Insider-Outsider Debate Will Get a Real World Test

With two weeks and a day left before the election, the two leading Republicans vying for their party’s nomination for U.S. Senate are on opposing sides of the biggest question of all: What attributes does the public prefer this season in choosing their leaders?

A statewide poll this month by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that, taking the electorate as a whole, the pendulum in California appears to be shifting toward the insiders, away from the passionate if less informed outsiders.

In the survey, 46% of people preferred experience in elected office for a candidate for governor or U.S. Senate, and 36% preferred experience running a business. A month earlier, the split was 43% for government and 40% for business, suggesting to the pollsters that respect for government is on the rise and that appreciation for business is on the slight decline.

Along party lines, however, the poll found Republicans preferring business experience 51% to 32%, and Democrats preferring government experience 59% to 24%.

To Mark Baldassare, director of the survey, that suggests that the best chance for state Treasurer Matt Fong to overtake electronics entrepreneur Darrell Issa--the leader in various polls--is to draw middle-of-the-road Democrats to his side.

But GOP loyalist Fong holds fast to his conservative positions. “I’ve been able to privatize, downsize, cut government waste and hold government bureaucrats accountable,” Fong said.

Not surprisingly, each candidate reads the civic psyche in a way that fits the qualifications he brings to the contest.

“Darrell has sold a lot of car alarms, but that’s all he’s done,” Fong said.

Issa dismisses Fong as a “career politician”

“My message,” he said, “is simple: If you want to keep having the same kind of laws written and the same kind of arrogance in Washington, keep sending career politicians there.”

The dueling messages also are reflected in the candidates’ television advertising. Issa has been airing commercials for a year. Fong, strapped for cash, began only last week.

In four different commercials, Fong delivers a sober text about his government pedigree while standing amid the symbols of power: the flag, the big desk, the golden dome of the state Capitol in the background. The message is clear: “Mend it; don’t end it.”

Issa, who has been advertising on TV since January (he started on radio), has decided in these final weeks for a kind of “bloopers” approach, with a new ad consisting of muffed lines from taping sessions.

The commercial also might be seen as a way to remind voters that Issa is not a professional politician at ease making slick TV commercials.

“It’s not easy filming these commercials,” Issa says at one point on the 30-second commercial.

The new, offbeat approach, Issa strategists said, is to allow their candidate to be heard and remembered above the “clutter” of all the political commercials expected in the campaign’s final days, particularly the expected barrage by Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Al Checchi, whose spending is breaking records.

This is not the first time that the specter of Checchi has been raised in the U.S. Senate race. Roy Behr, advisor to Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, sees a “Checchi backlash” that could harm other self-financed candidates, notably Issa.

In April, a poll by the Public Policy Institute found six of 10 voters indifferent on the issue of self-funding.

By May that had shifted so that by 52% to 34%, they preferred candidates who seek contributions rather than those who use their own wealth.

“They hate these millionaire candidates hiding behind these commercials,” Fong said.

Wrong, said Issa, what they really hate is politicians who promise to cut government but then wimp out.

Issa wants to close the departments of Commerce and Energy, sell the Tennessee Valley Authority, kill the National Endowment for the Arts and end federal support for programs marketing California agricultural products abroad.

Such support is “corporate welfare,” Issa told an agribusiness convention in San Diego last week.

Fong is ready to transfer the duties of the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense and put the NEA on notice that it could be ended if it continues to give grants artists with a penchant for obscenity.

“I’m the only candidate running who understands the private sector,” Issa said. “I understand that the individual is the solution, not the government.”

“Yes, he’s done well in the private sector,” Fong said, “but Darrell Issa is not prepared for the job he is seeking.”