TOM MCCLINTOCK "EARLY" DAILY EDITION - 8/26/2003(CA GOVERNOR'S RACE)

Go Tom go! You're the conservative PUB's only candidate.

Hey "A CA Guy" I'm waiting for you to answer 3 questions.

1. What are (R)nold's total %s?

2. More importantly than that often times misleading number early in an election-what are his negativity numbers? over his No Opinion? Those are a more telling barometer, which is why Simon dropped out, his disapprovals were off the charts. Do you know what your (R)nold's is?

3. I'm told this is a liberal state, the only way we can get elected, as the legend goes, is to appeal to Democrates, what is the % of Democrates supporting (R)nold's No-Offending-Issues campaign? After all, his Tonight Show annoucing was brilliantly groundbreaking and a spectacular populist rallying. If Demos are to be appealed to, now would be their zenith. Care to answer these polling questions?

If I am going to see you on every McClintock thread, flaming your same Talking Points at whatever decent Conservative posted it, you won't be able to run away from these statistics. All of which were from before Simon dropped out.

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KNX reported on Monday that Bill Simon's private polls (presumably shortly before last Saturday) showed that if he dropped out, the results would be:

31% Schwarzenegger
25% Bustamante
17% McClintock
8% Ueberroth

Unfortunately, KNX didn't give any other information about the polling method and data or who conducted it. There also wasn't any older poll to compare the data. If it is similar to the Field/PPIC polls, then it seems that Simon's support would mostly shift to McClintock, although support for Ueberroth has gone up, too. Too bad there weren't more details about the poll.

McClintock will guest-host for Roger Hedgecock (on the radio at AM 600, or online at the KOGO website) this Thursday, 3-6PM. People can call in and ask Tom questions for three hours. It's a great opportunity to interview Tom and ask any questions about his planned policies or budgetary issues.

The phone numbers are 569-8255 (San Diego area codes), 800-600-kogo, or "#600" on Sprint phones. Not mentioned during yesterday's interview was whether Schwarzenegger would guest-host or which other candidates would, except that Davis and Bustamante declined the offer. The guest hosts will appear from this Wednesday through next Friday. (six or seven shows)

Tom cannot win. Never.

Tom cannot win. Period. It's wishful thinking. Or maybe he's not thinking at all.

Thanks, Helen, for the info. I suspect that the next field poll will show the Simon supporters behind McClintock and because of the Bust-the-bank "8 billion dollar tax increase" and Busty's association with the Hispanic racist group, his numbers will fall...tightening up the race right up to the debate on September 17 when McClintock will shine and the liberals will be exposed for who they are.
click here to learn more folks. http://www.tommcclintock.com

Hi kellynla! I'm back in beautiful Ventura County. Thank you so much for getting the daily post up on the forum. Today our local paper, Ventura Star, had a nice front page article on Tom. It points out that Arnie is starting to go on radio - probably as a reaction to Tom's success on radio. Last couple of paragraphs are very telling on why Tom isn't planning on dropping out.

McClintock gains edge in Simon's withdrawal
Race's truest conservative apparently gaining ground

By Timm Herdt, herdt@insidevc.com
August 26, 2003

SACRAMENTO -- First thing Monday morning, Joe Giardiello, the Southern California point man for Sen. Tom McClintock's campaign for governor, got a call from a Republican activist in Imperial County who had been a devoted supporter of businessman Bill Simon.

He wanted to know one thing: "What can I do to help?"

It was just one example of the shot in the arm that Simon's sudden departure as a replacement candidate for governor has given McClintock's campaign. Simon's decision leaves the Thousand Oaks senator as the only true-blue conservative left in the race and also ends a distractive debate among conservatives over which of the two should drop out.

"The person who benefits the most is Tom McClintock. No question about it," said Assemblyman Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark. "I think you'll see a bump in McClintock's polling and people will see that he's the candidate that's surging. ... Some Republicans might wake up and see that Arnold Schwarzenegger might not be the best candidate to run against Cruz Bustamante."

The sudden opening for McClintock was not lost on Schwarzenegger's campaign team. For the first time, the actor on Monday accepted invitations to appear on two conservative talk radio shows -- a staple of conservative candidates statewide and a favorite medium of McClintock's.

Simon's announcement on Saturday was followed by more good news for McClintock on Sunday: A poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times showed McClintock at 12 percent, behind Bustamante's 35 percent and Schwarzenegger's 22 percent.

"The timing of Simon's decision could not have been better for us," John Stoos, McClintock's longtime political aide, said Monday. "Our radio ads went on the air today, and our television ads begin Friday."

Stoos said the Times poll showed McClintock to be "the only candidate with momentum." Schwarzenegger's standing in various polls has remained in the mid-20 percent range despite what Stoos called "two or three weeks of the best press coverage I've ever seen in politics."

While some GOP leaders continued to exert pressure through the press in an attempt to persuade McClintock and former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth to also drop out, both camps insisted on Monday that they were in the campaign to stay.

"We're certainly in this to the finish line," Stoos said. "Tom's been absolutely unequivocal about that."

Ueberroth also reiterated his intent to campaign aggressively, saying he believes that as the Oct. 7 election day approaches, increasing numbers of California voters will focus on the serious nature of the election and be attracted by his appeal to elect someone with an independent, problem-solving approach.

A number of other Republicans, however, stepped up their warnings that unless one or more of the GOP candidates drops out it will hand the election to Lt. Gov. Bustamante, the only major Democrat whose name will appear on the replacement ballot.

The winner will take office only if a majority of voters decides that Gov. Gray Davis should be removed.

"The fewer candidates, the better," said Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge. "With three Republicans and one Democrat, the numbers just don't add up."

Senate GOP leader Jim Brulte was more blunt in an assessment he gave to members of the Big Bear Valley Republican Club: "Four weeks from now, if there are three Republicans running for governor, Cruz Bustamante is going to be the governor."

Those close to McClintock say party leaders who want him to defer to Schwarzenegger are wasting their breath.

He has always been a maverick whose relationship with the party establishment is strained. Last fall, as McClintock was engaged in a neck-and-neck campaign for state controller against Democrat Steve Westly, the California Republican Party spurned McClintock but gave more than $1 million to Gary Mendoza, the GOP candidate for insurance commissioner, and nearly $350,000 to Sen. Bruce McPherson, the candidate for lieutenant governor.

Mendoza lost by 350,000 votes, McPherson by 550,000. McClintock came within 17,000 votes of Westly, faring better than any Republican candidate on the statewide ballot.

Given that record, the party establishment has little to offer McClintock now as an inducement to persuade him to defer to Schwarzenegger.

"What are they going to do?" asked a McClintock supporter. "Tell him they won't support him next time he runs for statewide office? They didn't support him the last time he ran."

Other longtime associates point out that there is something else in McClintock's political background that will maintain his resolve to stay in the race. In 1986 McClintock, then an assemblyman, had announced his intent to run for Congress. But when Tony Hope, son of the late comedian Bob Hope, entered the race, McClintock dropped out in the belief that Hope could not be beaten.

He was wrong.

Simi Valley Mayor Elton Gallegly won that contest and has served in Congress ever since.

Excellent article. You should post this on the home page! I am looking forward to the next field poll numbers and the debate on 9/17!

McClintock gains attention in recall
Republican state senator sticks to his conservative ideals.
By Daryl Kelle
Los Angeles Times
(Published Tuesday, August 26, 2003, 5:46 AM)

Even within his own Republican Party, state Sen. Tom McClintock has always been an outsider, consigned to counting his victories indirectly -- as the instigator of ideas that catch on later, usually with someone else's name attached.
Bill Simon's exit from the recall election during the weekend has given McClintock, 47, his moment. As the campaign's prominent fiscal and social conservative, he is poised either to be a spoiler in the Oct. 7 election or, if votes on the long recall ballot are split just so, to replace Gray Davis as governor.

A new Los Angeles Times poll last week found that McClintock's support has doubled since early July to 12% of likely voters, behind Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Republican movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With California's budget balanced only through borrowing and its credit rating at junk-bond levels, McClintock believes he is finding an audience for his conservative fiscal positions.

As governor, he says, he would bypass the deadlocked Legislature, if necessary, to balance the budget through executive order and ballot initiative. He would cap government spending, cut California's bureaucracy, contract out for state services and reduce the state's workers' compensation benefits.

Last year, as the state budget shortfall ballooned, McClintock was the only member of the Legislature to vote against salary and pension increases for state prison guards, a package that costs at least $700 million a year. Davis, who received nearly $1.5 million in his first term from the guards' union, signed the bill.

Witty if a bit stiff, McClintock took his frugal notions to voters last fall as a candidate for state controller.

Though outspent 5 to 1, he lost by a slim margin and pulled more votes than any other Republican on the statewide ballot, including Simon in his loss to Davis for governor.

"From Day One, I've said don't count Tom McClintock out," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a University of Southern California political analyst. "He's the true conservative in this recall race. He's a true believer."

Just two weeks into the race, McClintock and Simon were both asked whether they would eventually throw their support behind Schwarzenegger to give the GOP its best chance of winning the Governor's Office. Simon relented Saturday, but a defiant McClintock stood firm.

"Forget it; I'm in this race to stay," McClintock said. "I believe in an election process where we have the campaign first and then the voters get to decide who wins. I know that's at variance with the country-club variety of the Republican Party, but so be it."

Bebitch Jeffe thinks McClintock has the credentials to stay in the race, if not the money. And she said Simon's withdrawal will bring a windfall of free media coverage to "the anti-Arnold."

Even his underfunded campaign treasury has received some help -- swelling by Friday to $312,000 in cash and what his campaign said were pledges of an additional $800,000. Analysts say it will take $6 million to $12 million to run a competitive race. McClintock says he can win with $4 million and is unveiling his radio and television campaign this week.

"I'm not tilting at windmills," McClintock said in an interview. "But I have found it takes a number of years of persistence to get a new idea to fruition."

McClintock's main new idea is actually an old one: to resurrect tax-activist Paul Gann's cap on state spending, so it could only increase as fast as inflation and population growth combined. Had such a cap been in place in the past five years, he contends, the state would have seen a healthy surplus rather than a $38 billion shortfall.

"This is not a revenue problem," he said. "Inflation and population grew 21% since 1998, and revenue grew 25%.

The problem is the 40% increase in spending for the same period."

McClintock knows many of his proposals are not popular. But the tart-tongued, abrasive state senator has never been a consensus builder. He has taken shots at what he sees as excessive spending by both parties for two decades.

He criticized Republican Gov. George Deukmejian regularly on a variety of issues. For a decade, he has railed against Republican Pete Wilson for imposing "the biggest tax increase in American history" when he was governor.

Some arguments between McClintock and Wilson were so strong, legislators who attended the Republican strategy sessions said they watched in awe.

"They weren't personal," McClintock said. "Those were forceful arguments against the tax increase, and events proved my arguments correct."

He so angered Wilson that the governor opposed McClintock's first bid for state controller in 1994, drying up campaign contributions, said Tony Quinn, a Republican strategist in Sacramento for three decades.

"Everything in McClintock's career has turned out to be a cul-de-sac: He drives in, and there's nowhere to go," Quinn said.

McClintock's positions on social issues are consistently conservative: He is anti-abortion and anti-gun control, although most California voters support both. Last year, he opposed construction bonds for schools and affordable housing that voters favored. He also supported Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot initiative that sought to cut off free social benefits and education to illegal immigrants -- a plan struck down in court but still popular with voters today.

Former Republican Assembly leader Scott Baugh said McClintock has been good in recent years at coming up with ideas that the GOP can rally around.

McClintock's plan to eliminate the state vehicle license fee was adopted in large part by Wilson in 1998. And two years later, McClintock's proposals on water and transportation were core to the Republicans' 2020 program for the future.

Thanks! I saw on Hardball something about the Tony Hope story, but I couldn't find anything about it in print until you posted this.

Thanks for posting. I canceled my subscription to the Left Angeles Times a long time ago. I have to go online to read what the enemy is writing. Another excellent article by Kelley. Is the last name Kelle or Kelley? Daryl must feel like a hamhock at a barmizvah writing these articles at the Left Angeles Times! You should post this article on the FR home page if you haven't already. VOTE4MCCLINTOCK or pay the con$equence$! http://www.tommcclintock.com

PING! "HEADS UP!" Event Details
California's First Live Town Hall Meeting
August 28, 2003 at 3:00PM

Senator McClintock to host Roger Hedgecock Show, internet listening available at www.kogo.com, or AM 600 in San Diego

http://www.kogo.com to listen online to Tom McClintock host the Roger Hedgecock Show on Thursday at 3:00PM

Then we lose all leverage- Schwarzenegger can raise taxes to his heart's content.

Thank you for your attempts to provide rational reasons to back Tom McClintock instread of spending your time going negative on another. Good job.

Will you give it a rest mate? You pop up here everyday without fail.

Thank you. I appreciate the compliment. I am attempting to keep everyone aware of the reasons to vote for McClintock. Conservative substance over liberal propaganda. Thank you for your support. VOTE4MCCLINTOCK or pay the con$equence$! click here to keep up to date on the latest events and articles http://www.tommcclintock.com

I will vote for Tom if he has a chance of winning.