Rivals Trade Charges With Tough, Negative Ads

After months of intermittent sniping, full-fledged war has broken out in the race for California governor.

The battle is, as ever, being fought on the television airwaves, where a pair of new advertisements has escalated the fight among Democrats by shifting the focus from policy to character.

And if truth is the first casualty of war--as the old saying goes--then substance may be a close second in this campaign.

In the harshest attack he has leveled in a series of negative spots, business tycoon Al Checchi accuses Lt. Gov. Gray Davis of exploiting his public position for personal advancement, allegedly trading “cash for favors� while serving a few years ago as state controller.

Davis counters with an advertisement charging Checchi with pillaging Northwest Airlines after taking over in 1989, firing thousands of people and forcing thousands more to take pay cuts, all for Checchi’s personal enrichment.

Hyperbole aside--and there is plenty to go around--the timing is no accident. The tough new spots, which began airing over the weekend, come as the primary contest enters the critical final stretch--and after yet another opinion poll last week confirmed the volatility of the race.

Thirty days from the election is typically “when you start trying to focus the electorate,� said Barbara O’Connor, a campaign advertising expert at Cal State Sacramento. “And the way to focus people is through negative advertising. Despite the fact we all lament it, it does work.�

And it seems to work particularly well under the current circumstances, with a crop of scarcely known candidates who enjoy little in the way of voter loyalty.

Each of the three major Democratic contestants--Checchi, Davis and Torrance Rep. Jane Harman--has led the race at various times within the past several weeks, according to published polls. Their respective rise and fall in those surveys has closely corresponded to the advertising that has saturated California’s airwaves.

The importance of those ads--in a state where any actual contact between voter and candidate is almost incidental--cannot be exaggerated. Research by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 80% of likely voters had seen at least some advertising in the race. More crucially, 75% of the undecided voters had seen the TV spots. (More than half of the respondents specifically cited Checchi’s ads.)

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The mega-millionaire has set new campaign spending records in this first run for public office. He has remained at or near the top of every voter survey in the past few weeks, thanks to an ad campaign that started running around Thanksgiving.

Harman enjoyed a burst of celebrity after she first hit the airwaves in March, surging to a nominal lead in the statewide Field Poll. But the most recent Field survey, released last week, showed Harman dropping back to third place after a relentless pounding in Checchi’s advertisements.

Davis, the newcomer to the advertising front who started his spots just two weeks ago, has since stepped into first place.

Today, any Californian spending any time in front of a television set can fairly easily define the state of the race--not by the meager political coverage but simply by watching the commercials.

Harman is airing spots intended to repair the damage inflicted by Checchi. Checchi has trained his advertising artillery on Davis. And Davis--having witnessed what happened to Harman--is fighting back against Checchi.

“We’re not going to allow him to do to us what he did to Jane Harman,� said Garry South, director of the Davis campaign. “If he thought we were going to roll over and lay dead, he badly miscalculated.�

The fourth major candidate in the contest, Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, is running virtually unopposed. Normally, that would mean he could save his limited resources by waiting until after the June 2 primary to begin advertising.

But under the state’s new blanket primary system--which allows any registered voter to choose any candidate, regardless of party affiliation--Checchi has been drawing considerable GOP support. That, in turn, has forced Lungren to begin airing his own costly series of ads to remind fellow Republicans that he’s around and to prevent serious defections.

Once started, negative advertising has a way of compounding. Charge is met by countercharge, and on and on.

All four of the major candidates will meet next week in the first--and, so far, only--debate of the gubernatorial primary campaign.

Aside from that brief interlude, any serious discussion of how the candidates might perform as governor--or how they would deal with issues that voters might actually care about--may be purely coincidental.

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Ad Watch ’98

An analysis of current political advertisements

An ad for Al Checchi says:

“Protecting your tax and pension money. As state controller, Gray Davis took over half a million dollars in campaign contributions from Wall Street and bond lawyers. In exchange, Davis gave them over $7 billion in state investments. Davis was so blatant about trading cash for favors that they finally made it against the law. Al Checchi hasn’t taken a dime from special interests. That’s why he can stand up to them and fight to cut state bureaucracy and pass competency tests for teachers. Checchi for governor.�

The Facts Are:

The totals are not in dispute. Davis received the support from 55 donors between 1984 and 1996. That period pre- and post-dated his years as controller and lapped into his final two years as an assemblyman and his first two years as lieutenant governor.

The nearly $7.5 billion in business is a mish-mash of contract types, and the sum represents a small fraction of the state’s $124-billion pension fund. Evidence of quid pro quo is tenuous: Firms often were selected not by Davis himself but by staff members or subcommittees of the commissions on which Davis served. Where confirming votes were taken, approval was usually unanimous.

The law barring commissioners from voting on contracts from firms that had given them money was approved by pension fund trustees in February 1998, three years after Davis left the controllers’ office. Criticism of such “pay-to-play� practice does date to 1994, however, when the federal Securities Exchange Commission passed a similar rule.

Checchi is worth more than half a billion dollars, so he does not need campaign contributions.

Analysis:

This attack spot first aired just days after a new poll showed Davis reaching a nominal lead in the governor’s race. It is intended to sully Davis’ personal reputation and counter his political strong suit: that he alone among the Democratic hopefuls can claim years of government experience.

An ad for Gray Davis says:

“Newspapers have praised Gray Davis’ plan to invest in education. He’s even endorsed by California’s teachers. So why would Al Checchi sling mud saying Davis won’t invest in schools? What kind of man would smear his opponents? Al Checchi, a man who fired 4,000 people, forced thousands to take pay cuts while paying himself $10 million a year. Checchi, a man who killed kindergarten legislation to save a tax break for his airline. Gray Davis, experience money can’t buy.�

The Facts Are:

Checchi became co-chairman of Northwest Airlines after a 1989 buyout. When the airline industry hit turbulent times in the early 1990s, Northwest instituted layoffs eventually totaling 4,300 workers.

Northwest pilots, machinists and flight attendants agreed to $833 million in wage and other concessions in exchange for 30% of the company’s common stock and three board seats. Wages snapped back to prevailing industry rates after three years. Checchi says the $10 million annual management fee paid to his consulting firm was required by the airline’s lenders. He later canceled it.

In 1995, Northwest successfully lobbied against legislation in its home state of Minnesota that would have ended a property tax exemption for tenants of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The projected revenues had been for daylong kindergarten for needy children. Northwest and other tenants said the tax unfairly singled them out.

Analysis:

This advertisement marks the first direct TV assault on Checchi, who launched his own negative ads several weeks ago, targeting both Davis and Torrance Rep. Jane Harman. The aim is to undercut Checchi’s support among Democrats--particularly blue-collar workers and union members--by portraying him as a greedy businessman.