So Long, Mr. Mayor
Welcome, Mr. Long Shot, Bill Simon
Riordan had departed by the time a beaming Bill Simon emerged; Simon couldn’t have looked more white and male if he’d tried. “My fellow Republicans,” he declaimed. “The George W. Bush party is alive and well in California . . . Our party comes out of this strong campaign ready to do battle.”
So Republican voters chose the image of the perfect conservative, with his scripted polish, over the reality of an experienced pragmatist with an erratically articulated good intent. Of the three Republican contenders, Secretary of State Bill Jones lacked money, and Riordan lacked the necessary element of cold calculation. Simon had enough of both, although for sheer cunning, he’s a snowflake next to the blizzard of Gray Davis, who has defined winning politics as cautious, poll-driven centrism. Riordan would have been a long shot to beat Davis in November, but Riordan, at least, is a centrist by conviction, not calculation, and Davis, for one, had no stomach for exposing swing voters to that contrast.
On Election Day, at the Pantry restaurant downtown, a table full of Democrats slapped on Riordan stickers after shaking hands with the ex-mayor. Ana Gilpin of Torrance said she found Gray Davis to be “stiff, sort of fake” compared to Riordan.
A Democratic voter, interviewed outside her Whittier polling place, expressed similar sentiments: “I don’t admire Davis like I used to,” she commented, “and I don’t like how he campaigned against Riordan. I consider Riordan to be an enlightened Republican . . . Jones and Simon are too Neanderthal for me.”
On Tuesday, however, Riordan’s fate was decided by Republicans such as 79-year-old Don Stack, a retired marketing manager who lives in La Habra Heights. “I got tired of Riordan,” he said. “I don’t like the way Riordan comes across. He is so wishy-washy on so many items, I don’t trust him anymore. He is not a very good Republican.”
That’s fine by Gray Davis, who’d rather face a good conservative Republican than a bad one with heart.
Christine Pelisek contributed to this story.
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