Politics makes strange bedfellows it is said, and you can see that reality in the scramble of ads generated under the top two primary. Don’t be surprised if strange bedfellows actually appear together soon. The way this year’s governor’s race is shaping up I would not be amazed to see a joint news conference, for instance, with Democrat Gavin Newsom and Republican John Cox saying they want to face each other in the General Election to provide their contrasting agendas on how the state should be run.
Newsom has already been charged with boosting the Cox campaign by attaching issues to Cox in ads that move Republican voters. Although, it should not be a shock in the new world of top two electioneering that a leading candidate contrasts his position with another candidate regardless of party.
Newsom has made it clear that he would prefer a Republican opponent in hopes of coasting to the governorship. So sharing a stage with that prospective opponent would not be as strange as it seems.
For Cox, in his effort to consolidate the Republican vote, appearing with Newsom and contrasting his vision with Newsom’s could generate enthusiasm from Republican voters who want to see a fight over issues and fear an all Democratic finale.
Perhaps the two candidates appearing together is a bridge too far in this election but it would not shock if it happened.
Managing the campaign in order to make the top two and face a preferred opponent seems to be the order of top two campaign strategy. However, such a strategy has a ripple affect down ballot. The theory is that Republican congressional candidates to maintain their seats need a Republican gubernatorial candidate drawing GOP voters to the ballot—a theory many experts expound, but which Newsom rejects.
Days before the election the volatility in the governor’s race in who grabs the top two positions is clearly still in play. Yesterday on this page, Joe Mathews conjectured that John Cox might even grab the top spot; and the day before the Jeffes wrote on this site that polling is not as trustworthy as it was in the past, so can we really know what is going on?
Beyond polling there are other predictors—whether solid or not—of how things might play out.
Take the Predict It website, which offers shares in potential political outcomes. Consider it a Sports Book for politics. Predict It has a page on the California governor’s race and who might finish second. (The shareholders are nearly unanimous in their belief that Newsom will finish first.) As of this writing, Cox has a solid edge over Villaraigosa in the battle for number two, although Villaraigosa inched up a little since yesterday.
The point is the top two primary has created new strategies, new targets, and perhaps new opportunities to practice the art of political persuasion.
It also opens the door to reviving that old observation that politics indeed has the ability to create strange bedfellows. Don’t be surprised.