Simon Sez

"Oh, crap. I am -so- screwed"

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson
8/2/02
http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/simon.htm

We all knew that the Republican Party in California had fallen on hard times when, in 2000, they endorsed Willie Brown for mayor of San Francisco. That might strike some people as a bit strange, since Brown is a) a Democrat b) black and worst of all c) a liberal, but the guy running against Brown was a) a Democrat, b) even more liberal and worst of all c) gay.

Even then, it was astounding, since Willie Brown single-handedly destroyed the effectiveness of the GOP in California in the wake of the 1994 elections, and he did it though chicanery, trickery, a nasty sense of humor and the ability to outwit the baffled and furious Republicans at every turn. He made them look like complete fools. It made for some of the greatest political theater in California history, and the GOP was the patsie.

Nobody in the GOP hates any other Democrat the way state Republicans hate Willie Brown. They even sing a little song about the man: "Bad, bad, Willie Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town..."

Watching the Republicans swallow hard and endorse Willie Brown was one of the strangest sights I ever saw in politics. Nothing, I thought, could top it.

The thing about Willie Brown is that the man, love him or hate him, has flash. He wears $15,000 Armani suits, has a trademark fedora, and owns the sharpest wit in politics today. He's sharp, he's stylish, he's dangerous. Sort of a mix of Tony Bennett and Tony Soprano. You could see him taking a bunch of dull-witted political adversaries and tying them up in knots, stymying them and making them look like monkeys in the process.

That someone else would come along and do to the GOP the sorts of things that Brown did (he's sort of retired, since in San Francisco, where he is the mayor, he now OWNS Republicans' little pink asses) is pretty remarkable. Politicians with Brown's ability and style would come along every day. One day he'll take his place in San Francisco lore, alongside Emperor Norton and Herb Caen.

That the latest Democrat to come along, rub his hands, and make the GOP his bitch is Grey Davis is nothing short of astounding.

Grey Davis lives up to his name. No color, and the guy kind of looks like the fellow who washes out the specimen bottles at the morgue. He looks limp, and kind of damp. He don't sound like he's got a steel trap for a mind, or like he's capable of outwitting anyone. In fact, he comes across as a bit dull, and vaguely annoying.

The Republicans never did take him seriously. Dull and vaguely annoying aren't very threatening, and it doesn't seem to have occurred to any of them that this dull and vaguely annoying man became governor of the biggest state in the union, and did so the hard way, coming up through the ranks of elective office. Certainly the GOP have dull and vaguely annoying governors, but both of them got there cause their family, particularly President Poppy, were very well connected and willing to kneel to the corporations.

Davis won his governor's race in ‘98 by twenty points. The state republicans decided that just showed that the voters were a bunch of morons, and decided that if they showed the voters what morons they were, they would come around.

As a result, the Democrats widened their lead in 2000, leaving the Republicans with only one state-wide office (Secretary of State Bill Jones) and very nearly giving the Democrats super majorities in both state houses.

The Republicans decided to give Californians a taste of the lash for their effrontery, and we all know how that turned out. California is still there, but the GOP control of the senate in Washington is gone, Enron is on the mat, and the ensuing scandals have Putsch on the run.

California, if anything, became even more Democratic. Davis' main flaw, as seen by the huge majority of state voters, was that he was a DLC Democrat, a little to the right of voters' tastes. Kinda like Clinton, only without the girls.

That he survived the Enron/Bush rape of California wasn't accredited to any particular wit on his part, but to the petty and often poisonous incompetence of the state Republicans. The general political attitude was "The state republicans are so bad they make Grey Davis look good."

But there was a Republican who wasn't a right wing whack, and who wasn't interested in banging the bible and pissing on the Hispanics in order to rope in the Baptists. He wasn't rabidly anti-abortion, or pro-death penalty. A self-made man, he didn't have the often-noted Bush fallacy that being born on third means you hit a triple. He was intelligent, he was capable, and he wasn't selling hate as a way of pushing voter buttons.

This made Rick Riordan a dangerous man. Early polls suggested he could make a race of it against Davis. The polls also showed a lot of Democrats looking at Davis, and then looking at Riordan, and deciding to think it over for a while before voting.

The Republicans had a three man race in the March primary. Bill Jones, the capable if uncharismatic secretary of state, ran on the Lundgren platform, appealing to far right xenophobes and Christians while managing to be colorless. Riordan was the moderate who had successfully run what was known as America's most ungovernable city for eight years. And then there was the almost obligatory millionaire dilettante, a vapid libertarian with a willingness to pander to the Christian right, CEO Bill Simon.

Davis could see that the Jones campaign was going nowhere. Republican voters may not be the brightest bulbs on the tree, but four years was short enough for most of them to realize that son of Dan Lundgren wasn't going to do any better than the original did.

Davis figured, correctly, that Riordan could beat him in the open election, and that he would have to hope that the right wing whacks, the noisy and motivated 20% of the population who also make up 75% of the GOP's primary vote, would get stirred up.

That left the one behind door number three. Bill Simon. I saw him described on Usenet today by Rob Bordon thusly: "He's a rich boy with a Bible, a truckload of Daddy's money and a history of business failures who wants to run government like a business. Sound familiar?
He's the son of William E. Simon, treasury secretary under President Nixon."

He was the quintessential California Republican in a state that led the nation's charge to the right beginning in the late sixties, and was part of the detritus left behind when the state began changing course leftward in the late nineties. Like Putsch, he was the vapid son of a vapid father, a silver spoon tyke born to privilege who felt that he deserved high office because he was rich.

While Putsch practiced a damp moderation in speech combined with the Texas boolyah of the gleefully ignorant, Simon decided that rich boy libertarianism – social Darwinism with a new coat of paint – combined with a little bible banging was the way to California's heart.

There was only one thing for Davis to do. He spent six million dollars promoting Riordan.

Now you have to understand that the average Republican primary voter is a squinty-eyed troglodyte who harbors a deep suspicion that the founding fathers were all just a bunch of damn commies, and that Christians who talked about peace and love were a bunch of faggots. To them, the words "moderate" and "mainstream" are code for "Stalinist child molester". The 20% of the electorate that are certifiable have a happy home in the GOP, and have pummeled out the moderates in the party with their flags and their crosses, and in the primaries, they decide who is going to run. In recent years, beginning with Empty Suit Huffington, they've proceeded to lead the party to ignominious defeat as patriots noticed the flag waving didn't seem to express American values, and the Christians noticed that the snarling bible pounding didn't seem to be expressing Jesus' values.

Getting labeled a mainstream moderate with this lot was bad enough. Getting labeled a mainstream moderate by Grey Davis was the kiss of death. Davis told the truth about Riordan. He was moderate, he was experienced, he could work with all voters. This drove the far right nuts.

The right galvanized itself, and Riordan, who had been leading by thirty points in the polls, was beaten in March by Simon.

Davis and the Democrats spent the next few days hiding wide grins while a tiny but dominant minority in the GOP cheered wildly and those Republicans who were still normal gamely cheered and managed to avoid slapping their hands over their faces while moaning in despair.

Still, Republicans had cause for hope. Simon was a CEO, and had run several businesses (into the ground, mostly, but in those days that was easy to gloss over), and announced that he was going to run California like a business.

At the time, Enron was just starting its colossal meltdown, and business executives were still considered respectable. And, Republicans consoled themselves, at least the guy wasn't a foaming racist, and could manage to utter entire sentences without sounding like Donald Duck on lithium. By Republican standards, he was a Catch.

The trouble is, the Simon campaign just sort of sat there, like a dead frog, and didn't do anything. April passed, and then May. The propaganda about Davis bungling the power crisis faded, and Republicans, unsure of how far Enron's tendrils went into various White House orifices, didn't really want to belabor an incident that of necessity involved conspicuous mention of Enron.

In June, things started to go really sour. The Republicans ran a poll, and announced, with breathless, joyous rapture, that Simon was leading Davis by seven points. Unfortunately for them, the widely respected and trusted Field Poll came out a few days later, and showed the opposite was true: Davis had what for that stage of the campaign was a comfortable seven point lead. Voters had heard of the Field Poll. They had never heard of the other outfit, and the public concluded that the other poll was nothing more than propaganda. Republicans had done the phony poll outfits to death during the 2000 campaign, and the timing on this one was excruciatingly bad.

CEOs fell from grace. No need to belabor the reasons why most Americans would like to see various captains of industry hanging from lampposts. If you are reading this, you probably read newspapers. But Simon was a CEO, and worse, he was a CEO with a shady past.

There was the tax thing. He refused to release his taxes for several months, while simultaneously complaining about the tax burden he and "other Americans" had to bear. Davis, of course, had released his tax returns. The public turned to Simon with a raised eyebrow. A smart politician would have put up, but Simon, like most dilettantes, is a little tone deaf to such niceties.

Then he broke down and did a "sorta" release, giving reporters several hours to glance over 11 years and thousands of pages of tax returns. Nobody was impressed.

Davis started running ads asking why Simon was hiding his taxes, and questioning his previous business experience, noting a number of failed concerns and suggesting that Simon was facing legal difficulties for possible fraud.

The Simon camp indignantly denied any fraud allegations just 24 hours before the jury in a case that most people didn't even realize involved Simon found that his company was liable, to the tune of $78 million (including triple punitive damages) for fraud.

It's a mortal blow to a campaign that was already on the ropes. The Pubs are pretty well stuck, and can only hope that Grey Davis is found in bed with a dead woman or a live man, as the Texas idiom has it. Davis is a smart politician who maneuvered the Republicans into picking their weakest candidate, and then played him like a brook trout.

Davis can mail in his campaign. As long as there isn't a nuclear war, or it doesn't come to light that he has been sexually molesting eighty year old nuns in the old folks' home, he's got this puppy put to bed. The lights are down, the curtain is lowered, the sets are struck.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Simon has left the building.