Go back to Special Report front pageSACRAMENTO, Nov. 5, 1994 -- For future politicians looking for clues on how to revive their sagging political fortunes, Gov. Wilson has written the definitive textbook.
While Wilson's Democratic rival, Kathleen Brown, told voters she had a plan for rebuilding California, the Republican incumbent had a plan for winning a second four-year term built largely on his record on crime and immigration.
It did not hurt Wilson to have almost unlimited money -- he'll spend about $25 million -- and a campaign team based on personal loyalty to the former San Diego mayor and U.S. senator.
Now Brown, trailing in the polls and out of campaign cash, must count on an unprecedented get-out-the-vote effort if she is to unseat Wilson in tomorow's election.
Clint Reilly, the San Francisco political consultant running her campaign, has been promising just such an effort for months. But many observers have questioned whether it will be enough to overcome the strong campaign that Wilson mounted.
The latest polls give Brown reason for hope. While a poll conducted last week by Mervin Field showed Wilson ahead by 9 points, a survey released three days later by Political Media Research Inc. of Washington, D.C., found the governor ahead by just 4 points, 48 to 44 percent.
For Brown, that's still a far cry from the heady days of two years ago, when trial heats in opinion polls showed her ahead by 23 points. Back then, Brown was treated as a celebrity on national television shows. All that was left was for her to appoint her cabinet.
But Wilson, who counts former President Nixon among his political heroes, battled back with Nixon-like doggedness. He left no question in voters' minds where he stood on crime and immigration, and he raised doubts about Brown's abilities and commitment on the issues.
In doing so, Wilson managed to turn the race away from Democrat vs. Republican toward right vs. wrong -- as he defined it. "Crime victims are Democrats, Republicans and independents," Wilson declared the other day in Orange County. "They are of every ethnic group. They are in every neighborhood in this state."
Brown's election, he warned darkly, would raise the specter of "dangerously lenient judges" like former Chief Justice Rose Bird, who was removed from office by voters eight years ago because of her opposition to capital punishment. Bird was appointed by former Gov. Jerry Brown, who like his sister, Kathleen, is opposed to the death penalty.
On immigration, Wilson reaped a crop he sowed in 1991 at his own political peril. He raised the issue in his first year in office, when California's budget deficit suddenly leaped from $4 billion to $14 billion.
The governor laid part of the blame on illegal immigrants who used health services and schools without paying their full tax share. The debate Wilson helped to ignite evolved into Proposition 187, a measure to cut education, health and welfare for illegal immigrants that became a cornerstone of his campaign.
Although prominent national Republicans like William Bennett, Jack Kemp and former President Bush's son, Jeb, denounced Prop.187, Wilson stayed committed to its passage while refusing to say exactly how it would be carried out.
"We are not only shortchanging the education of children of legal residents," Wilson said. "We are, in fact, shortchanging critically needed health care like prenatal care for those who are, ironically, of the same ethnic stock but who are legal working poor."
Brown, meanwhile, has stuck to her strategy of attacking Wilson for his support of Prop.187. During a recent visit with Sacramento high school students, Brown said the measure was simply "one more moment in history where, when everything else goes wrong, you find one group to blame."
Wilson's campaign press secretary, Dan Schnur, responded that "if Kathleen Brown was truly interested in telling the children about the impact of Prop. 187, she'd tell them about the additional funds that the state of California could spend on their education if it were passed."
Brown has been on the road nonstop in the final days of her campaign. She staged a 29-hour marathon road trip at the end of last week, leading a handful of reporters and campaign workers on a bus and airplane tour that took them from San Francisco to San Diego -- and to some all-night truck stops and bus depots in between.
President Clinton, who has headlined fund-raisers for Brown during the campaign, was back in California campaigning for her over the weekend.
Brown planned a tour of California Monday with the rest of the Democratic ticket. Then she was heading home to Los Angeles to vote.
"There's plenty of votes to elect Kathleen Brown if they turn out," said Brown campaign spokesman Steve Glazer. "We have precinct captains in 7,000 precincts. We have a massive get-out-the-vote effort, and it's been building and growing throughout this election."
That's not the kind of talk associated with a sure-thing campaign. And Brown's effort has been hampered by staff turnover and lack of focus.
Schnur, however, dismissed any notion that Brown's campaign had lost a golden opportunity to defeat Wilson.
"Kathleen Brown could have run an error-free campaign," he said, "and it would not have been a very different race for her."
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