Rivals in GOP Race Launch New Attacks

The three top Republican candidates for governor continued their fight Wednesday over who stands truest to GOP values, bickering over taxes, truth-telling and--improbably--San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

Richard Riordan and Bill Simon Jr. broadcast new ads attacking each other, even as Riordan lamented the campaign’s negative tone.

Bill Jones took to the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to criticize former Mayor Riordan’s eight-year residency and to accuse Riordan and Simon of showing up late to the Republican Party.

But it was Brown--the liberal Republicans love to hate--who became the subject of the most vigorous finger-pointing after an article in the San Jose Mercury News offered a Simon link to Brown’s successful 1999 reelection campaign

The newspaper reported that SKS-Simon, a joint venture of Simon’s family investment company and a San Francisco developer, gave $95,000 to an organization that funded a series of last-minute, pro-Brown election mailers.

Simon, asked about the contribution during a campaign stop in Burbank, said he had “no responsibility for that whatsoever, no knowledge of it, no part in the decision.”

He compared his investment company to a bank that provides homeowner loans. “You don’t tell them what color to paint the house,” Simon said.

Still, the revelation was fodder for Riordan and Jones, who seized on the contribution as evidence that Simon--who touts himself as the one undiluted conservative in the race--had been less than forthcoming about his political past.

Riordan, who started the campaign as Simon’s friend and even urged him to run for governor, denounced his rival as a hypocrite.

“He’s somebody that’s given 10 times as much to Willie Brown as I gave to Willie Brown. And yet he sat silent while I was getting beat up on that issue,” Riordan said at an appearance in Huntington Beach.

The former mayor, who has been battered by opponents for his generous support of Democratic campaigns and causes, donated $10,000 in 1990 to the Committee for an Independent Legislature, which was established by then-Assembly Speaker Brown to promote the election of Democrats.

Riordan, whose once-commanding lead over Simon has evaporated under a withering advertising assault, campaigned at a beachfront construction site, surrounded by electricians in yellow hard hats.

The candidate won applause from the nonunion electricians when he vowed to allow contractors to bid on public contracts regardless of whether they employ union members.

“I’m not anti-union,” he said. “I think that workers have a right to be members of a union. But workers also have a right not to be members of a union.”

Turning to the campaign, Riordan at one point lamented the negative tone of the race. “The campaigning that’s been done, it’s disgusting,” he said. “... It’s the wrong, wrong message to give to our voters.”

But he also suggested that he may have erred by not striking back forcefully enough at Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, who has spent millions on attack ads in the GOP primary. “Maybe I haven’t been out there hitting hard enough,” Riordan said.

There was no such hesitation Wednesday.

Riordan pressed his criticism of Simon with a new radio spot citing his rival’s lack of political experience and renewing attacks on the first-time candidate for failing to vote in past elections. On a more personal note, the ad drew a contrast between the way each man acquired his considerable wealth.

“Dick Riordan, a self-made businessman, turned failing companies around,” the ad stated. “Bill Simon inherited his family’s multimillion-dollar investment company.”

Asked about the claim at his second stop of the day--a tour of a guitar factory in Fullerton--Simon replied, “Once again, Dick’s factually wrong. The record is clear. I’ve been a successful businessman.... I’d stack my record up against Dick’s.”

Simon responded even more forcefully on the airwaves, with a new negative spot on taxes. “Dick Riordan advocated for nearly a dozen tax increases over the past decade,” the TV spot charged, and it reprised Riordan’s June 2000 description of former President Bill Clinton as “the greatest leader of the free world.”

Separately, a handful of pro-Simon legislators gathered on the Capitol steps to bash Riordan on the tax issue.

Echoing Simon’s ad, they faulted Riordan for failing to support President Bush’s proposed tax cut and backing a tax increase proposed by Clinton in 1993.

“Either you’re in favor of tax cuts, or you’re not,” said state Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside). “Bill Simon has pledged not to raise taxes ... and Dick Riordan has equivocated every single time he’s had the chance to make that pledge.”

Speaking to reporters afterward, a Riordan spokesman rejected that characterization, saying the ex-mayor is “the only candidate in the race who has a record of not raising taxes” during two terms in City Hall.

“Then you have Bill Simon, who hasn’t even bothered to vote on basic bond and tax issues that were vital to Los Angeles,” said Kevin Spillane, political director of Riordan’s campaign.

In Los Angeles, Secretary of State Jones seized on a grab bag of issues--the size of the city’s government, contributions to Willie Brown, Simon’s spotty voting record--to argue that he alone has the experience in elected office and Republican politics to beat Davis in November.

Straining to be heard over the sound of downtown traffic, Jones said of his opponents, “They don’t vote. They give to whoever they think is going to win and then they turn around and expect the Republican Party to support them when they have not been there for us.”

Suggesting that Simon lacked government experience and Riordan lacked a true Republican pedigree, Jones said to win in November the GOP needs to offer Californians “a real choice... a Republican choice.”

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Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak and Jenifer Warren contributed to this report.