Surprising Election Results in California Primary
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: As we've been telling you throughout the day here, a couple of rather large political upsets in California. Voters there digesting the news that Congressman Gary Condit has gone down to defeat and so has the former mayor of L.A. in his bid for the governor's office. Richard Riordan is the man's name. Bill Schneider is our analyst. He joins us live from Washington. These two races weren't even close, were they, Bill?</s>WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: No, each of them was about an 18-point margin.</s>HEMMER: Yes. Governor Gray Davis, his campaign poured about $10 million in ads hitting at Richard Riordan. They apparently worked to some degree, obviously. How common is it to pour that much money into a primary race, Bill?</s>SCHNEIDER: Very uncommon. In fact, to my knowledge, it's unprecedented. Ten million dollars in the other party's primary? Now he says he was defending himself because Riordan started out by attacking Gray Davis rather than his Republican opponents, and Davis says he was fighting back. But a lot of people suspect with good reason that what he was trying to do was pick his opponent. He didn't want Dick Riordan to be his opponent because Dick Riordan has a lot of appeal to Democrats and to moderates and Gray Davis wanted the least electable Republican, in his view, to be nominated. Well, he has got Bill Simon, whom he is trying to demonize as a right-wing extremist. We'll see what happens.</s>HEMMER: Yes. And Richard Riordan really was up substantially for quite a time until the last couple of weeks. Did he take his voters for granted or where did he make his misstep, Bill?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, of course, he got his brains beaten out by Gray Davis in all those ads. He didn't run a very vigorous campaign either to fight back. It wasn't until the last few days that he really defended himself. He is a wealthy man. And I think the big disappointment in the White House, which encouraged him to run, is that he did not dip into his own personal fortune to spend money defending himself. He didn't seem to think it was worth it. So if you don't defend yourself against charges like that from your opponents and from the Democrats, then you are going to be in big trouble.</s>HEMMER: Quickly, what do we know about Bill Simon? What more will we learn about him?</s>SCHNEIDER: We'll learn a lot more. He's a conservative. He's never held elected office before. His father was secretary of the treasury. He has good breeding. The chairman of the California Democratic Party called him an unelectable extremist and a sanctimonious hypocrite. Well, tell us what you really think.</s>HEMMER: There's a mouthful.</s>SCHNEIDER: You're going to see more charges like that as the campaign goes on.</s>HEMMER: Got it. Let's move up to the central valley and Gary Condit. His political future right now is over up until the fall of next year. Dennis Cardoza beat him. The numbers pretty sound, 55 to 37 percentage wise. Did that surprise you, that margin of difference there, Bill?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, actually, I was surprised that he got as much as 37 percent of the vote.</s>HEMMER: Really?</s>SCHNEIDER: That's a lot of people voting for Gary Condit. If they hadn't redrawn the district lines, if they kept him in his old district, there's a chance it would have been a lot closer than that. People are very attached personally to their member of Congress. He ran on the -- he was really running against the press and the way the press was treating him. There was a lot of sympathy for Gary Condit. Thirty-seven percent is not terrible. But, really, this race was hopeless from the beginning. It's very rare for a Congressman to lose renomination in his own primary. That's what happened to Gary Condit. He has to do something pretty bad and that is the way the voters felt, that he had something pretty bad. He embarrassed his district.</s>HEMMER: He's going to finish out his term, obviously. What then? Has he indicated what he will do?</s>SCHNEIDER: He has been in public service for 30 years. I don't know that he's ever really had another job. So, it's not clear. Typically, and I'm not saying he is going to do this, but typically when a member of Congress leaves office, they stay right here in Washington and become lobbyists, advocates, representatives. That's how they continue their careers.</s>HEMMER: Listen, turn out was pathetic yesterday. I think the second lowest ever. Have you been able to measure what sort of impact that may have had on either race here?</s>SCHNEIDER: Well, it certainly meant it was hopeless for Dick Riordan, because Dick Riordan really depended on a high turnout of independents voting in the Republican primary. But, apparently, they did not vote in very large numbers. So the Republican voters were overwhelmingly conservative, the kinds of people who resented Dick Riordan's criticism of their party and his attempt to say the Republican party has to change by reaching out to independents, moderates and more women.</s>HEMMER: Boy, the race is on. Your time of year. Thank you, Bill. Much appreciated.</s>SCHNEIDER: Sure, Bill.</s>HEMMER: Bill Schneider live there in D.C.