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Posted on 03/20/2002 3:56:25 PM PST by DadOf3
In light of the recent attention Governor Davis has been recieving over his questionable sanity and obvious megalomania, I thought I'd post this article from last October. Not sure if it ever ran here on FR.
(mention of the now irrelevant Riordan has been clipped for brevity.)
Fear of Flying
The governor dropped a plan to acquire a private jet after the terrorist attacks, but it was just one of his gaffes.
BY JILL STEWART
The ex-mayor's running strong, and he hasn't even announced.
Watching Governor Gray Davis try to recover from numerous political pratfalls this past month left me musing over what he's done to make me so enjoy his misfortunes, especially since I find his centrist politics rather comforting.
The thing is, I've given up supporting political leaders based on ideology, because the worst sort of crumb-bums vote the "right" way, while some truly sharp and decent people are constantly backing things I oppose. My political philosophy has evolved into caring about who a political leader is under the skin, not which ideology he or she espouses.
I realize now that I am enjoying the indignities Governor Davis has suffered these past several days because he is two-faced. He cannot be trusted. He has an agenda, but it's not the one he places on the table for you to read.
I don't care for that in a leader, do you?
My knowledge of Davis goes back to a few years ago, when a Davis staffer told me how Davis used state employees and state offices to conduct his campaigns for state controller and then for governor. Then I interviewed another staffer, a secretary of his while he was controller. A year or so previously, she had physically broken down and ended up hospitalized with a stress-induced disorder after Davis pushed her out of his way one day during a fit of pique.
Behind closed doors, if things go wrong, Davis can be a trash-talking rage machine. He throws items such as phones and ashtrays. He once grabbed and shook an employee until that person's teeth chattered, according to my off-the-record interview with the employee.
But do we really have to have this closet bastard as our fakey, smiling governor for another four years?
You can imagine my glee when things recently started to implode around Davis, who has spent three years raising money for next year's gubernatorial race.
First, the media acquired a threatening letter Davis sent to respected community leaders and business people, warning that if they gave any campaign funds to his new arch rival, Dick Riordan, Davis would find out about it.
Not a good message in this new era of bad guys and megalomaniacs. But it was typical meat cleaver-wielding by Davis' manipulative and unpleasant chief political adviser, Garry South.
Then, somebody leaked the news that Davis intended to buy or lease a luxurious private jet for $1 million a year in taxpayer money because he wasn't safe on California's airlines. You could hear that Davis pratfall ring out at every half-empty California airport.
Here was the governor of California, letting us peons fly on airplanes he felt could blow up at any moment.
In an artful move to distract the media from this embarrassing revelation, Davis' people announced that Davis was reconsidering the private jet because the contract to acquire it hadn't been advertised for competitive bids. To further distance Davis from the brouhaha, the chief of the California Highway Patrol, Dwight "Spike" Helmick, was trotted out to say the private jet was his idea.
The media sheep immediately got distracted writing the "competitive bid story." But (hee hee) some of us did not get distracted. The real story is that, in his private world -- the one where he throws ashtrays, cusses like a whore, shakes women by the shoulders and rages over his perceived enemies -- Gray Davis believes he is a superior being.
Last week, Davis finally dropped the plan for the private jet and released a pathetic written statement in which he urged Californians back into the air. "Let's all show support for the proud employees of our nation's airlines," Davis stated wanly.
A little late for that, isn't it, oh gutless wonder?
[clip]
Davis is weakened even as he faces three strong Republican challengers. This gubernatorial race will be incredibly negative, largely because Davis won't control his evil twin, Garry South, the most underhanded campaign strategist in California. South's below-the-belt approach won't go unanswered this time.
South will do anything to leave a mark on an opponent. During Davis' first run for governor, South called me up while I was a guest on Larry Elder's talk show on 790 KABC, and accused me of writing negative stories about Gray Davis because I was involved "in a conspiracy with a group of people." On the air, I got a good chuckle explaining to the furious South that conspiracies involve secrets -- and I was hardly leaving any stone unturned in my coverage in New Times.
But it was South's incredibly distasteful and bigoted attacks on actor Arnold Schwarzenegger that illustrate how really icky these two powerful men are under the skin.
Some months ago, South got wind of a rumor that Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was considering a run against Davis for governor. To my amazement, on official campaign stationery sanctioned by Davis, South launched a bizarre character assassination of Schwarzenegger that made my skin crawl.
In a series of histrionic faxes to reporters, including me, South quoted tabloid reports that the actor was a sexual harasser who behaved outrageously in public toward women he did not know. In the faxes, South taunted him for his Austrian accent, calling him AHR-NOLD.
It was dumbfounding to see the governor's staff busily promoting bigotry and gossip even as they let Davis so badly mishandle California's growing energy crisis.
Jill Eisenstadt, Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman, tells me, "We just thought it was a really incredibly sad state of affairs that they resorted to that kind of immaturity and rumor-spreading, and stooped to tabloid journalism. There are so many important things going on in the state of California that his staff should have been dealing with instead."
Because of South and Davis, the other candidates cannot afford to be polite. Secretary of State Jones has already shown he is no Milquetoast, by whacking Davis with revelations that some of the state energy traders that Davis hired owned stock in energy companies they may have cut deals with.
I suspect we are going to see massive blowback onto Gray Davis created by the tone that he has set. Since the day he was elected, Davis has been shamefully devoted to protecting his own butt. But it may turn out he should have been watching his back instead.
REgards
alfa6 ;>}
It really is funny. Of course it's also hindsight, but I now have no doubt that Davis would have pulverized Riordan in a November matchup, given the pathetic quality of the campaign Riordan ran for the GOP nomination and all the weaknesses it revealed. I also think it likely that Riordan would have squeaked through to victory in the GOP primary had Davis not massively intervened.
Of course this doesn't mean that Simon will win in November, it just means that in hindsight Davis knocked off the weaker opponent.
When I read articles like this describing Davis' questionable mental stability, and reflect on his recent interview with the San Diego Union Tribune editorial board, I can anticipate some very interesting possibilities during the coming campaign. More than most politicians, Gray Davis' entire world is bound up in the necessity of getting elected and being perceived as someone important. If the polls show him in serious trouble as the November election nears, he could explode or panic or make major self-destructive errors out of sheer terror at the thought of being defeated and dethroned.
Hassidic Jews??
Nice idea. If the price does not hit $3, he can say he saved us. If the price does hit $3, he can say he tried but the bad guys (whomever) got in the way.
This guy has all the charm of Bill Clinton at his best. Just a born leader of men. Brings up visions of the brave Captain Davis, beating off the hordes of Godless monolithic communism in the rice paddies of Vietnam.
Come to think if it, has anybody seen his DD214?
calgov2002:
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SIMON THE SANE ONE
SIMON = SANITY
Lemme see. Party registration favors Democrats. The media is liberal. And the Latinos were put out when we tried a last ditch effort to defend the border called Prop 187. Davis is a vicious child and runs vicious negative ads. Need any more reasons?
Hold your hat, because you will find it even harder to understand when he is re-elected in November. And don't blame me; I'll be out stumping for Simon.
Do you hear me? They're MINE! I think I deserve a little credit for finding them don't I? I deserve strawberries and I don't get squat.
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