| | | | HOW’S THIS FOR AN inspiring, and genuine, campaign slogan: “Some call me cheap!…I’m asking for your vote mainly because I’m a grandpa.” Or this: “I am the CEO of a bio-information company, husband/father, and a practicing Druid Unitarian.” Or this: “Don’t take your freedoms for granted! For the past ten years I have been working to legalize the domestic ferret.” Only in California, kids, only in California. | |
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Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that the Golden State has more wacko candidates per capita than any other state (I mean, in Idaho, they even get elected), but thanks to California’s commitment to open government and ballot access, voters actually get to hear exactly how these freaks choose to present themselves.
Each candidate for statewide office in California gets a lengthy paragraph in the state’s voter’s guide to define himself as he chooses. While most candidates—take Gov. Gray Davis, for example—lay out a shop-worn agenda or rehash a tired political philosophy with sound-bite precision, many candidates let it all hang out.
“This is California’s version of the 15 minutes of fame,” said Mark Baldassare, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California and an expert on local politics. “Almost anyone can get listed as a candidate here and the voter’s guide is seen as their only chance to get theirmessage out.”
Which explains the statements by cheapskate Republican gubernatorial candidate Danney Ball, Druid/Libertarian for Governor Gary Copeland and Friend of the Ferret, Pat Wright, the Libertarian nominee for Lieutenant Governor. And for obscure candidates, the more abnormal the statement, the better. The message is the medium here.
“The ferret guy is getting all the press!” Copeland told me, sounding disappointed that his Druidity hasn’t garnered more attention statewide. So I asked Copeland how being a Druid would make him a great governor, especially since seeking power violates one of the fundamental tenets of Druidism (no, really—I took a course).
“I know, that’s been tough to explain,” Copeland admitted. “But Druidism is also about serving our fellow man and following your own path. And this is my path.” Copeland explained why most Americans don’t think much about Druidism. “We Druids don’t do the penis thing and say, ‘My god is better than yours.’ Our job is just to help others succeed in their lives.”
For his part, “the ferret guy” claims his public statement has helped voters see the ferret as a symbol of relentless government encroachment on personal liberty. “Ferret owners know only too well about how civil liberties can be taken away,” said Wright. “I could legally own an Asian water buffalo, but not a ferret. People are asking, if government can’t even handle the ferret issue, what can it handle?”
It obviously can’t handle traffic control. When I tracked down Ball, who’s a singing cowboy in addition to being a gubernatorial candidate, he was stuck in gridlock on some freeway, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. “Single drivers are the biggest problem!” Ball said. “Look at all these cars with just one person it them!” Pressed, Ball admitted the he, too, was alone in his vehicle—a 37-foot, gas-guzzling motor home.
And I sense that I’d caught Ball in another hypocrisy. He boasts about being so cheap “I have not spent one minute raising money to get elected.” But then why did he suggest I call him, all the way from New York, on his cell phone—which means that he was paying for the call? “I have a great rate,” he explained. “I’m thrifty. I don’t really have a lot of bad habits that cost a lot. I’m kinda boring, I guess.” (Now there’s a winning slogan!)
Ball might want to team up with Jim Dimov, a Republican candidate for governor whose public statement vowed that he would “change all unconstitutional laws for the benefit of the People, [and] will remove all corruption, bureaucracy, crime and pollution.” That sounded ambitious, yet when I called Dimov to hone his list of priorities, he actually added to it.
“Also, I’ll remove all taxes!” he said. “And I’m going to develop something called isothermic gasoline. It’s gasoline from garbage! It’ll cost 29 cents a gallon. And all the factories will have filters so there will be no pollution.” I submitted that it might be hard to implement his vision without state bureaucrats to actually do the work, so Dimov backtracked from his sacred vow. “OK, I’ll only get rid of 90 percent of the bureaucracy.” | |
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Insurance commissioner candidate Stefan Stitch made his personal statement simply by inserting the word “Watchdog” between his first and last name—the only candidate to use a nickname. Stitch said he earned the moniker from his work as risk-management analyst at Champion Rubber Products, a defense contractor which has not had a workman’s comp claim since 1951.
“Most of the workers here are former gang members from East L.A.,” he said, explaining his nickname’s origin. “A lot of them goof around, but I train them to be safe and follow the rules, so they call me ‘Watchdog.’ They also call me some pretty derogatory things, but I do think there’s some respect there.” Like Stitch’s gang members, Libertarian Attorney General candidate Ed Kuwatch hates rules, too. His slogan—”Don’t let them micromanage your life”—is a rallying cry for anyone who believes that government is trying to control us.
“Can you believe some of these rules?!” he said. “Did you know that in California, it’s illegal to transport a legally-caught trout into an area where it is illegal to catch trout without a notarized letter of permission? Where are you going to get a notarized letter on a Saturday or Sunday, when most people fish?”
Kuwatch denied ever breaking the law, claiming that the one time he caught a trout, he cooked it right away and “it fed four people.” I suggested that Kuwatch’s new slogan should be: “So fiscally conservative that I can feed four people on one trout!”
Of course, not all of California’s office-seekers are flakes. Many of the would-be public servants running for office on Tuesday simply see the voter’s guide as a way of distinguishing themselves. That’s the case for Republican controller candidate Dean Andal. Let’s face it, in a race pitting four “fiscally conservative” GOP hopefuls, the only way to distinguish yourself might indeed be to write, “I’m a husband, father and Eagle Scout.” “Can you believe that my consultant didn’t put that in the first draft?” Andal said incredulously. He then told me that no matter where he goes throughout the state, people stop him, hug him, and tell them that he’s won their vote simply because he’s an Eagle Scout.
“There are three things that being an Eagle Scout tells voters,” Andal said. “One, that you have persistence, since only about 2 percent of Boy Scouts go on to be Eagle Scouts. Two, that you have a commitment to public service. And three, that you follow the Boy Scout creed to ‘leave the campsite better than you found it.’” (Judging from the rapidity with which Andal created his three-part answer, being an Eagle Scout also confers a gift for creating enumerated lists.)
Andal’s huggy voters aside, there is a downside, of course, to using your public statement to make a, well, statement. Ferret man Wright reports that some voters have ridiculed him in public and left hostile voice mail messages. “I had one guy saying, ‘Hey, man, I’ve got a ferret in my pants for you!’” Wright said. “Obviously, these are not ferret owners.”
Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
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