whatsoever except in politics and I bet you the majority of voters are going to say ‘thank you but it’s time to retire.”’

Tom Campbell: “Tom Campbell…is a great person, but he’s advocating tax increases – he’s running in the wrong primary. He’s not going to get into double digits, he’s not going to be the Republican nominee.”

Meg Whitman: “This is going to come down to between Meg Whitman and me and when people dig in they’re going to realize that only one of us has actually started companies from scratch. The other one is a large company marketing executive – that’s a difference…Only one of us has actually run for office and won. I’m the only Republican to get elected in a regularly scheduled election since 1994…The difference is track record.”

SOCIAL ISSUES

Abortion rights: “I’m pro-choice but I really do feel quite passionate about being against abortions. I want to drive the number of abortions down to as close to zero as possible.

“I just don’t think you can or should outlaw abortion – I mean that’s just not going to happen, wrong step. I’m in favor of outlawing late term abortion…I support parental notification, I support some logical steps that put some reasonable restrictions on abortions and most importantly I’m in favor of bold education programs for teenagers.”

Gay rights: “I don’t support gay marriage (and I support) Prop. 8. I do support civil unions and domestic partnerships.”

Social conservatives: “I’m finding that a lot of very conservative social conservative types they understand that my top priority is family values. There’s nothing more important than making sure that families can make ends meet…

“So we don’t completely agree on the social issues but we’re not 100 miles apart. On fiscal issues we’re 100% in lock step.”

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Education, California Governor's Race, California Politics, California State Budget, Jerry Brown, Meg Whitman, Negative Campaigning, Steve Poizner, Tom Campbell | 11 Comments »

Why Indie Voters Don’t Make California Purple

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Purple2In recent years, some pollsters, pundits and consultants have pointed to declines in partisan voter registration, along with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s two elections, to question California’s reputation as a left-leaning “blue state” and to argue that it is in fact a post-partisan “purple state.”

Exhibit A, for the post-partisan advocates, is the voter roll: Democratic registration stands at 45%, down 12% since 1978; Republican registration is 31%, down 3%, and independents now represent 20% of the voters, up 12%. These data, it is argued, prove that partisanship is waning and California is evolving into a bastion of independence.

Here at the Calbuzz Repository of Analysis and Policy, we’ve never bought the neo-kumbaya thesis. It’s long been our view that while political parties, like other large institutions –- corporations, unions, metro newspapers, etc. –- have become atomized and decentralized in the modern era, political behavior is pretty much like it’s always been.

And the Field Poll’s release of a new study of 30 years of voting patterns last week offers further evidence that advocates for the post-partisan theory  misread our history and attitudes. While Field’s data confirm the long-term trend of voters increasingly bypassing both parties to register as independent declines-to-state, their analysis also shows that these independents reliably think and vote like Democrats most of the time.

Consider, for example, voter attitudes on same-sex marriage – one of the most incendiary issues in California politics. Back in 1977, Democrats were opposed 29-63%, Republicans were opposed 30-65% and independents and others were opposed 38-55%. Three decades later – in 2009 – Republicans have hardened their opposition to 23-68%. But Democrats have flipped their position to 64-30% in favor and so have independents — to 57-38% in favor.

Likewise on abortion rights, another divisive issue. Back in 1975, a narrow majority of California voters approved of abortion rights, with Republicans in favor 50-44%, Democrats at 52-43% and independents at 59-34%. By 2006, 70% of voters overall favored abortion rights and the big movement came among Democrats, now 82-10% on the issue and independents at 73-14%. Republicans’ attitude on the issue moved only slightly, to 55-40% in favor.

As Mark DiCamillo and Merv Field explained in the Field Poll release, public attitudes about death and taxes haven’t moved much, but on social issues like same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia,  “California voters, especially Democrats, have become more socially tolerant” over the past three decades. What’s important in the numbers is that independents – while there are more of them – function for all intents and purposes as if they were unregistered Democrats.

The purple state thesis was stated perhaps most forcefully –- and mistakenly — by GOP consultant and former Schwarzenegger communications director Adam Mendelsohn during last year’s presidential elections, when he predicted in September that John McCain was “exactly the kind of Republican” who would be competitive amid the purple hues of the Golden State.

“Certain Republicans are able to win in California and when you have a Republican , like John McCain who has a proven track record of reaching out to independents, reaching out to disaffected Democrats, this is something he built a career on doing. It’s exactly the kind of Republican who poses a real opportunity for us in California,” Mendelsohn told Fox News in September, adding that “California (is) not a red state, or a blue state, but a purple state.”

Others, like Dave Lesher and Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California have made the case more subtly, arguing that because California’s independents combine strains of social liberals and fiscal conservatives, “their vote is up for grabs.”

“Independents’ attitudes, in contrast to that of Democrats and Republicans, don’t fit neatly into traditional liberal and conservative camps,” the two wrote in a LAT op-ed in 2006, adding that this made for “a surprising degree of uncertainty and volatility.”

In fact, it hasn’t. The analysis of fiscal conservatism is based on a single issue: the long-standing strong support of Proposition 13 by voters of every ideological stripe. But by almost any other measure, the notion that independents have their finger to the wind in every election cycle is, we think, not right.

For starters, the rise of independent registration has not been accompanied by the surfacing of any independent political movement. Setting aside the Superintendent of Public Instruction (a nominally non-partisan office) no one has been elected to a statewide office without partisan identification. Beyond that, independents have sided with Democrats most of the time.

– Democrats have won the state in five of the eight presidential elections since 1978 and have made a clean sweep since 1992, when the move towards independent voters started gaining steam. (And no candidate who opposes abortion rights, on which independents have moved left, has won at the top of the ticket, i.e. for president, governor or senator, since George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis here in 1988.)

– Democrats have dominated every single Legislative session except for the anamolus “Contract with America” election of 1994, when Republicans briefly held a majority.

– Democrats have controlled most of the statewide constitutional offices in the last 30 years, buoyed by independent backing.

The purple staters’ best case is the history of the governor’s office which, since Jerry Brown’s re-election in 1978, has been won only twice by a Democrat, who was tossed out before finishing his second term.

But even in the case of the governor, California independents –- with their Democratic-leaning tendencies on social issues and their centrist outlook on fiscal issues –- have for two decades only rewarded the GOP when they have fielded relative moderates like Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  When the GOP has tried to win statewide with one of their red-meat candidates (see: Dan Lungren, 38%, and Bill Simon, 43%) they have been crushed by their inability to win independents.

It is undeniably true that voters are increasingly declining to declare themselves either Democrat or Republican when they register to vote. But scratch an independent in California and you find a voter who leans Democratic.

If the Republicans were to nominate a fiscally moderate, pro-choice, pro-environment candidate who is not seen as virulently anti-immigrant or anti-gay, that candidate might well attract enough independents (and Democrats) to win at the top of the ticket. But it’s unclear that such a candidate can win a Republican primary without first lurching so far to the right as to be poisoned in a general election (recall that Schwarzenegger never had to run in a contested primary, and that Wilson first won nomination after being drafted from the U.S. Senate by GOP leaders as the party’s best hope of ensuring a competitive reapportionment).

The problem with confusing independent voter registration with independent voting behavior is that it leads to the kind of thinking Schwarzenegger’s former communications director engaged in when he told the SF Chronicle in 2008:  “John McCain will give a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama a serious run in any purple state like California.”

Calbuzz sez: Purple staters can argue that ’til they’re blue in the face, but they’ll still end up red-faced with embarrassment.

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Democratic Party, California Politics, California Republican Party | 6 Comments »

Newsom Hunkers Down: Jaye Books, South Rises

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

ericjaye2When Calbuzz heard from the enterprising Phil Matier and Andy Ross that Eric Jaye, Gavin Newsom’s longtime senior political adviser, was quitting his Prince’s campaign for governor because of “a fundamental difference” (his words) with strategist Garry South, we weren’t bowled over with surprise.

It’s not that South is a control freak; in fact, he’s perfectly capable of working collaboratively and cooperatively with campaign managers and other candidate handlers.

But Jaye to date in the campaign had Newsom heavily focused on using and trumpeting his use of online social network tools, both for organizing and for fundraising and South  is simply not, by nature,  a Twitter-Facebook-kind of guy.gary_south

The last political consultant to elect a Democrat governor of the state, the Duke of Darkness is a bare-knuckles, in-your-face, shoe-leather, hand-to-hand combat veteran who has two main tasks: 1) Get his candidate to raise a ship load of money and 2) Needle, badger and tweak primary rival Jerry Brown at every turn.

Jaye and South were both doing their best to handle the split-up professionally, and with as little inside vitriol splashing on Newsom as possible. We tried to bait South into talking but he refused to engage.

But as Calbuzz sees it, Newsom’s decision to dump the guy who’s been with him from the beginning of his career, in favor of the guy who has actually won a tough Democratic primary and two governor’s races –- not to mention taking out number of millionaire opponents — suggests Newsom is choosing to forego the all-tweet-all-the-time strategy in favor of a little throwback hardball.

As we noted July 2 , while Brown is sitting on more than $7 million (without actually announcing his candidacy), Newsom has raised just $2.8 million and has only $1.1 million in the bank, despite his legions of Twitter and Facebook fans.

Jaye apparently felt that Newsom could use his online profile to pull an Obama, who shattered all known fundraising records in his presidential bid with a major assist from the web. Fair enough, but that notion ignores the fact that before he was Lord of the Internets, Obama was an old school Chicago pol, with guys like David Axelrod locking him up to dial for dollars and running him through countless fundraisers so that in the year before the election he outraised Hillary Clinton the old fashioned way.

That’s what Newsom must to do to become more than a San Francisco boutique candidate. Brown’s long record and saturation name ID, for better or worse, presents a formidable obstacle for a rookie candidate, and Newsom needs to find a way to gain a financial and tactical edge on General Jerry.

(Aside: We were reminded of the decision made by former Gov. Pete Wilson in September 1995 when he picked Craig Fuller, an old Bush Sr. hand, to manage his presidential campaign over George Gorton, his friend and campaign strategist for 25 years. Gorton had never run a national campaign.)

Democratic primaries are all about capturing the party’s left-wing, and over at Calitics, our liberal friends fretted that losing Jaye, with his back-to-the-roots connection to Newsom and his progressive politics, is worrisome for the San Francisco mayor’s chances.

“South has a history with the radical moderates over at the Democratic Leadership Council, and that’s how he won with Davis,” wrote the estimable Brian Leubitz. “He talked ToughOnCrime ™, business, and all that jive. And it won him the 1998 election.

“But California is in a very different place today than it was then. If Garry South is going to be running Newsom’s campaign, he’ll have to update his strategy. It didn’t work with Steve Westly, and it won’t fare much better now.”

This is fuzzy thinking. Newsom’s first challenge is to beat Brown in a Democratic primary. So why in that context, would South even try to position Newsom to the right of the Attorney General?

Newsom and South are going to have to run a two track campaign: extolling the alleged wonders of San Francisco while ripping Brown’s record — as a governor, mayor, attorney general, state party chairman and the other 173 offices he’s held –- up one side and down the other. This is what South knows how to do, and is very, very good at. And it’s the pathway that Newsom has now chosen as his longtime friend and adviser leaves the field.

– By Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine

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Posted in California Democratic Party, California Governor's Race, California Politics, Campaign Contributions, Campaign Finance, Gavin Newsom, Jerry Brown | 6 Comments »

Why California “Leaders” Can’t Make a Deal

Monday, July 6th, 2009

kittenThe constitutional requirement for a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to pass a budget is clearly the single most important reason why the Capitol is in a state of near-permanent political gridlock. But the two-thirds rule has been around since the New Deal and budgets used to get passed. So what’s the hang-up?

Power: Nobody’s got it.

The governor and the Legislature fulminate and flounder simply because no one in the Capitol in 2009 has the stature, clout or influence to cut a deal like Ronnie and Jesse or Pete and Willie once did.

Strip away all the policy wonkery, weed whacking and egghead analysis  and you find that a combination of term limits and politically-safe, gerrymandered legislative seats has created a political atmosphere in which every legislator is an army of one – and none of them fears the governor, the speaker or any other leader in the Legislature.

mousey“It’s difficult to deliver anything when every member of the legislature is looking over their shoulder,” says Steve Maviglio, former chief spokesman for the Assembly Speaker’s Office and before that for Gov. Gray Davis. “They’re worried about what they’re going to run for and who’s running against them – and that’s within their own caucus. Sometimes, they’re preparing to run against their own seatmates.”

Contrast this year’s with the budget meltdown of 1992, the last time California issued IOUs. Although many of the same conditions applied, the big difference was that both Gov. Pete Wilson and Speaker Willie Brown wielded enough political authority to sit down in a room and cut a deal: Wilson took responsibility for rounding up Republican votes for tax increases and Brown for putting a lid on Democratic caterwauling over program cuts.

Lou Cannon, the Ronald Reagan biographer who covered the Gipper when he was in Sacramento for the San Jose Mercury News, recalls that Reagan and Speaker Bob Moretti negotiated “for 10 straight days” over a budget that eventually included the largest tax increase for any state in history at that time.

Today, says Cannon, “There’s an awful lot of posturing and not much negotiating…these guys are negotiating in the newspapers, the ones that are left anyway, and it doesn’t seem like a real negotiation.”

We have the spectacle of a girlie man governor who flaps his arms and threatens to hold his breath until he turns blue but whom majority Democrats simply cannot trust or count on to deliver a single Republican vote for a deal to which he agrees.

“There’s a massive leadership void,” says one senior Capitol insider. “(Speaker Karen) Bass does everything by consensus. (Senate President Darrell) Steinberg is a rookie and Schwarzenegger can’t deliver any Republican votes and he’s lost interest, if he ever had any.”

Bass, a short-timer like every other speaker since term limits, has truncated authority as an enforcer, as was shown when Assemblyman Juan Arambula of Fresno recently peeled off and went his own way. Add to that the endless series of special elections that leave her a vote or two shy of her total and she lacks standing.

In the Senate, Steinberg has been indefatigable in playing the statesman, but all for naught. Although he’s held his troops together, the Reps simply thumb their noses at him, knowing that their political survival depends, not on results, but simply on the most right-wing stances, which they can sell to win partisan primaries in partisan districts.

The budget becomes a kind of Political World of Warcraft, with taxes on business and slashes to programs for poor people as stand-ins for the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague.

Term limits that hobble political leadership and gerrymandered districts that reward the wing nuts of their respective parties have made compromise nearly impossible.

“The combination of term limits and the lopsided redistricting have made these guys even more remote from the people and their constituents,” says Cannon. “All legislators live in some kind of parallel universe, but these people live in another galaxy.”

A galaxy where the center cannot hold.

– By Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine

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Posted in Arnold Schwarzenegger, California Constitution, California Politics, California State Budget, Darrell Steinberg, Karen Bass | 9 Comments »

GOP Media Guru: Reeps Should Salute Sotomayor

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

sippledon1Don Sipple, a savvy Republican filmmaker, was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s media consultant in the 2003 recall campaign for governor. In 1994, he created the controversial “They Keep Coming” anti-immigration television ad for Pete Wilson’s re-election campaign for governor.

By Don Sipple
Special to Calbuzz

Among the self evident truths we are dealing with this week is the fact that Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed and elevated to Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the national GOP is still in the wilderness after two successive drubbings at the polls.

In nominating Sotomayor, President Obama has once again exhibited his gift for deft political maneuvering while Congressional Republicans continue to demonstrate why they are not only tone deaf, but have a death wish to boot.

soniasotomayorIn spite of representing a border state and being a co-sponsor of immigration reform legislation, Sen. John McCain garnered only 31 % of Latino voters in 2008. Women gave him just 43% of their votes. It’s difficult to see how the GOP benefits — even in the slightest — by opposing Judge Sotomayor. Instead they should celebrate her, praise Ms. Sotomayor’s personal narrative and move to have her confirmed by acclamation.

What the national GOP must learn is that while it is the duty of the opposition party to oppose, they must do so selectively and choose wisely the ground on which to attack.

But instead of picking their spots with a strategic purpose in mind, the GOP substitutes tactics for strategy and carps about everything. They have yet to land a blow on the new president.

Republicans need to understand that this is 2009. The world has changed, the electorate has changed and attitudes have changed. In the minds of voters, posturing and posing is no substitute for problem solving. And voters are well aware that there are plenty of problems begging for solutions.

Fifteen years ago, the costs of providing services to California’s then 2.5 million illegal immigrants was putting pressure on the state’s treasury, already reeling from declining revenues due to a deep recession. Thus a legitimate public policy debate ensued regarding the federal government’s failure to secure the border and to reimburse California and other states for costs borne by those states.

Certainly there were political risks in engaging on this issue back then. But Gov. Pete Wilson was re-elected comfortably in 1994, receiving 38% of Latino votes, even though today those who rewrite history believe his leadership on the issue of illegal immigration was a death knell to Republicans among Latino voters in California.

When there is an honest pubic policy disagreement, intelligently debated, it is unlikely there will be lasting political damage. Recently, the subject of drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants has stirred passions on both sides, but to my knowledge it has not caused a wholesale revolt among Latino voters. In fact, during the recall election of 2003, public polling showed over 60% of Latino voters in California opposed to drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants.

Republicans need to recognize and respect the rise of Latinos as a potent political force in the nation and several fast-growing states. By nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the highest court in the land, President Obama has made her a symbol of Hispanic pride and culture.

The GOP would be wise to salute her instead of sliming her.

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Posted in California Economy, California Politics, California State Budget, Illegal Immigration | 1 Comment »

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