The Newsom campaign's in troubleBy Tim Redmond
Lots of interesting opinions about what the loss of Eric Jaye means to the Newsom campaign. Paul Hogarth at Beyond Chron Thinks that Garry South, who is now in charge, could lead to Newsom’s downfall. Brian Leubitz at Calitics thinks that
Eric Jaye was an enormous asset to Newsom's campaign. It is hard to see how a departure of somebody with that kind of relationship and with that kind of intricate knowledge of the candidate is good for the campaign.
And Jerry Roberts, who has been covering politics in this state even longer than I have, thinks this is exactly what the Newsom campaign needs:
The last political consultant to elect a Democrat governor of the state, the Duke of Darkness is a bare-knuckles, in-your-face, shoe-leather, hand-to-hand combat veteran who has two main tasks: 1) Get his candidate to raise a ship load of money and 2) Needle, badger and tweak primary rival Jerry Brown at every turn.
A few thoughts:
1. Everyone agrees that South is, in political terms, an asshole, someone who loves negative campaigning and sees the key to victory as raising tons of money and trashing your opponent. He has had both success (Gary Davis, at first) and failure (Gray Davis, later; Joe Lieberman, Steve Westly) with that approach.
But the thing to keep in mind is that, whatever you think of Newsom’s politics, this isn’t his style. Newsom’s not a brawler; he wouldn’t even show up at supervisors meetings to argue with Chris Daly. He’s much more of a stand-in-the-well-scripted-public-meeting-with-a-cordless-mike kinda guy. In fact, if this becomes a bloodbath, Newsom loses; he can’t take a punch. Real conflict makes his nervous. And I don’t think Jerry Brown will come out of the gate with a negative campaign, but if Newsom starts it, Brown will respond.
2. Newsom ought to be the clear front-runner in this race. It’s almost a textbook campaign -- the new, fresh face, the young, tech-savvy charmer with the grand ideas against the been-there-done-that crabby old pol who has changed his political stripes so many times it’s hard to know what he actually believes in any more. That’s what Eric Jaye was trying to do. Sure, the fundraising was slow, and Jaye mistakenly thought that Newsom could pull an Obama (I’ve seen Barack Obama, and Mr. Mayor, you’re no Barack Obama). But if they could raise enough to be competitive, they had the right strategy.
3. It’s hard to win a Democratic primary without the progressives in California. And South has done everything possible in his career to anger and alienate progressives.
4. Eric Jaye is no fool -- he had hitched his own star to Newsom long ago, was looking not just at Sacramento but beyond -- and if he thought South’s approach was the correct one, that it would lead to victory, he wouldn’t have been so quick to bail.
I dunno -- Jerry Brown ought to be terribly vulnerable at this point, but I think Newsom’s campaign is in trouble.
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Comments (4)
Newsom's campaign has been in trouble ever since he first announced he was running for Guv.
Posted by JSC | July 29, 2009 06:04 PM
Well, I don't know about that, JSC -- I'm not a Newsom fan, but I think the race ought to be his to lose. And that's only because his opponent has so much baggage.
Posted by tim redmond | July 29, 2009 08:48 PM
Musta been some serious shit going down if Jaye cashed in all of those years of carefully cultivated investment at this juncture.
That said, Jaye has made 15% of most all of what money ran through Newsom's various campaigns since 2000, so he's probably not hurting, but he's not going anywhere further up politically, either.
Newsom's toast because he's alienated both extremes, social conservatives and economic progressives, extremes that mobilize in elections. The social conservatives will attack him and he will not have the economic liberals on his side fighting in defense.
-marc
Posted by marcos | July 30, 2009 08:14 AM
Is there any chance Westly throws his hat in the ring again?
Posted by Mike M | July 30, 2009 07:35 PM