By Tim Redmond
Now that Antonio Villaraigosa appears not to be running for governor, the most populous state in the nation, the world’s eighth-largest economy, is headed for a very ugly choice. The Democratic Party has exactly two prominent candidates to run California — Jerry Brown, who has become a conservative with his no-new-taxes pledge and his tough-on-crime stuff, and Gavin Newsom, who has been a pretty awful mayor of San Francisco.
Is this the best that the state can do?
It might be — and here’s the problem. In a state this big, with more than 36 million people, a race for governor is all about image. It’s about television ads and media hype — and most people don’t pay attention to the details. Brown is ahead in the polls almost entirely because of name recognition; he’s the attorney general, has been govenor before, his dad was governor, he’s run for president — people have heard of him. Liberal Democrats who are older and remember when he was the dynamic young, progressive leader think back fondly to those days. Democrats who are more moderate look at his hard-ass love-developers-and-cops tenure as mayor of Oakland. Nobody has any idea how he would fix the state’s economy; I don’t think he knows himself.
Newsom is catching up, and will make this a close race, because he’s the new young face — and because he’s got a team of consultants and producers who are experts at creating false images. He’ll run as the “green mayor,” although he’s opposed the most important environmental measures in the city. He’ll run as a sensible leader who balanced a budget with no borrowing or taxes (although he’s doing it by destroying the local safety net). What most voters won’t see is the arrogant, petulant guy who has surrounded himself with fawning accolytes and nasty hit men. They won’t see a person who is way over his head in his current job, and has no business moving on to a much bigger one.
And that’s what we’ve got.
I wasn’t kidding last week when we talked about splitting up the state. It sounds like a radical idea, but think about it: If we were electing a governor of the coastal counties between Sonoma and Los Angeles, Jerry Brown wouldn’t even be a factor — and a lot of smart, experienced progressives would have a shot at the job. We wouldn’t be facing this ugly choice of finding someone either bland or conservative enough to appeal to the Central Valley. The voting population would be much smaller, and thus the vast sums of money that candidates have to raise would be significantly reduced.
We might even get a good governor.
In the meantime, we have to do better than this. Is there nobody else out there, no real change candidate who might actually be able to take on the serious problems facing California?