California Puzzle -- Poll Shows Simon Beating Davis

The nightly tracking poll taken for the California Teachers Association (CTA), made available to Republicans Friday morning, was startling.

Thursday night's telephone interviews about the race for governor showed beleaguered Republican candidate Bill Simon leading Democratic Gov. Gray Davis 34.2 percent to 33.7 percent. The three-day tracking roll gave Davis a mere 2.7 percentage point lead.

Those numbers collide with Democratic surveys that show a double-digit lead for Davis. They also force a decision on George W. Bush that must be made instantly. Should he pay a final one-day visit to San Diego, perhaps next Monday, to affirm Simon as the Republican Party's California standard-bearer in good standing? Or should he not risk the damage to his prestige in the Golden State that could result from association with a drubbing?

At stake is not just the way the nation's most populous state will be governed for the next four years. The baroque Simon-Davis contest is drenched in 2004 presidential politics. President Bush's friends here are concentrating on his becoming the first Republican to carry the state since his father in 1988. Whether Davis tries for the Democratic nomination in 2004 will be determined by his re-election effort this year.

Davis ought to have nothing to worry about. The California Republican Party, non-performing and torn by bitter feuds, has hit bottom after decades of decline. Democrats enjoy immense advantages in money, organization and even the erstwhile Republican superiority in getting out the absentee vote.

On top of this, Simon's error-plagued campaign shows that a shakedown candidacy for the county board of supervisors or state assembly would have helped. Indeed, the conventional wisdom remains that Davis will win easily against a man best known for being the son of financier William E. Simon, a former secretary of the Treasury.

Diluting these immense advantages, Gray Davis is undoubtedly the most unpopular governor of California that anybody can remember. Prominent Democrats privately express contempt for him as a relentless fund-raiser without principles. One well-known elected government official told me he had endorsed Davis as far back as the 1998 Democratic primary but now considers him "another Nixon." He rages that Simon is about to be wiped out, propelling Davis into the White House. He plans to vote for Green Party candidate Peter Miguel Camejo.

The poll for the CTA (by Washington-based Republican pollster Jan Van Lohuizen) showed in the Tuesday-through-Thursday three-day roll last week that 52.9 percent of Californians think the state is on the "wrong track" compared with 30.4 percent who say it is going in the "right direction." Davis has never recovered from his handling of last year's energy problems. Most dangerous for Davis are possible defections of Latinos (now comprising one third of the state's population). The legislature's Latino caucus refused to endorse Davis because he vetoed a bill enabling illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses, a measure shown by surveys to be widely unpopular. In response, the governor moved quickly to get 17 of the 22 caucus members to sign an endorsement. Questions cannot be definitively answered until Election Day. Will the lingering undecided voters just stay home? Could an usually light turnout defeat Davis? Has Simon, the victim of Davis's unremitting attack ads and his own mishaps, become unelectable in California? There are loyal, well-placed California Republicans who feel Simon should never have run in the first place, is a sure loser, and that the president should stay out of the Golden State for the next two weeks. Published reports suggest that he might come into Rep. Gary Condit's district in the Central Valley to support an underdog Republican bid for Condit's successor. That won't happen. If Bush comes in, it will be to help Simon. This is a test for the president and his political team. A stunning upset by a terribly flawed campaign would cheer an election night where longtime Republican governorships in Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin probably will end in top-heavy defeats. Bush backers in California distrust the CTA poll, and fear humiliation for the president. A gambler would come here, but Republican presidents usually don't gamble.

1966

See also, from www.TomMcclintock.com:

Let's Go and Get it Back

September 29, 2002 • Speech by Senator Tom McClintock

The pundits say that we Republicans have an uphill fight. After all,

• We have a Democratic Governor with an Invincible Campaign machine behind him.

• The only constitutional office we still hold is the Secretary of State.

• Our most recent presidential nominee lost California by over a million votes.

• We're down to only 14 Republicans in the entire State Senate.

• We have only 31 Republicans in the State Assembly.

Folks, what I had just described, word for word, is exactly where we stood on this day in 1966

Think about that.

• Gov. Pat Brown was invincible. Four years before he had humiliated our candidate for governor, former vice president Richard Nixon.

• The only Republican in constitutional office was Secretary of State Frank Jordan.

• Barry Goldwater had lost the last presidential election in California by over a million votes.

• We had exactly the same number of State Senators as we have today and within one of the same number of Assembly members.

• Our new nominee, Ronald Reagan, had never held political office before. He had been under vicious personal attack throughout that summer for his alleged ties to the John Birch Society "and other extremists groups."

But something very strange happened in the weeks after Labor Day. People stopped thinking about the issues that were important to the media and began thinking about the issues that were important to them.

And on Election Day, The entire political landscape of California had changed fundamentally and permanently.

• We elected Ronald Reagan governor.

• Republicans swept every constitutional office except one.

• In a cause near and dear to my heart, a college professor named Hugh Flournoy beat incumbent state controller Alan Cranston.

• We made dramatic gains in both houses of the legislature and two years later took back majority control.

• We delivered majorities for the presidential ticket in the next six presidential elections in a row.

And the point I want to make is that our party is in an infinitely stronger position today than it was 36 years ago- because the case we can make for fundamental political change against this administration is far stronger and more compelling than the case that Ronald Reagan could make against Pat Brown...
-- snip --
...Ladies and gentlemen, we are the loyal opposition to a corrupt and incompetent administration that has utterly squandered our resources, overburdened our families, over-regulated our businesses and done enormous harm to the freedom and the prosperity that we once knew. And we, my fellow Republicans, are all that stands between that regime and the future of California.

In April of 1775, a column of British soldiers moved up the road from Boston. They mowed down the colonial militia at Lexington and Marched unhindered to Concord.

But something happened that day. Without phones or faxes or email, word spread to every village and hamlet, every farm and home - and spontaneously, American farmers and merchants left their families and gathered along that road to confront the most powerful army in the world. Not because they wanted to. But because they had to. Because the situation had become intolerable and could no longer be ignored.

I believe we are seeing the civic equivalent of that begin today in California. Men and women who have never cared much for politics are today turning their attention to the ravages of this regime. They are becoming politically active not because they want to - but because they have to - because they are tired of seeing their government sold to the highest bidder - because they are tired of watching this governor spend a larger share of their incomes than ever before and seeing all of it squandered.

Folks, let this election be our generation's road from Concord. Let every one of us do everything we can to rise to the occasion that this election presents. Let us carry this message with whatever time and money we can spare. Let us look back on these 37 days as the most productive political involvement we have ever invested.

We can make this state over again. And we can restore to our children what has been taken from us. Growing up here forty years ago, I remember a California where electricity was clean and cheap and abundant, where the schools were the finest in the country, where the highway system was the envy of the world, where people had the freedom to pursue their dreams. We had that state once. It has been taken from us.

Now Ladies and Gentlemen, if you are ready, let's go and get it back.

You need to compare the same polls. The CTA tracking has Simon up or down one and was done last week, during the week. I have never thought that polls on the weekend were as effective because whole demographic groups aren't home -- people with kids, for example, will be doing soccer games, gymnastics, etc., etc. People with kids tend to be more conservative. People go out more on the weekends, go out of town, etc., etc.

The PPIC poll should be compared with the last PPIC poll which shows that Simon went up three, Davis down one, for a net Simon gain of four points. If we gain four points a week for the next two weeks, we're at a statistical deadheat.

Don't be discouraged. The CTA tracking is definitely more accurate, the SurveyUSA/PPIC poll "says" it's likely voters, but it's self-identified likely voters as opposed to those taken from the voter rolls.

Go Simon!

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