Posted on 02/26/2002 4:08:53 PM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
SACRAMENTO – The three major Republican candidates for governor yesterday assailed Gov. Gray Davis' latest effort to secure federal help to lower California electricity prices as the acrimonious race moved into a final hectic week of campaigning.
Republicans Richard Riordan, Bill Jones and Bill Simon denounced Davis for trying to shift the blame for the crisis to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to cover for his own mismanagement.
"Every time Gray Davis gets in a bind, he points a finger at someone. This is just his MO," said Jones, the current secretary of state. "Now he's going to FERC to make it look as if it's their problem."
Davis announced on Sunday that his administration would ask federal regulators to void the $43 billion long-term contracts to provide the state with extra negotiating power.
The governor, a Democrat, credits the contracts, negotiated at the depth of the electricity crisis, with helping prevent further rolling blackouts and lowering prices on the spot market from the record highs of a year ago.
But critics say the long-term contracts are far too expensive now that spot market prices have gone down sharply.
All three Republicans say they would renegotiate them to get a better deal for California.
Davis spokesman Steve Maviglio said the governor would like to do the same, but it's not that simple.
He said state officials have been trying for the past three months to get hard-nosed energy companies to change the contracts. Aid from the federal government, he said, is essential.
"These aren't normal business people. These people have been gouging the state for the past two years," he said. "They're not going to retreat now."
As the Republicans sprint toward next Tuesday's primary election, political operatives privy to public opinion polls conducted for various campaigns say the dynamics have shifted dramatically.
They say the race is a virtual dead heat between Simon, a venture capitalist and philanthropist making his first bid for elective office, and Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles who was once the prohibitive favorite for the nomination.
Simon, once a distant third, said his campaign's internal polls show he has surged into a 4-percentage-point lead.
Accompanied by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Simon made a four-city whirlwind tour yesterday beginning with a breakfast at the Westgate Hotel in San Diego. Jones and Riordan, meanwhile, held dueling news conferences outside the state Capitol.
The popular Giuliani, who as U.S. attorney for New York in the 1980s hired Simon as an assistant, said his old friend and protege possesses the leadership qualities voters are looking for in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I think this election . . . is going to come down in California, as it will all across the country, to people seeking leaders," Giuliani said. "I think the era of just focusing on one political party or the other, or one political ideology or the other, is over with.
"We understand that we could be facing very difficult crises, some of which we may not even know, but we just have to imagine. So ultimately, it's going to be our burden to find the very best leader to be governor of California."
The sudden tightness in the race is reflected in its growing rancor. Both Riordan and Jones have been hammering Simon's inconsistent voting history. There is no record of him having voted in any primary election since he moved to California in 1990.
Riordan, in a new campaign television advertisement, yesterday took aim at Simon's claim to be the "real Republican." The ad notes that Simon was registered as an independent when he lived in New York and didn't register to vote at all when he lived in New Jersey in the 1980s.
Giuliani, after a fund-raising luncheon in Newport Beach, said he didn't think Simon's spotty voting history was much of an issue.
"It's not unlike most voters who probably don't spend their entire life fixated on politics, but have a whole other life to live," he said.
I'm glad to see that to this point, the GOP candidates haven't been beating up on each other as much as they've been beating up on Davis.
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Davis assailed on energy policy!
This assumed that Davis had an energy policy. He never had an energy policy except to get other states to pay for the real cost of our electricity.
In an archery contest, one usually aims at the largest target.
The bull's eye on Doofus' butt is big as Yosemite.
Nothing gentle is planned. Extortion, sure.
I am doing a polite inquiry first, just for informational purposes. If necessary, I'll do something unsavory.
I have a passion for state politics, because that's where the rubber meets the road. But frankly, we've won the battle in Texas and it's merely a case of defending the fort. Not so in my native state of California.
This is my favorite quote out of the article! Mavgiglo thinks of business people as nothing but an altruistic blessing for government to brutalize at will by regulating and reneging on contracts... That idiots in government must be forgiven if they make a mistake with the people's money because afterall, their intentions were good.
To these goo goo goofs, the only purpose for them to be in government is to "look good!" That's all that matters and that government officials should be assumed to be there "for the good of all" and ALWAYS be above reproach... especially if they're Demonicrats!!! What a "pant-load!"
I know it's what they think, because I've been there with some of them in endless meetings about mostly nonsense and heard them drone on and on about it when out of earshot of the public or the press.
Mavgiglo and Davis are "normal" for a couple of numb-nuts!!!
I do have a twisted enough sense of humor to think that it was funny prank, though.
But it certainly has caused a lot of people to wonder just like you have.
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