Dems line up early for shot at oft-derided No. 2 state job
In California, the lieutenant governor’s job comes with little power, a tiny staff and a boatload of built-in ridicule, but that’s not stopping a passel of current and would-be politicians from making it one of the most sought-after posts on next year’s ballot.
With the March filing deadline still well in the future, four serious candidates, all Democrats, already have emerged to replace termedout Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, with the possibility of more contenders to come.
Jeff Bleich of Piedmont, the former ambassador to Australia, is in the mix, along with state Sen. Ed Hernandez of West Covina (Los Angeles County), former ambassador to Hungary Eleni Kounalakis of San Francisco and Asif Mahmood, a Los Angeles-area physician.
Although the main job of the lieutenant governor is described, not always jokingly, as waking up each morning and checking to see if the governor is alive, that person also serves on both the UC Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees for the California State University
system. The lieutenant governor is also on the State Lands Commission and chairs the California Commission for Economic Development.
None of those jobs is a policy powerhouse, however, and with a staff of only six, what a lieutenant governor can accomplish is pretty much limited to what the governor will let him do.
That hasn’t worked out well for Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor who challenged Jerry Brown for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, before shifting to the lieutenant governor’s race.
When Brown became governor, Newsom found himself frozen out of many policy discussions.
That doesn’t have to happen, said Douglas Herman, a consultant for Bleich.
“If you’re not going to be a teammate to the governor, you’re going to be marginalized,” he said. “You need someone who will be a real partner so there are two people taking on the state’s problems.”
Newsom, who announced just weeks after his re-election in 2014 that he would be running for governor in 2018, has used his post as a political credential for entry into plenty of statewide battles, including same-sex marriage, gun control and the recreational use of marijuana.
“There’s value in the bully pulpit,” said Katie Merrill, Kounalakis’ main political consultant. “There’s value in someone who can talk to voters about things like free community college, that no one may be working on full time, like the lieutenant governor does.”
Lieutenant governor doesn’t have to be a non-job, said Garry South, a Democratic strategist who ran Gray Davis’ successful campaign for the job in 1994 and his runs for governor in 1998 and 2002.
“The intelligentsia in Sacramento may laugh and snicker, but ... if you can talk about education and talk about the environment, (the job) is more than just a trifling, virtually honorary posting,” he said. “To the average voter, being lieutenant governor is like being the vice president ... taking over the governor’s job when he’s away. That’s not a bad credential.”
Hernandez is currently the only candidate who has run for public office. An optometrist and local businessman, he spent four years in the Assembly before being elected to the state Senate in 2010. At the end of June, he had $1.57 million in his campaign account.
“He’s the only candidate with a record of delivering for the people of California on a variety of issues,” said Dave Jacobson, his campaign consultant.
The only political rookie in the race is Mahmood, who would be the first Muslim elected statewide in California. He is a Pakistan-born pulmonologist who opened his campaign in front of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Los Angeles. He had $846,000 in the bank in June.
While the two former ambassadors haven’t run for office, they’re both veterans of the world of Democratic politics.
Bleich is a former president of the California State Bar Association and has raised money for a number of Democratic candidates, serving as co-chair of Barack Obama’s finance committee during his 2008 campaign for president. He had $611,000 cash on hand in his June 30 campaign filing.
Kounalakis, her father, Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakpoulos, and other members of the family have been deeply involved in Democratic politics over the years, giving millions to candidates across the country.
While Kounalakis worked with her father’s development company for 18 years, “my first job was with the California Democratic Party, and I’m a five-time delegate to the national convention,” she said in an interview. Kounalakis has $1.3 million in the bank.
The wild card in the lieutenant governor’s race, though, is state Sen. Kevin de Léon of Los Angeles, the Democratic leader in the state Senate. De Léon has raised $2.82 million for a possible run, but he has declined to say whether he’s getting into the race.
“I don’t have an exact, hard timeline,” he said when reporters in Sacramento asked him about his political plans this month. “I’ll make a decision and let you know.”
But Hernandez, a friend of de Léon, already has the endorsement of 19 of the 27 Democrats in the state Senate, as well as the backing of Latino leaders like Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon and former speakers John Pérez and Fabian Nunez. That likely wouldn’t happen unless de Léon had given his quiet OK.
No Republicans are currently running active campaigns, although that could change. Democrat Cameron Gharabiklou, a San Diego attorney, announced last week that he was getting into the race, and former Richmond Councilwoman Gayle McLaughlin is running as an independent.
Lurking beyond the November 2018 election is the question of what happens to the winner in the future.
“I don’t think that anyone looks at the lieutenant governor’s job as a career capper,” South said.
As political steppingstones go, the job has been a shaky one. When Davis was elected governor in 1998, he was the first lieutenant governor since C.C. Young in 1926 to move up in a regular election. Others have become the state’s top executive when the governor was elected to the Senate (William Stephens for Hiram Johnson in 1917), died (Frank Merriam for Sunny Jim Rolph in 1934) or was named chief justice of the United States (Goodwin Knight for Earl Warren in 1953).
But a statewide office in the nation’s biggest state is still a serious lure to politicians and would-be politicians, and from now until 2018, the race for lieutenant governor is likely to be one of California’s hottest.
“Sure, there’s a challenge in raising money, but it’s also important to have a message that appeals to a wide group of people,” Jacobson said, “telling them what you will do for California.”