This Year, Campaign Is for Endorsements

Who knows what Brian Bilbray will do come primary day next June.

When the Republican congressman from San Diego takes a good hard look at the ballot for the U.S. Senate, he’ll see the names of two pals--car alarm mogul Darrell Issa, a longtime Bilbray backer, and San Diego Mayor Susan Golding, with whom he once served on the county Board of Supervisors.

That is then. This is now. And for now, Bilbray has dealt with his dilemma in unlikely fashion:

He has endorsed them both.

It is, at the very least, a novel approach to one of the premier tussles in this political off-season, the arm-bending over endorsements.

It is tempting to ignore the sheaves of endorsement letters that flutter out of fax machines around the state this time of year, as profuse as the falling leaves of autumn. It is tempting to see those seeking endorsements as the psychological heirs to a tear-stained Sally Field burbling, “You like me, you really like me!” into the Academy Awards microphone a number of years back.

But there is logic behind all this. Really.

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His dual careers as psychoanalyst and professor of political science allow Stanley Renshon of the City University of New York to put candidates on the couch, so to speak. Endorsements make sense to him.

“I don’t think politicians are any different from us, in liking to be validated,” he said.

As Renshon points out, endorsements serve several purposes. They create some momentum, particularly in off-years when attention wanes. They put one’s opponents on notice about the resources that can be commandeered during the campaign. And they promote what Renshon calls the “halo effect”--the positive impact of borrowed credibility.

“If you get someone with a good reputation to endorse you, it adds to your reputation,” he said. “Presumably, they wouldn’t endorse an idiot--although that happens.”

While all candidates are panning for endorsements this year, two in California have elevated the exercise into an art form: Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who is running for governor, and state Treasurer Matt Fong, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate.

Davis’ current list of endorsers--it seems to grow daily--stacks half an inch deep. His campaign wields endorsements with all the finesse of a sledgehammer over his likely rivals. Almost always, the endorsements speak of strategy.

The first group endorsement listed on a Davis campaign-compiled list is that of the Long Beach Police Officers Assn.--not coincidentally, the hometown cops of likely Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Lungren, the current attorney general.

Only last week, Davis’ campaign trumpeted two more meaty endorsements from law enforcement groups. First came that of the 9,000-member Los Angeles Police Protective League. Then came the endorsement of the National Assn. of Police Organizations, which represents 4,000 police agencies and 200,000 police officers, according to the Davis camp.

The message to Lungren and everybody else is that Davis will play offense against an expected soft-on-crime attack from the attorney general.

It may not be original, but it has worked in the past--most notably for Bill Clinton, who frequently surrounded himself with uniformed cops when he tried to unseat George Bush in 1992. Not incidentally, Bush did the same thing when he trounced Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988.

“Even if you have a good record on public safety issues, it gives embodiment and credibility to that record when you have people walking the beat every day,” said Garry South, Davis’ campaign manager. “Anyone who tries to say so-and-so is weak on crime has got to go talk to the cops.”

Fong has had his own strategic imperative, which is proving that he has a broad base as he seeks to out-position San Diego Mayor Golding and businessman Issa. He has accumulated a list of 1,000 backers, whose names were duly forwarded to campaign activists and reporters as a way of suggesting that the campaign is on the move.

Issa himself has been no slouch in the endorsement game. Though not competing with Fong for bulk, he got needed attention months ago when he won the endorsements of former state GOP Chairman John Herrington and a handful of conservative legislators. The endorsements stood out because of the element of surprise--that establishment figures would spurn more experienced candidates to side with Issa.

“At this stage of the campaign, you’re not on television, and this is the way the campaign is waged,” said Richard Temple, a Fong strategist. “A lot of people at this point in time get their information from friends and across the backyard.”

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True enough, but endorsements do not a winner guarantee. Every losing candidate can forward a few boxes of them. Just ask Bob Dole, whose character was testified to by millions but whose presidential campaign was doomed.

“To get people to endorse you is a step along a long, arduous path,” said Renshon, the professor-psychoanalyst. “You still have to be out there explaining to people who you are. If you can’t, then all the endorsements in the world will not help you.”