Demonic Sheep

Yesterday, Carly Fiorina released a bizzare web video attacking Tom Campbell’s record on fiscal issues and depicting him as a demonic sheep. Since the video was released, Chuck DeVore has also come out against demonic sheep, but in a very different way.

First, a bit of background for those who haven’t been following the race. Fiorina, Campbell, and DeVore are the major candidates for the Republican nomination for the 2010 California Senate race against Barbara Boxer (who is currently underwater in her approval rating, and is thus seen as vulnerable despite California’s strong Democratic leanings). Fiorina is the former CEO of HP and was a campaign advisor for McCain in 2008. DeVore is the ranking Republican in California’s state assembly committee on revenue and taxation and a former VP of Research for a midsize aerospace company. Campbell is a former Congressman and the current Dean of UC Berkeley’s business school. Fiorina has next to no political record prior to this campaign; DeVore is a conservative of the Tom McClintock mold, focused primarily on cutting spending and taxes; and Tom Campbell is a soft libertarian: very conservative on spending, a bit squishy on taxes and gun control, pro-choice, and very pro-gay-rights.

Until a couple weeks ago, Fiorina and DeVore were the only major candidates. Fiorina has been running as a  moderate, and started out with a considerable lead in the polls, with a very high percentage of undecided voters. DeVore’s been steadily catching up on her. Fiorina’s tenure as CEO of HP was something of a train wreck, which gives her high name recognition but not in a way that translates into high support, while few people who aren’t politics junkies have heard of DeVore. Tom Campbell was initially running for Governor, but Meg Whitman seems to be running away with that race, and Campbell switched to the Senate race. Both polls taken since Campbell switched races show him well in the lead, picking up about half of DeVore’s support and a big chunk of the undecided vote.

And so Fiorina decides to come out swinging against the new frontrunner. From a strategic perspective, I don’t see what this ad does for her. First, its writing and production values are ridiculous, which makes Fiorina look profoundly unserious as a candidate — Jim Geraghty speculates that the absurdity is intentially to get the ad attention, but that strikes me as counterproductive. In addition to the effect of beclowning Fiorina, the absurdity of the ad distracts from the content (everybody remembers the demon sheep, but we have to strain to remember exactly what the line of attack on Campbell was), and the viral nature of the ad means it’ll be seen mostly by people who follow politics closely and who are the most likely people to know enough background (or have the interest to look it up) to see how badly out of context the ad’s attacks are:

• Campbell has a ten-year voting record in the House, in which he was a solid conservative on spending issues.
• The 2005 California Budget was Plan C — a package designed to keep the state limping along as best they could after Campbell’s proposals to fix the underlying problems with the budget were rejected by both the state legislature and the state’s voters.
• Campbell has supported temporary tax increases as part of a compromise to get permenant spending caps — as far as I know, he has never supported a permanent tax increase. It’s not a tradeoff I agree with (since temporary tax increases have a way of sticking around and permanent spending caps have a way of evaporating), but it’s defensible from the standpoint of a fiscal conservative who believes that unconstrained spending is the core problem.

The ad also leaves Fiorina without a niche in the race. Before Campbell joined the Senate race, Fiorina was the moderate and DeVore the conservative. The Demon Sheep video hits Campbell from the right, thus abdicating the moderate niche to him. Meanwhile, DeVore still has a firm handle on the conservative niche, and comes off looking like a mature adult next to Fiorina’s silly antics. At this point, I rather suspect the race is going to turn out to be between Campbell and DeVore with Fiorina rapidly fading into irrelevance.

Personally, I’d be quite happy with that outcome. I’m a fan of both Campbell and DeVore, and I’m leaning towards voting for Campbell. I’m probably a bit closer to DeVore on the issues I care about the most, but endorsing Campbell’s libertarian views on social issues (especially his support for gay marriage) would be a very healthy step that I’d like to see the California Republican Party take.