Gubernatorial Candidate Tom Campbell

A little while ago, in the prosecution of my duties to the Spartan Daily, I had the opportunity to meet one of the Republican candidates for governor of California, Tom Campbell.

Campbell, for those who don’t know, has a long history in California politics. He served five terms in the House of Representatives, a few in the State Senate, and in 2004 was head of the state finance committee. Throughout his career, he’s maintained a reputation as a very strict fiscal conservative, the kind of person who pinched pennies until they bled.

And that’s how he’s marketing himself, as a take-no-guff  money-minder who’s going to clean up California following one of the worst budget disasters in its history.

And for a governor, that makes sense.

I don’t agree with everything Campbell proposes. As a middle-class CSU student who pays out the ass for his education, I’m elementally opposed to tuition hikes, for example. But you want someone with fiscal chops like Campbell’s holding the purse strings, and it probably will take the sort of radical changes he’s proposing to balance the state’s books again.

As a governor, Campbell makes sense.

As a governor.

As a candidate, Campbell is a bit of an odd fit for this election, and it really comes down to two words: gay marriage.

Campbell is a pro gay marriage Republican. Which might not normally be game-breaking, but it’s definitely a stumbling block when trying to mobilize a political base that’s rallied increasingly around social issues.

One need only look at the saga that was Propisition 8 last November. The passing of a constitutional ban on gay marriage in California was one of the few conservative victories in an election that saw the Democrats seize the presidency, tighten their grip on both the House and the Senate and take control of the bellwether state of Missouri. Even now the fires of the same-sex marriage debate aren’t entirely out, just smoldering, with ongoing protests and a court case set to be heard in January.

To further compound the issue, Gavin Newsom has his eyes on the Democratic nomination. Gay marriage is the San Francisco mayor’s signature issue. In fact, he’s so connected with it in a lot of people’s minds that anti-Newsom ads were a key part of the Yes on 8 campaign’s strategy — just look at the “whether you like it or not” TV spot, which came out at about the time polls started flip-flopping in favor of the ban.

Clearly, the Republicans are going to want to campaign hard on the gay marriage issue against Newsom. Even if he doesn’t get the Democratic nod, the fact that he’s in the running means its inevitable that it’ll become a centerpiece. By running as a pro-gay marriage Republican, Campbell loses access to what’s probably the best weapon in the Republican arsenal at this point.

Further, and I’m just speculating here, the party bosses probably know this. California isn’t a machine state so that alone wouldn’t make or break his candidacy, but for someone who’s already at a money disadvantage going up against the deep pockets of someone like  Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who’s also vying for a spot on the Republican ticket, it might be just enough of a barrier to fund raising to sink him.

Beyond that, Campbell doesn’t stand to pick up many votes on this issue if you compare him apples to apples against Newsom. If you’re the sort of voter who’d cast your ballot for a candidate solely based on their support of gay marriage, you’d choose the San Franciscan every time.

Campbell has some tough hurdles to cross on his way to the governor’s seat. He’s clearly counting on the economy to clear some of them for him. And maybe he’s right. Maybe voters do care enough about the economy to make the sort of political gamesmanship he’s severely handicapped in irrelevant. As he was quick to note at his speech, decline to state residents can vote in the Republican primary. Maybe that’ll be enough to get the nomination, at which point the party will get behind him whether they like it or not. (See what I did there?) Maybe there’s a hidden groundswell of centrist republicans I’ m not seeing.

Either way, he’s one to watch. The way Tom Campbell’s primary campaign goes might be an indicator of what we’ll see in the general election. Will social or economic concerns win out? Only time will tell.