So far, the major left-coast media have served up our major gubernatorial candidates as depressing cartoons. Simon is portrayed as another one of those politically-wet-behind-the-ears, multizillionaire, pro-business stiffs the Republicans keep throwing into statewide races; subtextually, it''s hinted that he''s a right-wing kook of ominous proportions. Gray Davis, on the other hand, has been sketched as a wily if unprincipled political operator, a man who, despite a well-earned reputation for uninspired oratory and craven pandering, has a genius for campaign fund-raising and strategy that derailed his biggest Republican threat, former Los Angeles Mayor Dick Riordan, with millions of dollars of attack ads.

As a scandal over a state contract for Oracle software blooms, the press is enlarging on its negative subtext for Davis, but it''s still vaguer than Simon''s; it combines, generally, the ickiness of the governor''s nonstop campaign fund-raising with the incompetence of his handling of the energy crisis.

Now that the cartoons are drawn, it seems, all that''s left is a smelly horse race that the media will call for us, all the way till November:

Davis takes a 14-length lead as Simon stumbles over a pile of unreleased income tax forms...

But now, with the incumbent clearly laboring under the Oracle strapped to his back, Simon is coming up on the outside...

Across the front pages of the major dailies, a crude, best-of-two-evils race will play out. Many a story will document the laments of voters dismayed at their gubernatorial choices. Many an op-ed piece will bemoan the likelihood of low voter turnout caused by disgust with the gubernatorial race.

There will be insufficient pondering of a clear and present question: Why does the largest state in the most powerful nation on Earth keep winding up with offensive nonentities as candidates for leadership positions?

In 1907, concerned about corporate influence over public life, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Tillman Act into law, making it illegal for corporations to contribute to federal candidates for office.

Here in the trend-setting state of California, 95 years later, even though there is no more obvious source of potential political corruption than the corporate treasury, we haven''t managed to get around to banning corporate donations yet.

In federal races, the size of contributions has been limited since 1974, when the campaign abuses of Watergate made it clear that unregulated election donations could subvert democracy in dangerous ways. Individual contributions were capped at $1,000 per election, or $2,000 per year. (Under campaign finance reforms passed this year, that limit will rise slightly.)

Until recently, state candidates in California could accept any wad of cash anyone (or any business) was willing to fork over. Gray Davis and state Senate strongman John Burton are among the most efficient hunters and gatherers, reeling in $25,000, $50,000, $75,000, and, in Davis'' case, even $100,000 donations with abandon. The last time I looked, the governor had $28 million in the bank-and that''s after spending some $10 million to poleax Riordan in the primaries.

This year, a package of campaign finance "reforms" known as Proposition 34 begins to fall into place. Prop. 34 will change some facets of California''s campaign finance regime ever, ever so slightly for the better. Contribution limits on state legislative candidates will roll out this year; limits on contributions to gubernatorial candidates will, of course, not kick in until after the November election.

But even after the California "reforms" are all in place, nothing much will have changed. Political players-the people and firms seeking contracts, licenses, permissions and other favors from the government-will be able to hand gubernatorial candidates campaign money in chunks as large as $20,000. Corporations will still be able to give directly to candidates.

And Californians will be left with the same choice we have had for a long time now:

We can elect a candidate who is so wealthy he can fund his own campaign (and pray the candidate knows something-anything-about running a government and possesses some-any-concern about the unrich).

Or, as we have done once already with Gray Davis, we can elect a whore.

There really can''t be much dispute about it. The governor''s a strumpet.

Of course, I''m not saying that Gray Davis accepts money for sex. (It''s probably just a personal failing, but I find it hard to package Davis and the physical act of sex in the same thought.)

I''m certainly not suggesting I can prove a single quid pro quo, even one instance of the governor receiving a campaign contribution in explicit exchange for official action.

He raises millions upon millions of dollars, essentially nonstop, in and out of election years, in gigantic chunks. To give the governor a $5,000 campaign donation is to be a political small fry. A list of major Davis campaign donors shows that there have been 425 individual donations larger than five grand-over the last eight months. There have been 17 contributions of $100,000 or more during that time, making a $5K gift almost a matter of shame.

Then, when it is pointed out that a gigantic campaign contribution from this or that business interest somehow seems to coincide with favorable action from the state government, Davis'' able campaign spokesmen coyly declare that political donations never play a role in the governor''s policy decisions. Why, just look at the decisions that have gone against contributors!

There is truth to the notion that Gray Davis takes so much money from so many interests on so many sides of almost every policy question that he cannot satisfy all his campaign contributors simultaneously. California Common Cause Executive Director Jim Knox describes the situation this way: "He is militantly moderate, which allows him to leverage money from all sides."

And this is precisely the problem at the center of electing a harlot to public office. There''s just no telling who she might do. From prison guards (who want and get raises) to Indian tribes (who want favorable regulation of gambling) to the Oracle Corp. (which got one hell of a state software contract), across the insurance, energy, telecommunications and real estate sectors, Gray Davis has accepted tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign money. Meanwhile, the state has passed out long, slurpy kisses to the donors. The governor maintains there is no connection between the money and the kisses, and, anyway, he never went all the way.

It doesn''t really matter. At the very least, Davis has done an amazingly lifelike imitation of an exceedingly prolific political streetwalker, and California deserves a higher tone in its highest office. Certainly, when we fill that office, we deserve better than a choice between an Equal Opportunity Slut and the Rich But Vacant Ingenue.

We will keep getting best-of-evils choices so long as the campaign finance system is not changed to give a wider range of candidates a decent shot at running for office. For statewide candidates to get their messages out to California''s huge and far-flung citizenry, they need to use television and other mass media, and mass media cost masses of money. To date, we, the citizens of California, have told the candidates to get the money however they can. This policy has naturally advantaged those who are already wealthy and those who are most adept at raising money.

If we want candidates who are primarily policy experts and political leaders, rather than campaign finance whores and clueless rich guys, we will have to remove fund-raising acumen from the list of political traits we encourage.

John Mecklin is the editor of SF Weekly.

Simple Simon

By Philip J. Trounstine

In California''s primary two months ago, Republicans voted like Republicans. Who woulda thunk it? Surely not Dick Riordan, who-with the blessing of President George Bush and the California GOP brain trust-thought he could browbeat his fellow Republicans into voting as if they were moderate Democrats in March so they could throw out a moderate Democrat in November.

A screwy strategy, you say? As Bill Simon says, "Next subject, please."

How did the inexperienced son of a former U.S. Treasury Secretary with only a passing acquaintance with the ballot box win the GOP nomination? He did it the old-fashioned way. He bought it. Cheap. Because Gray Davis had spent the Gross National Product of Tuvalu driving down the value of the one thing in Simon''s way: Dick Riordan.

Contrary to the fashionable analysis, Davis and his campaign pros did not set out to elect Simon the GOP nominee. Rather, they recognized that a moderate, pro-choice Republican could pose a threat to the governor in November. And since Riordan was running a general election campaign against Davis, they decided to join the battle.

Their goal: to prevent Riordan from gaining traction among swing-voting moderate Democrats and independents, especially in Northern California, who might find Riordan attractive. The danger was clear. A January Los Angeles Times poll showed Riordan with a 45-33 favorable rating among Democratic likely voters.

They wasted no time, exposing Riordan on TV as two-faced and unreliable on his pro-choice abortion stand. For good measure, they nailed him for gouging the state on energy costs while he was mayor of Los Angeles. The result was palpable in the next Times poll. By February, Riordan''s favorable rating among Democrats was 40-45.

And while Davis was squeezing him from the left, Simon pulled a cool $5 million out of his own pocket to go after Riordan from the right. Taxes and Bill Clinton. Yow. Worse, stealth candidate Bill Jones had conservative icon and former Governor George Deukmejian-whom Riordan had insulted-go on the air, excoriating the former L.A. mayor.

And guess what? Riordan''s favorability among Republicans suffered even more than it did with Democrats. From 63-16 in January, Riordan''s favorability among Republicans slipped to 54-30 in February.

Riordan was toast.

Conventional wisdom had held that the early March primary would favor the well-financed candidate with built-in name identification. It was supposed to be unfair to the newcomer. But Riordan''s sickening collapse and Simon''s extraordinary surge demonstrated that conventional wisdom is always wrong.

Once again, the California Republican Party had failed to rally its center and left in a primary. According to the L.A. Times exit poll, conservatives outnumbered moderates at the polls 57-38 percent. And 54 percent of those GOP voters said abortion should always be illegal, with few exceptions. This was-and is-Simon''s base: the rock-solid, deeply ideological, uncompromising conservatives who comprise, at best, one-third of the California electorate.

Simon''s campaign to capture the GOP hard core was smart. Simon ran as exactly who he is: a staunch conservative who opposes abortion, gun control, taxes and government regulation. His best line: "Gray Davis didn''t plan to fail, he just failed to plan." He was disciplined enough to stay on message and willing to spend his own money. And he was ruthless enough to attack his friend and fellow parishioner, Riordan, when the professionals told him he had to.

Would Simon have won without Davis? Absolutely not. But having won as he did-by exposing himself as a Heritage Foundation ideologue-he''s made it virtually impossible for himself now to repudiate the hard-right positions he used to capture the hearts and minds of the GOP''s knuckle-draggers.

Now, you may scratch your head and wonder: Wait a minute, the most important issues to California voters are the economy, education, energy and health care, right? Yes. Absolutely. If you ask people what are the most important issues facing the state, that''s what they say.

But there''s another set of issues in California. These include abortion, gun control and off-shore oil drilling. And for at least a third of California voters, these issues are so ingrained that if a candidate is on the wrong side of them, he or she will not even be heard on the "important" issues.

Critics who want to demean these concerns call them "hot button issues." The analyst''s hidden bias suggests these are irrational, intemperate and emotional matters that drive voters into hysterics.

Actually, these should more properly be called California''s "cold shoulder issues:" If you''re on the wrong side of them, that''s what you get from the voters. They won''t even listen to what you have to say on what everyone agrees are the salient, significant matters of governance.

That''s how Dan Lungren got 32 percent of the vote.

And that''s half of Bill Simon''s problem heading into November.

Yes, Gray Davis is vulnerable on energy, the economy and education. Energy because he inherited a dysfunctional system of deregulation that was unscrupulously leveraged by Enron et. al., because he didn''t raise rates 400 percent when the utilities and Wall Street were demanding him to, and because he negotiated long-term contracts that looked great at the time but look too expensive now.

The economy because that''s what happens to governors: They get credit for good times and blame for bad times.

Education because despite countless attempts to tell the story in the press, Davis still has not convinced Californians on a broad scale of what is true: that student performance has actually improved, that schools are better and teachers are better trained than they were when he took office.

And yes, the state budget''s $23 billion shortfall is a huge problem for the governor-especially in light of the tendency of Republicans in the Legislature to use their minority veto to hold up any budget compromise.

But even if Simon can get past the cold shoulder issues-with TV ads that seek to change the subject-he''s so far to the right of California voters on these important issues that his attempts to exploit the governor''s vulnerabilities are likely to backfire.

Take energy. Simon opposes price caps and supports deregulation-the very combination of policies that created California''s energy crisis in the first place. His position is shared by less than one-quarter of California''s voters and just 32 percent of California Republicans, according to polling by the Public Policy Institute of California.

But that''s not all. Simon''s free-market solution on energy opens the discussion of other vital resources he''d like to privatize: like California''s water supply and its roads and highways. Even Lungren didn''t support selling off the state''s water to the highest bidder.

His solution on the economy and state budget? Reduce workers'' compensation benefits, workers'' safety regulations and environmental laws that "impose undue regulations and red tape on businesses." Cut taxes and cut state spending. (In other words, reduce revenues and then have to cut programs even further.)

These are positions guaranteed to enrage teachers, laborers, nurses, police officers, the elderly and just about anyone else who earns a wage, has their kids in public schools or state colleges, uses state parks or drives on public roads.

Education? Aside from the fact that he''s attracted to vouchers and wants to give a tax break to parents who "home-school" their children, Simon''s big ideas include getting private companies to share in building new schools.

It''s not as if Simon won''t have allies: The Pro-Life Council, the Gun Owners of California, the California Republican Assembly and other organized conservative interest groups will surely work hard for him.

Rudy Giuliani and President Bush - both of whom are popular in California - will certainly try to help him frame the debate on issues that Simon would rather talk about.

Also on his side: Simon apparently has a great deal of money to spend, it looks as if he''s able to stay on message and his golly-gee personality seems attractive to a lot of people he encounters on the campaign trail.

But Davis-despite his vulnerabilities-not only has enough money to frame the debate, he has legions of teachers and nurses, cops and firefighters, workers, women and environmentalists, all of whom have the ability to communicate with their forces independently. And their message will be this: On education, the economy, energy, environment, abortion and gun control, California is far better off today because of Gray Davis. And Bill Simon is untested and radically right-wing.

Which is why, in November, Davis will win a second term.

Philip J. Trounstine, the former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News and former communications director for Gov. Gray Davis, is director of the Survey & Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University and a communications consultant who has done some work for the governor''s re-election campaign.