On Monday, Mayor Sam reported some rumors that were floating around the political world, that Garry South had told Gavin to raise $5 million by the end of the year or drop out.
Today, CalBuzz got the story from the horse’s mouth, and boy, is it an angry mouth.
“This is complete, utter bullshit, and I categorically deny it. “Mayor Sam” never talked to me to pass any of these hearsay assertions by me, and he is just picking up and disseminating intentional disinformation from the Brown camp – including Brown himself, who’s too busy “doing his job as AG” to debate, but has time to hang on the phone in his Oakland loft starting and spreading rumors about Newsom. I don’t give my candidates ultimatums of any sort.” (CalBuzz 10/07/09)
Mayor Sam responded this morning to South’s rant.
The thrust of our piece Monday was that Newsom has had such major trouble collecting any real campaign jack the San Francisco Mayor had to throw a hail mary pass and roll out a way earlier than usual endorsement of a former POTUS – Bill “BJ” Clinton in an LA photo opp at a green college building earlier this week. (Mayor Sam 10/07/09)
In the end, I sort of believe South on this one. It just doesn’t seem like South to tell a paying client to drop out of a race. And, as he pointed out, he did stay with some rather big underdogs in the form of Gray Davis and Steve Westly when they were polling quite low. That being said, Davis was a pretty good fundraiser and Westly could self-fund.
I would be very surprised to see Newsom drop out of the race early, nor do I think it would be good for the state. A vigorous exchange of ideas (not mud) is critical to ensure that the Democratic nominee supports, or at least understands, the goals of the progressive grassroots.
if Newsom can’t come up with the money to cover that expensive consultant, all that staff and overhead AND start banking more money for both a competitive primary AND a general (where he’s polling so poorly against a dunce and a jerk), it’ll be hard to hold on to anyone. I don’t know if South made such an ultimatum, and frankly I don’t care. But I can’t imagine any consultant sticking around if there aren’t the resources to run a real campaign.
Besides, Newsom is already showing signs of cracking. The fact he lashed out at Streetsblog for reporting something that was a) true and b) not a puff piece saying how great Dear Leader is just shows he is NOT going to be able to take any punches. The fact he won’t do any fundraising beyond showing up and looking pretty is just another layer of fail.
There’s plenty of time for Someone Else With A Base of Support to enter this race, so if Gavin flubs this like he did running SF, someone else will step in and we won’t be having any coronations for anyone.
A vigorous exchange of ideas? Between these two? You have got to be kidding. What is needed is a decent candidate in the race.
What are the possibilities for a decent democratic candidate in this race? The thought of Brown as such makes me hyperventilate — we’d have two Republicans running for gov’t, no matter his official designation…