Pubdate: Sun, 27 Aug 2000
Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News
Contact:  750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190
Fax: (408) 271-3792
Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
Author: George F. Will, columnist for the Washington Post.

SENATE HOPES WILL SUFFER IF BUSH WRITES OFF CALIFORNIA

Campbell Needs Help From The Top

WHEN Tom Campbell, Silicon Valley congressman and Republican nominee against
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is reminded of 1992, the year he narrowly lost the
nomination for the Senate, he murmurs, ``Infandum . . . ubes renovare
dolorem.'' If your memory of Virgil is rusty, that means: Too deep for words
is the grief you bid me to renew.

In plain English: Don't remind me.

When Campbell lost that nomination to an ideological conservative, he worked
with allies in the state Legislature to change the nominating process to the
blanket primary ballot used this year for the first time. (And last: The
Supreme Court recently said it unconstitutionally infringes parties' rights
to freely associate with like-minded people.) With Democratic and Republican
candidates listed on one ballot, and everyone eligible to vote for anyone,
Campbell was the top Republican vote-getter.

But having engineered an end-run around his party's base, he cannot quite
define his distinctive constituency. He supports normalized trade with
China. But so does Feinstein. ``I'm the cheapest man in Congress,'' he says,
and the National Taxpayers Union calls him the least willing member to spend
money. But with burgeoning surpluses, parsimony seems passe. He favors
abortion rights and gay rights, but so does she. He calls himself a
libertarian, but favors, as she does, more government regulation of
political speech (campaign finance reform). He wants to replace the income
tax with a national consumption tax, but the public senses that such
systemic change is impossible, given the way the tax code is woven into so
many social expectations. A tenured law professor a Stanford, Campbell sued
President Clinton, charging that the use of U.S. military forces in Kosovo
without congressional approval was unconstitutional. That is arguable but
uninteresting to 99.99 percent of Californians.

Campbell has an economics Ph.D. from the Vatican of free market theology,
the University of Chicago, and was editor of the Law Review when earning his
Harvard law degree, after which he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Byron
White. He testified for the confirmation of Robert Bork. Were Campbell to
enter the Senate as Pat Moynihan leaves it, he would inherit the title as
the most interesting mind in the chamber. He could be a broader-gauge John
McCain, with more than the one-note radicalism of campaign finance reform.
He plans to poach from Al Gore's populism, denouncing ``special interests''
that supposedly manipulate Washington.

Feinstein, former mayor of San Francisco, has hitherto run statewide three
times -- unsuccessfully for governor in 1990 (losing to Pete Wilson 49
percent to 46 percent), successfully in 1992 for the remainder of the Senate
term Wilson yielded to become governor, re-elected in 1994 to a full term.
So she is known from the Oregon border to the Mexican border. His name
recognition is about half her 95 percent. The Campbell campaign's positive
thinkers say: If he is just 11 points behind (48 to 37 in their poll, done
by Zogby) with half Feinstein's name recognition, the race will become
winnable as he becomes known.

But how will he do that, spending much less than $10 million in a five-week
post-Olympics sprint? This, in a state that six years ago soaked up almost
three times that much, spent by Feinstein's last opponent, Michael
Huffington. Campbell's aides hope to entice news media into paying
attention. However, that hope may be delusional in a state where negligible
political interest explains why no Los Angeles or San Francisco television
station has a bureau covering state government in Sacramento.

Even though Feinstein is on the Senate Appropriations Committee, a terrific
perch for fund-raising, she has only a few million in cash on hand, partly
because Gore and other Democrats have vacuumed California clean of money,
partly because she looks secure, partly because she is rich enough to write
herself a whopping check, as she did against Huffington.

Last week George Bush's post-convention television advertising began in 21
states, but not California. Bush's campaign says he, unlike his father in
1992 and Bob Dole in 1996, will fight for the state's 54 electoral votes,
noting that he has been there every month since March -- twice in May and
June -- and will be back in September, when his ads will run in some media
markets.

Campbell hopes that, come late September, Bush does not conclude that
California is too expensive a gamble. Campbell's slender hopes require that
Republican turnout not be depressed by the top of the ticket pulling out. As
in 1992. Infandum . . . iubes renovare dolorem.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk