Tom Campbell to drop out of governor's race to run for U.S. Senate
Source: San Jose Mercury News/Ken McLaughlin and Mike Zapler
In a move that will rock the state's political landscape, former Silicon Valley Congressman Tom Campbell will announce Thursday that he is dropping out of the California governor's race to run for the U.S. Senate, the Mercury News has learned.
Campbell has scheduled two news conferences to make the announcement: one at 9 a.m. in Los Angeles, the other at 2:30 p.m. at the San Jose Fairmont hotel, according to an e-mail from Campbell's campaign that was sent Monday to his major supporters. The e-mail referred to a "soon to be announced new venture" — confirmed by campaign sources to be a Senate run.
Reached for comment, Jamie Fisfis, a spokesman for the Campbell campaign, would neither confirm nor deny the scheduled announcement.
With Campbell out of the GOP gubernatorial primary, former eBay chief Meg Whitman and state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner will now go head to head in a race that will be fueled by millions of dollars out of their own pockets. Each has already contributed roughly $19 million to their campaign coffers, dwarfing Campbell's $1 million war chest.
In the Republican Senate primary, Campbell will now face former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a fellow Silicon Valley moderate, and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Irvine. The winner will face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in the fall.
Sources in the Campbell campaign say the candidate feels he has a much better chance to be heard in a race where the monetary playing field is more level.
Campbell boasts a political résumé that his primary opponents in the Senate race cannot match: five-term congressman, state senator and state finance director. His intellectual bona fides are also top-notch: He is a Harvard law school grad, he earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, and he won a tenured professor position at Stanford Law School at age 34.
His ideology — liberal on social issues such as abortion and gay rights, conservative on fiscal matters — could make him the most formidable opponent for Boxer, some political analysts say. In past races, Boxer has drawn mainly Republican opponents that she can easily pigeonhole as right-wing ideologues. That wouldn't be possible with Campbell.
But if he can win the nomination, Campbell's major obstacle in the governor's race — a dearth of money to compete against self-funded multimillionaires in a gigantic state — would still be a problem for him in the Senate race, though perhaps not to the same degree. While Fiorina has signaled that she's willing to spend some of her personal wealth on her campaign, she does not appear to have the ability to drop tens of millions of dollars on the race, as Whitman and Poizner are doing.
There's also the fact that Campbell has twice run for U.S. Senate and lost — in 1992, when he lost the GOP primary in a race that Boxer ultimately won, and again in 2000, when he was handily defeated in the general election by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Campbell will also face the same challenge that Fiorina is wrestling with: convincing red-meat conservatives to embrace him despite his reputation as a Bay Area moderate. Campbell is pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and while his economic philosophy tilts right, last year he endorsed a temporary 32-cent hike in the gas tax to help balance the state budget. Unlike DeVore and Fiorina, Campbell has declined to sign a no-new-taxes pledge.
DeVore said this morning he stands to gain the most from Campbell's switch.
"I don't believe there is room for two Silicon Valley-based Republicans that voters perceive as moderate," DeVore said. But he added that Campbell cannot be taken lightly.
"The bottom line is he's a very substantive individual who can't be dismissed," DeVore said.
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