Jerry Brown’s weekend suggestion at the state Democratic convention that a pre-primary debate take place between him and his main Republican rivals is a way for Brown to insert himself into the Republican primary. He is following the example of his one time chief-of-staff and later governor, Gray Davis, who jumped into the 2002 Republican gubernatorial primary. Davis ran ads to undercut his most feared opponent, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan.
Davis was sitting on enough campaign cash in those pre-billionaire candidate days to afford to spend some campaign funds and weaken his rival. Brown needs to husband all the money he has for a November election battle so his plan is to disrupt leading Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, by drawing her into a three-way debate.
As Riordan rival Bill Simon welcomed Davis’s ads nearly a decade ago, Steve Poizner saw Brown’s move as an advantage to his tough uphill campaign and eagerly agreed to the debate.
Whitman’s seasoned campaign staff is too smart to step into the trap. The Whitman campaign can easily put Brown’s gambit aside and stop the political chatter. Whitman should announce that immediately after the primary, should she win, she would challenge Brown to a debate. In the mean time, the primaries will run their course. That should put an end to the story.
At least, that will end the story for this election cycle. However, Jerry Brown, who likes to think himself a political visionary, may be just a little ahead of his time with his primary election, cross-party debate suggestion.
If Proposition 14 on the June ballot passes creating a top-two primary, in which voters can cast their ballots in a primary for any candidate running for an office regardless of party, primary election, cross-party debates may very well become the norm starting with the 2012 statewide election.