If you’re looking for a clue about whether Republican Tom Campbell is giving up his long-shot run for governor to switch to the Senate race, it may be what Sherlock Holmes called “the dog that didn’t bark.”
It’s been four days since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger released his new budget and Campbell has been MIA, with nary a speech, blog post or white board presentation. That’s not like the economics professor who takes pride in being a government finance geek.
Campbell hasn’t said a word about any change in plans, but there’s lots of evidence out there for a political CSI team.
On Campbell’s campaign web site, you’ll find plenty on “Tom Campbell in the News,” but not a single piece speculating about the possible political switcheroo. It’s not that they’re hard to find, since you can see them here, here and here, just for starters.
While Campbell told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci last month that he “was in the governor’s race,” he pointedly didn’t make any promises about how just long that was going to be true.
By Monday, however, a Campbell spokesman was denouncing “unfounded rumors,” but still telling reporters that “Tom will make his plans known soon.”
Now it would be easy enough to defuse any rumors by having Campbell, who’s never been shy when it comes to chatting with the press, to just stand in front of a microphone and say he’s in the governor’s race to stay.
That hasn’t happened.
As of early this morning, Campbell had no campaign events listed on his governor’s race web site. He hasn’t posted on his political blog since before Christmas. He’s also received just one reportable contribution since mid-December, but that’s a whole different problem.
Since Jan. 1, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has raised $370,000 in contributions of $5,000 or above. State Insurance Commission Steve Poizner reported collecting $340,000.
And Campbell? He’s taken in $10,000 since the first of the year, which would be a pretty dreary figure even if his two opponents hadn’t also dropped $19 million of their own money into their respective campaigns.
Still, Campbell knew what he was getting into when he jumped into a race with a pair of megabuck candidates who made it clear they would spend whatever it takes to get elected.
Campbell’s hope was always that Whitman and Poizner would spend so much time and money flinging mud at each other that fed-up Republicans would back the one-time state finance director as the only adult in the race.
While nothing has changed that potential scenario, the Senate race is looking different than it did last year, when former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina jumped into race on a fanfare of publicity and immediately opened her fall campaign against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
The Silicon Valley resident pointedly ignored conservative Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, virtually refusing to even admit she had a primary challenger.
But a Los Angeles Times poll last November showed Fiorina and DeVore tied at 27 percent, with plenty of voters undecided. And when Fiorina was slow to find her political feet, angering conservatives by saying she would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s Supreme Court choice, Campbell may have begun considering a Senate run.
If Campbell does decide to look to Washington, he’s facing a steep hill. His new and revised campaign would start out broke, since money he raised under California’s more liberal finance rules couldn’t be transferred to a federal race. And with that $2,400 contribution limit in the Senate race, the tough months of fund-raising for the governor’s race could quickly look like the good old days.
Fiorina announced Monday that she has put $2.5 million of her own money into the campaign and raised another $1.1 million from donors by Dec. 31. Her recent speeches have received good reviews and her new “campaign leadership team” includes some of the best-known – and wealthiest – Republicans in the state.
DeVore hasn’t raised anywhere near that much money, but he’s a go-to guy for California conservatives and the lone Southern Californian in a GOP primary where most of the voters live south of the Tehachapi’s. That could give him a big boost if Campbell and Fiorina split whatever Republican votes are out there for Bay Area moderates.
But Campbell’s biggest problem in a Senate race could be that Senate race. If he made the switch, he’d be saying “Never mind” to all the people who supported him for governor and turning his back on the promises he made to use his years of experience to turn California around. He’d be switching gears to improve his chances of getting back into elective office.
In short, he’d be just another politician,
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.