Sitting in second place, governor candidate John Cox gets a hand up from frontrunner, pulled down by straggler

John Cox of Rancho Santa Fe, a Republican, has found himself near the top of the heap in deep-blue California’s race for governor.

Two polls this past week placed him just behind Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom in the June 5 primary election, an outcome which would allow Cox to advance to the general election in November along with Newsom.

Few thought that would be how things would play out in California when the state switched to a “top two” primary system — in which the top two vote-getters go to a runoff election, regardless of party.

In a state with 45 percent Democratic voters and 25 percent Republican, the assumption was that a runoff in the governor’s race might allow the dominant party’s liberal and moderate wings to duke it out.

Then came Cox, a perennial political candidate in Illinois whose early entry into politics in California involved proposals for profound changes to the government. He proposed a legislature with 12,000 members, to strengthen the voice of the people and lessen the voice of special interests. He has steadily built momentum in the governor’s race, and was endorsed this month by President Donald Trump.

For Newsom, Cox has become a frenemy going into the primary. Beating a Republican would probably be easier for Newsom in November than taking on a fellow Democrat.

For former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, also a Democrat, Cox is a growing obstacle. Two polls released Thursday place Cox in second place and Villaraigosa in third, leaving Villaraigosa with little option but to make Cox his focus.

“It’s been absolutely strange,” Tim Rosales, Cox’s campaign manager, said by phone.

In not-so-subtle ways, the frontrunner appears to be trying to usher Cox along with Newsom into the November campaign.

“The idea of choosing your own opponent is old, and I’ve got to tell you in a situation where you have an open primary it becomes easier,” said John Nienstedt, a pollster with Competitive Edge Research and Communication. “The rules have been set up to aid someone like Newsom in this effort.”

Newsom’s campaign is casting Cox as a solid conservative, while Villaraigosa’s supporters are attempting to reallocate some of Cox’s votes by making him appear as an unreliable Republican.

Newsom’s campaign did not return calls for this story. The campaign has produced a series of commercials that, on their surface, criticize Cox for his positions on gun control and perspectives on President Donald Trump.

“Why is John Cox attacking Gavin Newsom for supporting common sense gun safety?” one of Newsom’s commercials begins. “John Cox stands with Donald Trump and the NRA. Cox called gun laws a waste of time, opposes background checks and a ban on assault weapons. And Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom took on the gun lobby and won.”

Another refers to Cox as “Trump’s protege,” while a 63-second cartoon on Newsom’s Facebook page uses polarizing issues like LGBT rights, hate crime laws and gun laws to cast Newsom as a defender of liberal values, and Cox as a hardline conservative.

While Newsom is trying to advance his own campaign, he is also trying to signal to conservatives that Cox is a solid Republican, Nienstedt said.

“He built Cox up by portraying him as someone who works in concert with Trump and opposes gun control,” Nienstedt said. “That’s more than a dog whistle, that’s a screamer.”

And it appears that Newsom’s playbook is paying off, Nienstedt said.

“Newsom’s strategy to bolster Cox is working, and Republicans have coalesced around Cox, the businessman,” Nienstedt said.

While Cox (and Newsom) are trying to consolidate conservative support for Cox, Villaraigosa’s supporters are trying to do the opposite — divide conservatives.

Families and Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa, a pro-charter school political committee, recently sent 500,000 mailers to conservative households. The campaign literature extols two other candidates, Assemblyman Travis Allen, R-Huntington Beach and Robert Newman, a farmer, with sterling conservative bonafides.

Cox is tarred in the same mailer as a former Democrat, a Chicago lawyer and a supporter of tax hikes.

A sepearate flyer from the charter-school group says Cox “doesn’t deserve your vote” and is a “Chicago liberal,” a reference to former President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown.

Another mailer tries to rally support for Allen with a picture of the assemblyman and his family posed in front of an antique military aicraft and a caption that says, “Our flag and national anthem unite us as Americans. This Californnia family doesn’t kneel.”

If their strategy is successful, Cox will have fewer supporters and lower the bar needed to finish the primary in second place.

Rosales said he believes that voters have figured out that Newsom is trying to boost Cox and Villaraigosa’s supporters are trying to tear him down. Some voters, he said, have reached out to the campaign to talk about some of the commercials about Cox they’ve seen, and they’ve said that they have read the fine print on the ads where the financier is named.

He said that Cox has gained support not because of Newsom’s commercials, but because of his policies and because Trump endorsed him on May 18, signaling that Cox is the GOP’s standard bearer in California.

“I think Republican voters are seeing through these Democrats’ attacks, and by trying to prop up these candidates who are falling pretty far back in the polls,” Rosales said, referring to Allen and Newman.

On Thursday, the Cox Campaign submitted a complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission, a state watchdog that referees election law and ethics, over the mailer about Allen and the flag and the military airplane. The complaint alleges that the Familes and Teachers political group didn’t disclose in the pro-Allen ad that it is actually pro-Villaraigosa group, an omission that hides the political group’s plot to spoil the election for Cox.

Cox’s team isn’t the only one that has found the push-pull unusual. A spokesman for Treasurer John Chiang, a Democrat who is running, said that it detracts from the progressive issues that the party champions and is unfair to voters who are trying to make a decisions about which candidate they’ll support.

“We don’t need another governor who is willing to play games instead of actually leading on issues that Californians care about,” said Fabian Levy, a spokesman for Chiang.

He warned that there will be problems for Democrats running for lower offices in the November runoff if conservative voters are drawn to polls to vote for Cox at the top of the ticket and then support other Republican candidates and causes down ballot.

“If we have a chance to get two Democrats on the top of the ballot, which we do here in California, that can help the number of Democrats who win in races across the state. Pushing a Republican like Gavin Newsom is doing, only helps Republicans,” Levy said.

Rosales said that the last weeks of the primary will likely turn into a preview of the messages that Californians will hear in November.

“The general election campaign is starting to shape up a little before the primary is done,” Rosales said. “It’s the same kind of attacks that we expect to see from Gavin Newsom in the fall.”

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

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