Davis’ 4th-to-1st Comeback ‘Proved the Pundits Wrong’

Sitting at a lunch table one day in March, Gray Davis was the picture of a delusional optimist. That very morning, a statewide poll placed him fourth in the governor’s race, behind a Republican and two well-heeled Democrats.

For weeks, he had been pounded by friend and foe alike. His rivals were flooding the airwaves with ads. Davis backers were literally screaming at the candidate to do something.

A low point came when Davis was forced to gather his allies and put down a near-mutiny. In a crucial confrontation, he planted in the crowd loyalists who rose to defend him in front of the unsuspecting onlookers.

Still, with a public calm honed by two decades in politics, Lt. Gov. Davis laid out his predictions over lunch that gloomy March day. He would win the primary by 15 to 18 points--guaranteed.

Davis was wrong. He won by 22.

It was a remarkable comeback by one of the state’s most consistently underrated politicians, aided by smoke and mirrors, abetted by the miscues of his opponents--and achieved thanks to no small amount of good luck.

Much of it was utterly beyond Davis’ control. One opponent, Rep. Jane Harman, never had the bottomless campaign wallet everyone assumed. She would personally spend $15 million, tops.

Another, financier Al Checchi, stubbornly relied on a misplaced strategy and faulty campaign polls showing him competitive even after he was told he would lose. The numbers whiz failed to listen when others said his numbers were wrong.

Davis’ straits, it turns out, were far worse than he ever let on.

Facing rejection by longtime friends in the labor movement, Davis fought a vigorous effort by national bosses to block state officials from endorsing him--a move that would have effectively killed his campaign.

Money was so tight that he spent the spring worrying about a puny purchase of radio time while opponents were lavishing millions on TV ads. His team talked about producing a reel of fake television spots, strictly for show, to convince sniping supporters that momentum was building. But he couldn’t afford it.

It was hand-to-hand combat in a nuclear age and, in the end, the guerrillas won. Hence, Davis mounted the stage late Tuesday night, beaming, to state the obvious:

“Californians, today you’ve defied the experts,” he said. “You’ve proved the pundits wrong.”

The Feinstein Threat

A giant shadow loomed over the governor’s race, one that Davis knew well and could do absolutely nothing about. It was Dianne Feinstein.

The senior United States senator from California was dithering about whether to run. Davis was a factor. In 1992, they had clashed in the Democratic Senate primary, and Davis earned her undying enmity by running a TV spot comparing her to Leona Helmsley, the New York hotelier-turned-felon.

Some Feinstein allies thought she might be lured into this year’s race by a desire to squash him again. Still, she hesitated.

Although her indecision hurt potential candidates such as former White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta and state Controller Kathleen Connell, it badly hurt Davis. For months in 1997 and early 1998, donors refused to give, just in case Feinstein jumped in. Activists too sat on their hands.

There was another problem looming for Davis--a candidate who could, even more than Feinstein, change the environment of the governor’s race simply by opening his wallet. His name was Al Checchi, the utterly unknown, fabulously wealthy co-chairman of Northwest Airlines, who had a yen for politics and a desire to start at the top.

In late 1996, Checchi began publicly ruminating about the governor’s race. A few months later, he had assembled a high-priced campaign team and was on the road, selling himself to audiences from Eureka to El Centro. He said he was only considering a bid, but actually had all but made up his mind.

He fancied himself the outsider-savior, the man who could restructure California’s lumbering government and make it limber. He believed that voters were primed to take a risk on a non-politician. For a while, it worked.

Checchi made the rounds with every five-and-dime political group he could find, repeating a favorite riff that California was failing its youngsters by fouling the schools and not investing in the future.

In the audiences, campaign manager Darry Sragow recalled, “the heads were nodding.” But as 1997 wore on, they stopped nodding.

“There was less anger, fingers weren’t being pointed with the same kind of intensity,” Sragow said. “The change occurred literally before our eyes. . . . As it turns out, we may have underestimated their sense of satisfaction.”

But Checchi, convinced he was right, kept making his pessimistic pitch.

To Davis, Checchi and Feinstein served as pincers. One came from the right and cut off his access to activists. The other came from the left and exponentially increased the pressure for Davis to raise money.

Cash was a constant problem. Voters in 1996 had approved campaign reforms that limited state candidates to $1,000 in donations per person. That was particularly bleak news for Davis, who had long relied on the largess of a relatively small number of donors willing to cut big checks.

He had transferred $4 million into his campaign account before the limits took effect Jan. 1, 1997. But he wanted to save that money to finance television ads in the closing weeks of the campaign. The money he needed to boost himself before then dried up. Davis traveled constantly, holding fund-raisers, imploring people to remember his decades of service.

“Voters are not looking for an entertainer or someone wildly charismatic to be their governor,” he said plaintively.

He insisted that he was in the governor’s race for keeps, no matter what Feinstein decided. But some close to Davis were certain that had she run for governor, he would have sought reelection as lieutenant governor. For all his public protestations, it was an option he privately never ruled out.

Davis was in limbo. Then came two weeks that made all the difference.

A Pivotal Ruling

The news last Jan. 6 flashed around the state like wildfire. A federal court had tossed out the campaign finance limits. Within hours, Davis and his allies were pressing donors for cash--lots of it.

“It’s a new ballgame,” his campaign manager, Garry South, exulted.

Davis was still celebrating the news when, two weeks later, Feinstein called a news conference. “I will not be a candidate for governor at this time,” she said.

Two of Davis’ biggest problems were dispatched, but many assumed his campaign was already doomed. Soon after, Jane Harman, a congresswoman from Torrance, announced that she would enter the race. Although she had no statewide name recognition or fund-raising base, she and her husband, Sidney, were multimillionaires. And she was female--no small consequence in a party whose every Senate and gubernatorial nominee since 1988 had been a woman.

Harman entered the race March 6--a week after she began airing mom-and-apple-pie television ads that introduced her to voters. Now she and Checchi were both running commercials. Davis, still husbanding his cash, was silent. On March 18, an opinion poll by the Field organization was published: Davis was dead last among the four major candidates, including Republican Dan Lungren. Among the Democrats, he was third.

For Davis, campaign manager South said, “it looked like a total state of collapse.” But that day, Davis offered his forecast of landslide victory.

March, it turned out, would be Davis’ most crucial month. As it opened, things appeared so grim that Davis and his staff considered making up the fake reel of television ads. They would never be run--the campaign still hadn’t enough money--but maybe a look at them would quiet the incessant criticism from panicked supporters. The backers wanted Davis to spend his money right there and then, whatever the consequences.

“We were going to meetings where everyone was saying, ‘What the hell’s wrong with Gray Davis?’ ” said one Davis intimate. “ ‘He’s not running a campaign. Nothing’s happening. . . . This Checchi guy’s all over the place! What is going on here?’ ”

On March 4, desperation drove the campaign to invite about 50 major financial backers and other supporters to a meeting. They gathered in a private room at the Wyndham Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. Pollster Paul Maslin put on a show, complete with pie charts. South did his shtick, sharing research showing that Davis’ message of experienced leadership would sell, if only they could save their resources for a big TV splash the last six weeks.

Then Davis let the supporters have it.

“Give me the benefit of the doubt,” he pleaded, according to one member of the audience. “I do know how to win elections in this state. . . . Help me do what I need to do instead of telling me what I need to do.’ ”

For good measure, the campaign had enlisted some loyalists to stand up and agree that Davis should hold off spending money, saving it for the crucial weeks before the election.

The supporters bought it. The campaign quickly followed with Davis’ formal announcement tour, which brought a surge of momentum heading into the state Democratic convention in late March.

Still, money was a concern. On March 23--Oscar night--Checchi switched from positive ads to ones attacking Davis. At the same time, Davis was fighting a rear-guard action against the national AFL-CIO’s effort to block his endorsement by the California Labor Federation.

“The feeling was Checchi wasn’t all that bad, he had all the money, why antagonize him? The feeling was Gray really didn’t have a chance,” said one Washington consultant with close ties to organized labor.

Davis, who declined to be interviewed for this article, went to his media strategist, David Doak. “ ‘I’m not sure I can hold it together and keep the money coming and keep everybody on board unless we show something,’ ” Davis told him.

The result was a modest, scrupulously targeted series of radio ads. The campaign placed them on stations they thought might catch the ear of union supporters--the better to create a sense of movement and deflect the effort to block his endorsement.

It worked. The buzz grew more positive. Momentum, sometimes invisible to outsiders, began to build. On April 20, after holding off its own supporters for months, the Davis campaign had enough money to finance television ads until election day. Davis hit the airwaves.

The impact was instant.

Checchi Starts to Slump

Checchi’s ads had been a bone of contention for a while. Some supporters saw them as stock, typical, what any hack politician would air. Trouble was, Checchi’s pitch was that he wasn’t one of them; he was different.

Supporters complained that the real guy didn’t get across. “He is more than the person who has been reflected on television,” Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido said as the election neared.

Checchi’s pollster told him that the ads were working. Everyone else said they weren’t. The first statewide poll to be published after Davis went on the air, an April 29 Field survey, showed Davis vaulting to first place, over Checchi.

People went to Checchi’s pollster, Mark Penn, to voice their concerns.

“Penn just said, ‘Everybody’s wrong.’ They ignored the warning signs. It was partly arrogance, partly not knowing what was going on,” said one consultant unaffiliated with any of the candidates.

Others went to Checchi himself and told him his campaign was in trouble. Checchi, with his background in finance, leaned on the numbers. “How do you argue against the numbers to a numbers guy?” asked one with knowledge of the conversations.

Once Davis grabbed the lead, he never let go.

As Checchi started his downward slide, Harman too was in trouble. She had blossomed early when she introduced herself to voters. But she gained a reputation for vagueness and, soon, was undermined by Checchi’s ads. She responded with a spot of her own, pledging to stay on the high road. But wherever she bought ads, Checchi outbought her. She bought more, and he outbought her again.

Ultimately, Harman’s campaign had to decide whether to compete there and then, or save its money for the closing weeks. Although she never publicly acknowledged it, Harman and her husband had capped their personal contribution at $15 million. Fighting off Checchi--who would end up spending roughly $40 million--would have cost much more.

“We could just not figure out how to do it without blowing the top off the budget,” said one campaign strategist.

Insiders knew how it would end weeks before it did. A Los Angeles Times poll published May 22 had Davis lengthening his lead and most voters disliking Checchi and uninterested in Harman. A week later, a Field poll reinforced the news.

A full week before the election, campaign manager Darry Sragow called Checchi, who was riding a yellow school bus on the first day of his weeklong push for his education plan. “It’s just not going to happen,” he told Checchi.

In the end, Gray Davis could have credited any number of things--the lifting of campaign funding curbs, Feinstein’s decision to stay out, the public’s distaste for Checchi’s negative ads, Harman’s late start, the end of anti-politician sentiment among voters. On the Sunday before the election, laughing in the bright sun outside First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, he chose the humblest reason.

“I am,” he said, “the luckiest guy on earth.”