I don't think you get it. The battle for govenor is now. The battle will be won or lost in the next 30 days. The battle doesn't even involve Simon.
Davis is running against himself. Davis can win if he convinces enough financial suppoters that he has a chance to win. Give Davis the cash and he wins.
Davis dug a hole for himself within his own party starting last year and continuing on into this spring. His greed was showing and he alienated many influential Democratics. Davis was within a cats wisker of being an obvious, unliked looser. And friends not many pragmatists will support a loser.
What Davis needed to do deperately was get himself back into the catagory of "having a chance" to win. Davis started a agressive attack ad campaign and the polls are begining to reflect his efforts. The campaign contributions are beginning to roll in again.
Simon, regardless of his fitness for office lacked the political intelligence to recognize the dimension of Davis' dilema and lacked the advice or the money to cut off Davis' head in July. He allowed the attack ads to continue unchallenged and let Davis back into the realm of credibility.
Very good point. David Horowitz writes stingingly about this in his book "The Art of Political War."
FWIW, this was the reason why x42 escaped his just desserts in the impeachment ordeal. They attacked, we stayed silent. Therefore, their molding of opinion went successfully unchallenged.
This is so wrong I don't know where to start. If that were in fact the case, Simon would have lost the primary because he was at 4 points 7 weeks out. Pete Wilson would have lost to Kathleen Brown (like the Field Poll said he would) and Ronald Reagan would have lost to Jimmy Carter, and I can go on and on.
I'm worked as a volunteer and paid staff on dozens of campaigns since 1988 and have found that most voters DO NOT FOCUS on the election until the last FOUR WEEKS. Where Bill Simon is on October 1st -- and where Gray Davis is -- will have more to do with the outcome of the election than almost anything that happens now.
Yes, Simon needs to address Davis' attacks, but he can't be on the defensive. He'll deal with them when and how he wants based on sound political strategy and a hundred armchair politicians telling him a hundred different winning strategies.