For several years now after each gubernatorial election, the UC Berkeley’s Institute for Governmental Studies hosts a post mortem seminar featuring members of the winning and losing campaign teams.  This afternoon, members of the Westly, Angelides and Schwarzenegger campaign teams gathered on the Cal campus to discuss their perspectives on the ’06 primary.  While there was nothing earth shattering said, there were some highlights worth sharing:

* The Wesley and Angelides staffers couldn’t make enough jokes about California’s new Democratic governor.  Jude Barry, Wesley’s campaign manager, cracked, “This past year proved that it was a good year to be a Democrat.  Two people proved that…Phil Angelides and Arnold Schwarzenegger."

* The animosity between the Westly and Angelides campaign teams was apparent, especially between Gary South (Westly) and Paul Maslin and Katie Merrill (Angelides).  Gary South said:  “I got involved with it [the Westly campaign] because it was my view, after having 13 years of experience with the other candidate [Angelides], that if he were able to slide through and get the nomination uncontested it would be a disaster in the fall.”  At one point, South said that Angelides defeat was "fundamentally a rejection of the man."

*  The Angelides people clearly feel that they won the primary on "validator" endorsements (they got a majority of all of the Democratic interest group endorsements) and that Westly contributed to their general election defeat.  They would not acknowledge that the public simply did not like their candidate, arguing that they just never got a chance to "fully introduce Phil to the electorate."

* Susan Kennedy was there on behalf of Governor Schwarzenegger, along with Steve Schmidt, Adam Mendelsohn, Reed Galen and Matthew Dowd.  They all described how instrumental Maria Schriver was in the hiring of the governor’s new team (post 2005 special election disaster) and how the new team agreed on a strategy of letting “Arnold be Arnold"  so he could better connect with the voters. This led, of course, to a question about whether Arnold was Arnold in 2005 or 2006.  Kennedy did a good job explaining in a matter-of-a-fact way that the governor was still in the learning curve of his new job and while she thought “he tried to accomplish the right things” in 2005, his team’s tactics were flawed.  He ended up fighting with “everyone” and they learned that they needed to “pick our battles.” 

• When asked about how the Schwarzenegger team dealt with the Republicans’ grumpiness after Schwarzenegger replaced Republican Pat Cleary with former Gray Davis staffer Susan Kennedy, Kennedy responded that she met with some key Republicans around the state (to show them that she didn’t have horns) but not with the activists, saying that she left “that wing of the problem” to Schmidt.

* Bob Mulholland was there, being his typical nasty self.  Boy, if anyone needs the governor’s "post partisan" lecture, it’s Mulholland.

Tomorrow the campaign teams will discuss the general election.  The event is free to the public and more information can be found here.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.