California newspapers made noise last week about the lack of
“momentum” in Bill Simon’s campaign. But they fell silent this week
as Simon’s campaign got a boost from President George Bush.
The Los Angeles media paid almost no attention to Bush’s
campaigning for Simon in the state, focusing instead on the
president’s hastily-arranged commemoration of the Los Angeles race
riots.
Whether or not the Simon campaign showed “momentum” was suddenly
a subject of no interest to California reporters, lest actual facts
about his campaign muddy their Simon-momentum-on-the-wane story
line.
Thanks to the anti-Simon press corps, few Californians know that
Simon has been leading Gray Davis in at least five polls.
“I don’t want to argue on whether or not Gray Davis has done a
good job or a bad job. I just want to look at the numbers. And the
numbers say he has done a terrible job. His numbers stink,” said
pollster Stuart Rothenberg in April. “And he’s losing to a guy who
has never run for office before on a ballot test.”
A survey conducted by the California Teachers Association — a
group which endorsed Davis — found Bill Simon enjoying a
four-point lead over Davis, 41 to 37 percent.
Simon says that he has been maintaining an 8-point lead over
Davis since the primary. The polling firm Public Opinion Strategies
Inc. says Simon leads Gray Davis 48% to 41% among registered
voters. A poll conducted by Probolsky & Associates Opinion
Research puts Davis’s support at less than 38% of voters and
Simon’s at 44%.
Polls apparently don’t impress the California media unless they
show Davis ahead. The San Francisco Chronicle neglected
the polls above, but it quickly perked up when an unreliable Field
Poll emerged to suggest a Davis lead.
This Field Poll was not restricted to likely voters. And yet
even this dubious poll bodes ill for Davis, as 57% of voters
indicated they would not vote for his re-election.
Most Californians, even many Democrats who intend to vote for
Davis, find the acharismatic pol fundamentally unlikable. Davis
suffers from the Al Gore syndrome: the more he declares that voters
like and agree with him, the less they actually do.
But Davis hopes to hide his long nose by having the California
media woo voters for him. Michael Finnegan, a reporter for the
Los Angeles Times, appears ready to buy the roses.
He supplied Davis with a comically contrived story against Simon
last Saturday. Finnegan rustled up a few die-hard pro-abortion
“Republican” women to badmouth Simon, then generalized that
“Encinitas, a GOP-majority town, illustrates how Simon’s stance
could doom his gubernatorial hopes.”
It is not clear from the story if the Encinitas women had even
heard Simon mention the abortion issue. But Finnegan managed to
goad one woman into saying, “I don’t care to listen any longer. I
don’t think I could vote for this man.”
This is a curiously hostile reaction to a candidate who goes to
great lengths to downplay his pro-life stance. To whom is this
woman listening? Certainly not the candidate. He never talks about
the issue unless a pro-abortion reporter brings it up.
No matter: Finnegan saw vast significance in this “Republican”
woman, who it turns out voted for Davis in 1998. Did Finnegan talk
to any Republicans who actually vote for Republicans? Who knows.
But he did talk to “coffee shop waiter Scott Bertone, 30, an
independent,” who opined apropos of nothing that if “you don’t
allow a woman her right to choose, you start from there and move
down the list of rights they’d take away.”
Finnegan whipped a few other non-Republicans in the
“GOP-majority town” into a fury. Democrat Beverly Whalin gasped,
“If they’re going to take that step backward, you wonder what else
they’re going to do. You start thinking are they going to invite
Jerry Falwell out here? Or Pat Robertson?”
Finnegan lets hairdresser Starla Adkins finish his news story
with an ominous warning to Simon. “Stay out of my womb,” she said.
“That’s what I like to tell a lot of these political men.”
Don’t worry, Starla, your womb is safe. The California media
will stand watch over it.
