Peter Ueberroth's Impossible California Dream

The 2003 race for Governor of the Great State of California, the sixth largest economy in the world, the home of movie magic and computer chips, of graying freeways and golden sun, started for me in a nondescript light-industrial park office building underneath the landing path of the John Wayne/Orange County Airport.

The scene was intoxicating, though in hindsight it may have just been the combination of jet fuel and warm August winds. Nameless young staffers scurried the converted warehouse floor like mice searching for cheese; desks and computers were arranged with all the precision of a Jackson Pollack painting; and the most important person in the building wasn’t the candidate or his top aides, but the guy with the brown utility belt who had arrived to install more phone lines.

None of this would have struck me as unusual under normal circumstances. But as a former political reporter and campaign consultant, I knew this race was anything but normal – and by the looks on everyone’s faces, they knew it, too.

The calendar with a big black “50” told the story. Fifty, as in 50 days to Election Day. Fifty, as in 50 days to begin, run, and successfully conclude a campaign that had yet to officially kickoff. Fifty days to compete as one of 135 candidates, a field that included a world-famous movie star, well-heeled political veterans, a washed-up sitcom actor, a B-list comedian, a pornographer and a couple porn queens, engineers and an amateur Sumo wrestler, opportunists, optimists, and assorted other doggerel searching for 15 minutes of infamy in what had become the political equivalent of a five-car pileup on the 405 Freeway during Rush Hour.

A friend and political strategist compared the recall to the reality show Survivor, which was appropriate considering this election was the greatest reality show in California, if not national, political history. The winner, he said, would not be the one who is most qualified, but rather the one who can last the longest.

“This campaign is impossible,” my friend said. “Look, you need a year to run for governor, and these guys had less than 60 days. You just can’t do it. You need six months just to get ready. You need to press the flesh, put an organization together.

“The best thing is to target a specific group and hope you can turn enough of them out to vote. Or use this campaign as a set up for something later. But you can’t campaign – you can win, because somebody statistically has to, but you can’t control or predict anything. All bets are off.”

Lighting the Fire

First issue: How do you get elected Governor of California when your name on the ballot looks like a typo?

Ueberroth isn’t a name; it’s a triple-word score in Scrabble. It’s no wonder everyone in the campaign headquarters called him Peter and that his Web site address was “PeterforGovernor.com” – if it was “Ueberrothforgovernor.com,” the Google search engine would have crashed trying to index the damned thing.

It was fortunate for Peter that he was a well-respected, well-known businessman who already had staked his claim to history. As head of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympic Games, he did such a good job leading the first profitable Olympics that he was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. By comparison, political newcomer Arnold Schwarzenegger never got so much as a People’s Choice Award.

Peter was a successful business leader, business owner and business thinker. And now he wanted to be the governor who would, as his campaign slogan said, “Make California Work Again.”

Why not? Of all the Ringling Brothers and Sisters running, Peter was among the most capable, not to mention the most normal. Sure, his greatest accomplishment, the Olympic Games, was two decades old, but Diff’rent Strokes had been off the air for about as long, and Schwarzenegger hadn’t made a good movie since…well, since…hey, did I mention there was a porn queen running?

Problem is, in a political sprint of less than 50 days, normal doesn’t get you elected. The best ideas don’t matter when the race is being covered by Entertainment Tonight and Extra. You need quick sound bites, not white papers on fiscal policy. This was Short Attention Span Theater, plain and simple.

Peter had money, but he didn’t have a fortune. He needed to remind the older generation who he was, and raise awareness among a new generation who identified more with the X Games than the Olympic Games.

The Ueberroth folks decided that the best way to ensure Peter got his message out – without breaking the bank – was to broadcast, over the Internet and on radio, a series of “Carry the Torch for Peter Issues Forums.” They wanted media coverage, sure, but they also wanted to bypass the traditional media and go directly to the people. My partner and I were hired to produce the Internet portion of these forums, which would take place up and down the state in front of selected voters.

It was as good a plan as any. Besides, consider the rest of the field: Schwarzenegger couldn’t pronounce the state’s name correctly; Republican Tom McClintock made Attorney General John Ashcroft seem like the head of the ACLU; Democratic Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante had one hand on his campaign platform and the other on the knife stuck in his boss’ back; and Arianna Huffington was full of enough meaningless sound and fury to make Faulkner weep.

Ueberroth had a shot to replace Gov. Gray Davis. All he had to do was convince a few million of his fellow Californians. And he had 50 days to make it happen.

Piece of cake.

Campaign (Dis)organization

In most cases, campaigns come off as well-oiled spin machines run by professionals for whom political strategy is a sixth sense. In most cases, they exude confidence and power, and more confidence, and, dare I say it, a lot of chutzpah.

And in most cases, appearances lie.

I have covered campaigns as a reporter, run them as a campaign manager and worked for them as a consultant. And in every one, from local City Council to U.S. Congress, they had one thing in common – they were complete, utter, painful, wicked, 24-hour freak shows of inefficiency, mental abuse and stress. When Emma Lazarus wrote “bring us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” she must have been referring to campaign workers.

Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But you get the picture; campaigns are run with all the accuracy of a sundial during a solar eclipse.

This campaign was no different. The first few days reminded me of Family Feud, when the family was down to its last strike and Dad had to decide whether to take a suggestion from his obnoxious brood or use one of his own. If you make the right decision, you’re a hero – but if you say “lay eggs” as your answer to the question “things a Rooster does,” you’re stuffing envelopes at the Union Hall for the big Mayoral campaign in Bejesus, Iowa.

No one at the Ueberroth office, it seemed, could make a decision before running it through a series of filters, impromptu meetings and e-mail messages. Hell, they didn’t even know each other – most of the staff wore homemade nametags. They lived out of hotels and strangers’ homes. They didn’t know what to do, where to go, even where they were, so they worked all day and most of the night on a never ending binge of politics-as-unusual, imbibing whatever campaign juice they could find so they could keep moving into the recall breach.

One day early on, a campaign copy writer followed me to the front door as I was leaving. She stopped just before the exit and stared out into the parking lot. She stood frozen, unable to leave and unwilling to go back to her desk. The campaign had taken a bright, attractive, energetic person and turned her into an extra from Night of the Living Dead.

I was scared because I had seen that look before – it was in 1992, in the mirror at my apartment in Santa Barbara. I was working on a Congressional race, spending every waking hour working on the campaign, in the office and on the road, with no time for myself or anyone else except the candidate. Excitement had turned to exhaustion, and within a couple months I had been reduced to a mindless drone searching for scraps of validation like a rat scrounging back alley trash cans.

Don’t get me wrong – with the right attitude and relationships, campaigns can be fun and downright exhilarating. But if you’re not careful, or if you’re new to the drill, campaigns will suck the life from your lungs.

You wake up for someone else, work for someone else, eat on some else’s schedule or not at all. “You” cease to exist. You are told the campaign is all that matters, and after a while, you believe it.

Close proximity to power can be hypnotic.  But politics is artificial power – and the sooner you can recognize that, the sooner you will be able to escape the toxic fumes of candidate campaigns and walk out the door whenever you want.

Coming Out

Peter met the press in Los Angeles on Day 48. It was the official launch of his campaign, the day he laid out his platform for California. And while the event received a decent amount of coverage, it elicited more of a whimper than a roar.

Peter pledged his commitment to protect Proposition 13. He vowed to reign in out of control spending in Sacramento by putting strict caps in place. He outlined his vision to bring jobs back to California, including initiatives to make California the state for entrepreneurs, focusing on the growth of small business.

And he promised to erase the budget deficit without raising taxes – he would do this via a five percent spending reduction from all parts of the budget except education; a tax amnesty across the state; a hiring freeze and review of state employee salaries; and selling off unused state property assets, among other things.

It was solid stuff. They were concrete ideas with real merit. So, naturally, nobody cared.

Over the course of a year, you can lay out economic plans, legislative agendas and proposals for positive change. In 50 days, you have just enough time to hit the paid airwaves and attack your opponents until voters decide that everyone in the race is an asshole, and that they should vote for you because you are the least offensive of the bunch.

Peter wanted to take a different, noble approach – and given more time, it could have worked. He was going to talk about issues. He wasn’t going to attack his opponents. He was going to let the Terminators and Commentators and Legislators and Sumo Wrestlers fight it out, and when the mud dried, he, Peter Ueberroth, would emerge victorious.

But this race was more about image than issues. Arnold was all images and no issues; Peter was the opposite, and the poll numbers showed what mattered most.

Peter had good ideas and bad charisma. You could win the governor’s office with good ideas, but not with Gray Davis’ personality. Campaigns, after all, are about positioning – not where you start, but where you finish. Not what you say, but how you say it. Positioning is king.

Dress Rehearsal

The first stop on Peter’s “Carry the Torch” Tour was San Diego, a somewhat quiet and out of the way burg by Southern California standards. We drove the 90 minutes south to attend a “dress rehearsal” the night before the event, hoping it would help us plan for the webcast and get a flavor for what to expect.

It did – we learned to expect chaos.

We arrived on time, but the set was still being assembled. Cameras were being hooked up, projectors focused. Half the people in the room didn’t know what they were supposed to do, and the other half kept looking at the first half for some direction. Everyone appeared as calm as if they were in the back seat of a car with Stevie Wonder behind the wheel and Ray Charles giving him directions.

Meanwhile, where was Peter? He was coming, he wasn’t. He would be here in the morning and do a dress rehearsal then; he was upstairs and would be down in six minutes. Vladimir didn’t wait this long for Godot.

More than an hour after the scheduled (or so we thought) start time, a gaggle of nattering aides with notebooks entered, followed by Peter, who looked relaxed if uncertain about what he was doing there. All of the aides had instructions and ideas for Peter, who looked amused by all the fuss over how one should walk up to a podium and hold a microphone, as if the wrong decision would change the Earth’s magnetic field and cause all matter to be hurled into space. Or worse, look bad on television.

My partner had an interesting observation. Here was Peter Ueberroth, a man of indisputable accomplishment. He serves on the Board of Directors of Coca Cola, conducts countless business meetings and closes successful deals. He is a millionaire many times over, and he did it by himself, without family wealth or currying favor.

Now he was running for governor – and all of a sudden, this man, this giant of business, was incompetent. He needed people half his age and in some cases intelligence telling him what to do? As in any new business, you need to understand how it works from experienced people. But I think Peter Ueberroth knows how to walk. He needed political training, not potty training.

As a reporter and campaign consultant I have met countless politicians, from local City Council members to sitting and former Presidents of the United States – and in most every case they were polite. However, I always knew there was a reason: They wanted a story, they were told to be accommodating, or they were using me to get to someone else.

But Peter really was a nice guy. The campaign and the aides and cameras and the pressure hadn’t changed him, hadn’t yet transformed him into Peter the Candidate.

Showtime

The first forum went off without a hitch. Peter talked about jobs and the economy, giving specifics and laying out his plans, all to a rapt audience of supporters who hung on every word and reacted with positive applause.

But campaigns are not won on the public’s reaction to an event; they are won on the media’s reaction and the public’s subsequent consumption of that news. And the media reaction was lukewarm at best. Peter looked tired, he lacked charisma; the room was stocked with supporters tossing softballs, and on and on.

The real message, though, was simpler: Peter the Candidate was boring. The former Olympic Czar had a solid budget plan, but the amateur Sumo wrestler made better copy.

Things happened fast after San Diego. A forum set for a few days later was cancelled – in fact all future forums were “postponed” for a while. The campaign had yet to air a TV ad and the polls weren’t showing any bumps from Peter’s earned media and radio-only strategy. The fact that he wouldn’t attack any of his opponents also made it difficult to move forward – boring will hurt you, but being nice can kill you. Peter was committing suicide and everyone knew it, except perhaps Peter himself.

It was never reported during the campaign (until now), but that Sunday after San Diego, one of the lead campaign strategists was fired, as well as a some others on the campaign team. Heads had started to roll, and they tend to roll faster when you are going downhill.

One of the biggest reasons was lack of organization and a coherent chain of command. Arnold’s campaign had the same problems, according to friends who worked for him, but he was able to weather the storm because, well, he was Arnold and Peter was not. The recall’s short time-frame only exacerbated the differences.

A few days after Black Sunday, the forums were back on. A new team was being put in place, TV ads were being shot, and Arnold was answering questions about a 1977 magazine interview in which he touted the joys of group sex and illegal drugs. In other words, it was a good week for the Ueberroth campaign.

While I didn’t know it at the time, it would also be the last.

The Best Laid Plans

Peter had two more forums that next weekend. On Friday, Peter came by our studio in Irvine to do a live interview with MSNBC.

Afterward, I talked with Peter for a few minutes and he seemed relaxed. He was still the “nice guy” I had met in San Diego – a little more tired, a few dollars poorer, but otherwise the same.

And it was then I knew he wasn’t going to make it to Election Day.

Candidates don’t need to stop being human to get elected, but they can’t be the same people they were before they started. They need to be leaders; policy can be taught, leadership cannot. .

Most important, they need to want the job and all that goes with it. This can be for the right reasons, like making life better tomorrow than in was today, or it can be for the wrong reasons, like power or influence or fame. But you need to want it; you need to want it so bad you can’t think about anything else or care about anything else. You have to be self-centered, because while governing is about other people, campaigning is about yourself. You have to believe that you are the biggest and baddest son-of-a-bitch on the planet, that everyone else is in your way and they better move aside or they are going to get run over.

I didn’t know Peter Ueberroth before the campaign, and I can’t say I know him all that well now, either. But I do know that Peter Ueberroth is none of those things, and I believe is incapable of becoming them. He’s a great person but was a bad candidate. Peter enjoyed the idea of governing but not the idea of campaigning to get the job.

You wouldn’t have known it from his performance at the Saturday forum, however. Peter was vibrant and animated. The Los Angeles Times acknowledged Peter’s newfound energy. Perhaps things were indeed turning around.

But then came Sunday, and Peter was tired and slow. This was the day we chose for another webcast, which of course meant even more people could see Peter ramble through his prepared remarks. It was as if he used every ounce of energy the day before and was running on fumes.

Final Curtain

The end didn’t take long after that. On Monday, a new poll showed that Peter’s numbers hadn’t moved out of the single digits. Pressure continued to mount for him to exit. Although the TV ads were about to start, the conventional wisdom was that it was too little, too late. Time was racing by; the Ueberroth campaign had been lapped. 

I found out Tuesday morning – not from any one at the campaign, but from the MSNBC Web site. My partner and I talked to our contacts later that day, agreed to hooked up the next evening for a farewell dinner and congratulated each other for fighting a good fight. It was only 22 days, but it seemed like we were saying goodbye to people we had known our entire lives.

Peter seemed relieved. At the dinner, there he was, sitting in a loud sports bar trying to read the menu, only to realize that his glasses were on upside down. That was quite an image – a man who just 24 hours earlier was a candidate for the highest office in the State of California, was now just some guy in a bar adjusting his bifocals. Here was a man who went from lead story on MSNBC to invisible in a matter of hours; a man who was perhaps smarter and more qualified than anyone else to serve, and who was now on the sidelines.

And I smiled. I smiled from ear to ear, laughing inside at the simple, understated beauty of it all. And I realized that no matter what happened next, this was just an election – an insane, senseless, messy, stupid waste of time, money and brain cells – but an election nonetheless.

Maybe things will get better, maybe not. Maybe Arnold will make a difference, or maybe our state will be doomed.

But whatever happens in the months and years ahead, we will be different, we will have been changed, because in the late summer and early fall of 2003, for the first time in a long time, politics mattered again because ordinary people were involved. That in itself is a cause for celebration.

Maybe, just maybe, there is still hope.

1:04:25 PM    

The Letter

Dear Dad,

It’s been a long time and the years don’t make this any easier. If anything, writing you now is almost pointless after all that has happened, after all you’ve missed. But you need to know. I need you to know.

Her name is Alexandra. We’ve been together nearly five years, and it has been the most amazing experience of my life. We laugh, we talk and we love each other very much. I can’t imagine a world without her, and if you met her, you would feel the same.

Oh, and one more thing: Her father is a Jew; her mother is a Christian. There, I buried the lead.

Technically, she’s not Jewish like us. Traditionally, she’s not recognized as a Jew by other religious Jews. But practically, none of that matters, at least to me, because she lives every day as a practicing, observant, contributing member of our Jewish community.

Dad, you won’t believe this, but she speaks Hebrew. She goes to Synagogue and observes Shabbat. She almost knows more about our people and our religion than I do, probably because she pays more attention in services than I ever did.

She is a Jew, dad. I want you to know that. She has taught me that you don’t get Judaism from a book – you get Judaism from your soul. Religious people don’t simply observe their religion; they observe themselves and others through their religion. God is everywhere, but God begins from inside.

Alexandra is more “Jewish” than anyone I know. So what does it matter that her mother isn’t a Jew? Being a Jew has nothing to do with DNA, it has to do with spirit and belief. I’ve seen plenty of “real” Jews treat the Ten Commandments with all the respect of bird cage liner, so trust me, my patience is wearing thin toward alleged devout Jews who would question Alexandra’s commitment.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to give a sermon. Maybe I’m overly defensive, I don’t know. I guess this isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

Alexandra’s mother is very supportive of her Judaism. Her mother’s family, however, is more reserved.

When they visit, they come with warm smiles and hugs. They give Alexandra gifts and tell stories. They fill the house with so much love I worry that the foundation won’t hold.

Then comes Sunday, and they take her to church, and she comes home talking about Jesus. She loves Christmas and sings all the carols. And I smile, and I sing, and I am scared to death.  

You see, I wonder whether Alexandra’s relationship with her mother’s family will change her attitude toward Judaism. But I also know, and have learned to accept, that she will make her own choices. It’s not my decision, nor should it be.

MAYBE I WILL BRING Alexandra to see you. But I don’t know if should, since she wouldn’t recognize you.

She has a picture of you in her room, beneath her Winnie the Pooh mural. She calls you Grandpa Herb and asks about you, what you were like and why you left. I tell her that you are my daddy, and that you will always be here for us, as long as we remember you.

But at the cemetery, you are not like your picture, you are not Grandpa Herb. You are just another name, in a place where all dead people look the same.

By the way, Alexandra’s middle name is Hope, after you. She starts Kindergarten in a few months, and will begin her third year of religious school. She might even join the choir someday – you should hear her sing the Barachu, it’s amazing. Her mother, Christine, sings it pretty well, too. Oh, and Christine also puts together the synagogue newsletter and is active in our Havurah. Not bad for a Lutheran.

We are a happy, healthy, blessed interfaith family. And you have a beautiful, happy, healthy, blessed Jewish granddaughter, who misses her Grandpa Herb very much.

I miss him, too.

Rest in peace,

Your Son

3:20:29 PM