In 2001, Gray Davis and his wife paid roughly $55,000 in state
and federal taxes. Bill Simon paid $1.5 million in state and
federal taxes. The year before he paid almost $2 million. Yet,
according to Davis, Simon isn’t paying his “fair share.”
Davis likes rich people as long as they donate to his campaign.
But if they run against him, he suddenly turns into Karl Marx and
treats them as lepers. Davis is playing the class warfare card
frequently these days, casting himself as a working-class guy
forced to fundraise by challenges from “billionaires.” He tells
reporters that he lives in a small condo in West Hollywood.
But the rich man in the race is Gray Davis. His campaign
treasury is overflowing at over $30 million, while Simon scrapes by
with $5 million (at last count). Were the circumstances reversed,
Davis would probably be whining about the unfairness of fundraising
inequities and saying that “campaigns should not be decided by
money.”
California reporters appear to view Simon’s personal wealth as a
character flaw while remaining fairly incurious about Davis’s
fundraising methods. After weeks of hounding Simon for his tax
returns, the candidate showed them to reporters this week. This of
course didn’t satisfy them, because the candidate gave them only 3
hours or so to examine them. How are reporters supposed to nail the
candidate with such a limitation? They wanted to dissect them at
their leisure at a local H&R Block.
The Los Angeles Times complained that an “independent
unraveling of the candidate’s convoluted finances was virtually
impossible.” Translation: We are too uninformed to know what to
make of them. When reporters pouted to Simon that he wasn’t letting
them take his returns to “tax experts,” Simon replied, “You’ve got
plenty of time to take a look at it” and suggested they “take
notes.”
So now reporters have a new issue: Simon won’t release his tax
returns on their terms. Until Simon lets them pass his tax returns
around the newsroom, it is “unclear,” the Times intones,
“whether Monday’s disclosure” would “lay the matter to rest.”
Unclear? It is altogether clear that the matter lays in the media’s
hands and they have no intention of letting it rest.
The Times thought it fair to run a picture accompanying
its story of a protester with a box on his head reading, “Simon is
a tax cheat.”
The more you pay in taxes, it appears, the less respect you get.
Simon has forked over to the state and federal government in the
last 11 years at least $11 million. He has also given millions to
charity.
But none of this impresses the media. They are far more worried
about Simon’s private finances than Davis’s public mismanagement.
Davis’s $24 billion dollar deficit is not as disqualifying to them
as whether or not a candidate used a tax shelter.
Simon can’t win this race unless he circumvents the media
through effective television and radio advertising, or somehow
shames them into covering the race with a modicum of objectivity.
By pointing out media bias against him, Simon is likely to forge a
bond with California voters, many of whom find the liberal media
monopoly in the state tiresome.
Davis and his friends in the media are convinced that they
represent the views and values of the average Californian. But the
success of conservative initiatives in the state — on marriage,
affirmative action, bilingual education, etc. — indicates that
their liberal elitism is hardly the norm. “Global warming” and
“racial reparations” — two of Davis’s enthusiasms this past year -
place him farther outside the California mainstream than Simon.
And with Davis raising taxes on Californians to pay for his
mismanagement, they aren’t like to care about Simon and “tax
shelters.” They may even ask Simon where they can find them.
