California Recall Race Produces Boom Times for Handlers

New York Times ^ | September 7, 2003 | KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

[calcowgirl]

California Recall Race Produces Boom Times for Handlers By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 6 — Dan Schnur, Rob Stutzman and Mark Bogetich are partners in a Republican consulting firm in Sacramento. But the recall election has divided them, at least through the vote.

Mr. Schnur is the campaign manager for Peter V. Ueberroth, an independent candidate for governor, while Mr. Stutzman and Mr. Bogetich have both signed on with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the actor-turned-Republican-candidate.

"We've strung up some barbed wire down the middle of the office, so things are working just fine," Mr. Schnur said.

The California recall election has opened a gold rush for political consultants, advertisers and pollsters, who are cashing in on the off-year avalanche of 135 candidates who are trying to replace Gov. Gray Davis. And with only two notable Democrats in the race, Governor Davis and Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, the election is especially a bonanza for political handlers who cater to Republicans. Pickings are usually slim for them in California, where their party is so weak that it has yet to produce a serious challenger to Senator Barbara Boxer, a Democrat who is up for re-election next year.

"For consultants who are associated with Republicans, this is money lying in the street," said Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

"Money, baby," said Peter Ragone, a spokesman for Governor Davis, as he eyed the Republican consultants swarming across this Democratic turf. "It's all about money."

The pace-setter in spending is Mr. Schwarzenegger, a multimillionaire who has attracted an eclectic and ever-expanding team of advisers and strategists.

"When people like him enter politics, it's like blood in the water," said a Republican consultant based in Washington. "Ask guys like Steve Forbes and Donald Trump; when they get into something, they all of a sudden have eight million people who want to be their advisers."

The potential cash windfall in the recall is huge, largely because time is so short — there were just two months of campaigning before the Oct. 7 election — and the news media focus is so intense. Consultants make most of their money by keeping part of the amount the candidate spends on television advertising, which can be up to 15 percent. The advertising in this race so far has not been as big as expected because the candidates are receiving so much free news coverage. Still, it is significant.

"If it's not $100 million of media but only $70 million, that's still a chunk of change that no one was counting on," Mr. Kaplan said.

But financial gain is not the only potential payoff. Consultants, like candidates, can position themselves for future races if they win a campaign as important as the California governorship. While President Bush and the nine candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have lined up most of their teams, they still have an eye out for advisers.

The California recall has attracted its share of veteran and high-profile political aides.

One, Lynn Nofziger, who was an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, is serving as an unpaid adviser to State Senator Tom McClintock, the conservative who has emerged as the strongest challenger to Mr. Schwarzenegger for the backing of Republican Party loyalists.

Three top advisers from Senator John McCain's 2000 insurgent presidential campaign are also working in the recall.

Mike Murphy, who was Senator McCain's chief media adviser and helped the president's brother Jeb win re-election last year as governor of Florida, has joined Mr. Schwarzenegger. So has Todd Harris, another McCain adviser who worked on Jeb Bush's re-election.

Mr. Schnur, the campaign manager for Mr. Ueberroth, the former baseball commissioner, is yet another McCain adviser. For others, the recall process itself has been a bigger draw than any single candidate.

Frank Luntz, a pollster who was an adviser to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, was hired by the group that triggered the recall, Rescue California, Recall Gray Davis.

"It's created another way for people to make money in a year when they normally wouldn't," Dave Gilliard, chief strategist of Rescue California, said, somewhat ruefully. "So everyone should be grateful to us."

Mr. Schwarzenegger's core team is made up of advisers who twice helped elect Pete Wilson, a Republican, governor. Mr. Wilson himself is co-chairman of Mr. Schwarzenegger's campaign. The team includes three people — George Gorton, Richard Dresner and Joe Shumate — who helped engineer Boris N. Yeltsin's 1996 re-election as president of Russia.

But Mr. Schwarzenegger has not lacked for others who want to be part of his campaign. Don Sipple, whose clients have included George W. Bush in 2000 and Bob Dole, the former senator, in his 1996 presidential bid, is Mr. Schwarzenegger's media adviser. And he has attracted some marquee names new to the political arena — notably Warren Buffet, the billionaire investor, and Rob Lowe, the actor.

In his fight to keep his job, Mr. Davis has turned to many of the advisers who helped him win the governor's office in 1998, as well as reaching out to former President Bill Clinton and to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

The governor's roster also includes nationally known consultants like David Doak, his advertiser; Paul Maslin, his pollster; and Garry South, a strategist.

It is no accident that Mr. Davis's supporters have portrayed the recall effort as another Republican move to steal an election they could not win. Several of Mr. Davis's advisers once worked for Al Gore.

"We are particularly motivated by the fact that this is merely a continuation of what we saw in Florida in 2000," said Chris Lehane, who was Mr. Gore's spokesman.

When the recall was announced, Mr. Lehane was working for one of the Democratic presidential contenders, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. But he now splits his time between the two campaigns.

Working with Mr. Lehane here is Mark Fabiani, another Gore strategist. Both are veterans of the crisis management team in the Clinton White House. And both worked for Governor Davis in the California energy crisis two years ago, prompting an outcry because the governor had put them on the state payroll.

Mr. Lehane and Mr. Fabiani are advising the California Federation of Labor, the coalition of unions that forms the governor's bulwark against the recall.

Mr. Ragone, the governor's spokesman and another Gore alumnus, said the Davis campaign had also asked the Democratic National Committee to send in Ann Lewis, a onetime Clinton adviser.

"She's helping organize national surrogates and giving basic counsel and guidance," Mr. Ragone said. "She's been through a couple of wars herself and is a highly decorated veteran."

Mr. Fabiani concedes that the California recall election is "a fascinating political drama."

"But you can't assume that this is so different from anything that's ever happened in the history of the world that you throw out the old rules," Mr. Fabiani said. "The fundamentals still apply. It's still politics. You need a message, you need to find a clear way to express it and you need to do it in a consistent, disciplined way. In the end, we think those old rules will carry the day."

[Nick Thimmesch]

Don't forget the name that started the whole Drudge/Blumenthal/wife-beating story: Don Sipple, who is working for Arnold.

[DoctorZIn]

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