Latecomers to race leave state Dems nonplussed
LONG BEACH — The view from California is that the Democratic presidential candidates on the debate stage Wednesday night shouldn’t feel scorned because one new candidate just jumped into the race and another is on the way. It’s not about you. It’s about them. And, as is the case with everything political, it’s about Donald Trump.
“It says something about how unmoored American politics is in the Trump era,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told The Chronicle. “I think Trump inspired people in some strange way to think that anything is possible and the old rules don’t apply.”
Garcetti should know. He considered a
White House run long and hard before concluding that being mayor of America’s secondbiggest city “is what I am meant to do.”
Good luck finding that kind of honest selfreflection these days. Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who jumped into the race last week, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is about to follow him, believe they are meant to run for president, even if few outside the donor community are asking. To them, it doesn’t matter that it’s late on the political calendar, less than 100 days before Iowa Democrats hold their firstinthenation vote.
The latecomers “realize no one person captures everyone’s attention, and if they think they can add to it, they’re jumping in,” Garcetti said.
It’s the kind of bizarro world where Garcetti, mayor of a city of 4 million people, stays home but Pete Buttigieg, mayor of a city of 102,000 people, is now leading the polls in Iowa.
“Pete had something to say and it’s been borne out,” Garcetti said. “Nobody would have imagined that a reality star (Trump) could become president. I think people see a possibility where there hasn’t been one in the past. It’s not a reflection of the weakness, it’s a reflection of the openness of the race.”
Or, as Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “It’s opportunism by definition.
“There’s an opening, an opportunity, maybe a jump ball,” Newsom told a small group of reporters at a restaurant outside the California Democratic Party convention here over the weekend.
Newsom should know. He’s been asked whether he’s running for president since about seven seconds after he was elected governor last year. And he’ll be asked again next year if Trump is reelected.
Newsom has another theory for why this is happening now.
“I think the impeachment has played a huge factor, pulling people’s attention away from the race,” Newsom said. “They see it as an opportunity to sneak in when not everybody is focused on what’s going on.”
Patrick and Bloomberg are misreading the public’s appetite for them, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University Los Angeles. Or, really, Democrats’ appetite for any other candidate.
“They’ve misread that Democratic voters are dying for more choices,” Sonenshein said after hosting a forum on Latino issues at Cal State Los Angeles on Sunday that five candidates attended. “It’s based on the people they talk to — who are their friends — who say, ‘It’s a nobrainer. Nobody’s committed to anybody.’ That’s different from saying they want more choices.
“It’s easy to get impatient about it, but this thing is going to be wide open for longer than people think,” Sonenshein said. “But it doesn’t mean that it’s so fluid that 12 new people need to come in and share their greatness with us.”
Sonenshein offered an analogy.
“Say you go to a restaurant and it serves meat, it serves fish, it serves vegan food and it’s all good, some better than others. But you’re not really too sure what you want to order,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that you’re hoping somebody is going to come by with a vat of other kinds of food because you hate everything that’s there.”
Polls bear this out. A Gallup Poll released last month — when friends of Patrick and Bloomberg were whispering in their ears — indicated that 75% of Democrats were satisfied with the field of candidates. That’s among the highest rates since Gallup started asking the question in 1992. Both selfdescribed liberals (85%) and moderates (71%) were happy with the choices of meat and fish so far.
One moderate in the race, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, said, “I don’t understand why new people are coming in.” She seemed particularly mystified by Bloomberg, a billionaire publishing tycoon.
“I don’t think that farmers in the Midwest who voted for Donald Trump and also voted for Barack Obama or the workers in California look at the White House and see this multimillionaire who is not coming through on his promises and say, ‘I think we need somebody richer,’ ” Klobuchar said Saturday at the California convention.
Patrick didn’t inspire grassroots voters with his first steps into the race. His genericsounding speech to 3,000 party delegates at the convention inspired little more than a golf clap. Others didn’t appreciate him jumping in the race toward the finish line.
“To me, it’s like they’re trying to backdoor it,” said Gil Martinez, a retired Teamster from San Bernardino who is trying to decide between Buttigieg and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. “That’s not a good look.”