Suppose you are the governor of a large state. You are up for
re-election this year and, if you win, this will be your second and
last term. Also, if you win, your name will immediately be in
contention for your party’s presidential nomination in 2004. If you
lose, well, you’ll have plenty of time to write your memoirs.
Re-election should be easy. Your party has a huge registration
advantage over the other party. About one fifth of the voters are
independents and they broke your way last time. You have more than
$20 million in the bank with which to blister your opponent, a
businessman who has never held public office (in fact, didn’t
bother to vote in several elections). He and his family were
involved in a savings-and-loan that went belly-up a few years ago
and you should be able to wrap that one tightly around his neck.
And, for icing on the cake, he’s on the wrong side of the abortion
and gun control issues so far as your state’s voters are
concerned.
Piece of cake, right? Not exactly.
You inherited a surplus from your predecessor when you took
office in 1998, but steady spending increases since then have
resulted in a $23.6 billion deficit today. The state constitution
requires a balanced budget be voted by June 30. Your party controls
both houses of the legislature, but has made no headway in reducing
the deficit as the clock ticks away.
To get the problem under control you have called for huge new
borrowing (the state’s borrowing capacity is already strained), and
you want to roll back auto registration tax cuts and add $5 in new
registration taxes over the next two years. Even if your scheme
passes, it won’t work according to financial experts who say it
will result in a $45 billion-worth of deficits over the next five
years.
A state senator from the other party says the deficit could be
wiped out and turned into a surplus if you were to roll back all
your non-education spending increases to their 1998 levels. You
won’t do anything of the sort and your legislators, on a
drunken-sailor spending spree, seem to the think the voters will
blame neither themselves nor you.
That’s not the only problem. It’s as if you had opened Pandora’s
Box and a flock of troubles flew out. Little did you know that when
some of your senior appointees approved a sole-source contract for
the software giant Oracle to streamline all state government
software, it would come back to bite you. Two days after the
contract was let, an Oracle lobbyist handed one of your senior
officials a $25,000 contribution for your campaign. You’ve had to
fire five of these officials since then, and the story has more
legs than a centipede.
The other day a new sweetheart deal surfaced: The board of the
state’s public employees retirement system voted to invest $760
million in two money funds of Yucaipa Co., headed by Ronald Burkle,
who gave your campaign $100,000 last year. Two of the board members
who voted for the deal, the state’s treasurer and controller (both
members of your party), have received large campaign contributions
from Burkle and his wife. A third board member, appointed by you,
had a large consulting contract from Yucaipa. That’s on a scale
with the practice of Clinton’s late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown,
who doled out seats on trade mission flights in exchange for big
campaign contributions.
Then there was the story that surfaced the other day to the
effect that when officials of the state’s large teachers’ union
came to the capitol to discuss some legislation with you, you shook
them down for a campaign contribution.
Maybe all this explains those public opinion polls showing you,
incumbent Gray Davis, even with your opponent, Bill Simon, or so
slightly ahead as to be within the margin of error. Simon has said
repeatedly, “I will not raise taxes.” It just may be that this,
more than all the negative ads you buy about abortion and gun
control, is what will register with the voters.
The “pros” in California still think you’ll pull it out, but
only if by election day you can turn around tens of thousands of
Democrats who are angry with you and if you can persuade those
pesky independents that deficits, new taxes and mismanagement
somehow didn’t occur on your watch. Don’t count on it.
