Simon Is Upbeat but Realistic

SANTA BARBARA —  A tradition for candidates trailing in the polls is to fend off questions about the possibility of losing by professing faith in a come-from-behind victory.

Bill Simon Jr. dispatched with that tradition Wednesday on a bus trip from Fresno to Modesto. What will he do if voters reelect his Democratic rival, Gov. Gray Davis?

“Just continue to look at ways to be of service to the people of California,” Simon said. “Probably go back to the firm.”

Coming 10 months after he left the helm of William E. Simon & Sons to run for governor, the candidate’s open contemplation of post-election opportunities marked a rare unguarded moment in a campaign that has come to resemble a rescue mission.

Simon has just 30 days to recover from a raft of campaign troubles, ranging from a money shortage to staff upheaval. He has even less time to make his case to the state’s millions of absentee voters, who can begin casting ballots Monday.

A Times poll released last week found Simon 10 points behind Davis, with only one scheduled event--Monday’s Los Angeles Times debate between the two men--that analysts say could prompt a quick turnaround.

For all that, Simon is upbeat in public, and supporters try to keep him that way.

“Bill, hang in there,” GOP volunteer Jim Hurst of Goleta told the candidate Friday at a Santa Barbara campaign stop. “You’re going to make it.”

To Hurst, a retired engineer, Simon has been “too much of a gentleman” in responding to Davis’ TV spots that depict him as a corporate swindler who cannot be trusted to govern the country’s most populous state.

“I think he should be harsher,” Hurst said.

By and large, Simon’s public demeanor is indeed gentle; a favorite exclamation is “my golly.” But the nice-guy talk has given way more and more to scathing indictments of Davis. At campaign stops last week from Orange County to Silicon Valley, Simon’s focus was on raising more doubts about the governor’s competence and integrity than Davis has raised about Simon’s.

By Simon’s telling, the governor has neglected California’s schools, spoiled its air and water, undermined its farmers and squandered the bounty of its 1990s economic boom. Simon casts Davis as an unscrupulous career politician with an insatiable thirst for campaign money.

“I call on the governor to stop selling public policy to the highest bidder,” Simon told supporters at a fairgrounds luncheon here at the foot of the Santa Ynez Mountains.

Simon expands the list of alleged Davis misdeeds whenever opportunities arise. At Los Angeles Harbor in San Pedro Friday, he blamed Davis for the shutdown of West Coast ports in a labor dispute. Simon said Davis “should have encouraged negotiations that would have kept our ports open.” Thanks to the governor, he charged, the dock lockout could soon deprive California kids of new toys.

“Davis threatens to leave children with a big lump of coal in place of Christmas gifts,” Simon said.

Davis campaign spokesman Gabriel Sanchez denied all of Simon’s accusations, saying they “smack of desperation.”

In a vast state where television is the essential vehicle for communicating with voters, the dearth of TV news cameras at most of Simon’s public events has limited the reach of his counter-assault. Like many other candidates, he has struggled to generate TV coverage of his chosen themes. Only one camera crew showed up in San Pedro; the local news of the day was the selection of a new LAPD chief.

So for Simon, swamped since June by Davis attack ads airing statewide, the launch of a TV spot introducing himself on his own terms last week was a big step forward. He said he hoped to show voters “that I’m a regular guy.”

“A lot of people don’t know me, and they don’t know my message,” Simon told a Santa Barbara reporter who asked about voters’ holding their noses as they choose between him and Davis. “Once they hear me and my message, I don’t think they’ll be holding their noses any more.”

In the ad, Simon says: “Do you know me? I survived millions of dollars of Gray Davis lies and distortions.”

“Maybe because I’ve made money, I’m not corrupted by it, like Gray Davis,” he goes on.

Hamstrung by a campaign war chest millions of dollars smaller than the governor’s, the Republican candidate has broadcast his previous ads sporadically. But Simon, who has plowed more than $9 million of his personal fortune into the race, said a new surge of donations would enable him to stay on TV every day until the election.

Among the biggest recent contributions have been $100,000 from Julie Simon Munro, a sister, and $50,000 apiece from Beverly Hills realtor William W. Singleton and the Firearms Freedom Fund of Fullerton, a group that--like Simon--opposes new gun control laws.

On the stump, Simon has combined his jabs at Davis with efforts to repair his own image, often by calling attention to his charitable donations.

“Some people criticize Republicans for being a little harsh,” Simon told GOP loyalists Monday at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. “The fact is, our heart is right. You can be compassionate and be Republican. I am compassionate. I care about people. My wife and I have helped thousands of people these last 20 years.”

And although he marketed himself as a “conservative Republican” in the primary, he has tried to tailor his general-election message to moderates and independents, notably by stressing education.

On Wednesday, he campaigned in front of a San Jose high school, where he criticized Davis for California test scores that remain low despite an overall rise during the governor’s term.

A cluster of Simon supporters chanted, “Dump Davis” and “Time for a Change.”

But bricklayer Victor Meras, a bystander dressed in bluejeans, a T-shirt and construction boots, asked Simon what he was doing in a prosperous neighborhood where schools are far from desperate.

“How come you don’t go to the east side, where they really need help?” he asked.

Simon, dressed in a business suit, told Meras that he had paid visits to a wide assortment of schools and that his family had long been dedicated to the ones in need. Simon squatted down to greet two of Meras’ four kids and told their father: “You’ve got a beautiful family.”

But Meras was unmoved by Simon’s pledge--which included few details--to fix the public school system. “I don’t think he really means it,” he said. “He just wants to get elected.”

In Santa Barbara, Simon returned to another issue he has used--albeit sparingly--to position himself toward the political center: the environment. The Sierra Club and other major conservation groups have endorsed Davis, but in his speech Simon cast himself as more dedicated than the governor to fighting offshore oil drilling and the dumping of radioactive waste.

Simon acknowledged later that he has invested in oil-drilling companies. He also reaffirmed his opposition to a bill signed by Davis that requires a cut in tailpipe emissions to combat global warming. Simon declined to say whether California should address global warming. Scientists, he said, remain divided on whether it exists.

“I’m not prepared to tell you today where the weight of the evidence is,” he said.

Simon’s difficulty in reaching to the middle without alienating conservatives was underscored more visibly last week on gun control. On Tuesday in Sacramento, he said he was glad to score the National Rifle Assn.’s endorsement. But in a radio interview two days later in Los Angeles, he said: “Just because they endorse me doesn’t mean that I endorse everything they stand for.” He declined to specify any disagreements with the NRA.

For Davis, Simon’s opposition to gun control, like his stand against abortion rights, has been a tool to court moderates, particularly women, by arguing that his GOP rival is out of step with mainstream Californians. Asked to respond to that argument Tuesday in Sacramento, Simon shifted attention back to Davis and the economy.

“I believe that we need to be in step with our people,” he said. “But we need to be focused on what’s important to our people each and every day.”

That was his reason, Simon said, for promising to improve schools and stimulate the economy by rolling back state regulations, reducing employers’ costs for insuring workers injured on the job, and cutting the state’s tax on capital gains. On the bus ride to Modesto, Simon returned to those themes, but also looked forward to the end of Davis’ ad campaign.

“People’s memories are short, so on Nov. 6, or a couple weeks thereafter, many people won’t really remember a lot of these baldfaced lies,” he said.

Would Simon run for public office a second time?

“Sure,” he said. “Absolutely.”