Rose Associate Director on Gubernatorial Campaigns

A May 16^th article in the San Jose Mercury News quoted Rose Institute Associate Director Professor Ken Miller discussing the campaigns of various gubernatorial candidates in California. The article, titled “A glut of Bay Area candidates reaches out to vote-rich Southern California,” details how the conservative candidates are focusing on the Inland Empire and Central Valley where the Republican population centers of the state are located.

Miller is quoted as saying that “with the exception of Schwarzenegger, who’s anomalous in a lot of ways, there hasn’t been a pool of Republicans from Southern California who are next in line to run statewide […] Instead, their base has increasingly become the Inland Empire and Central Valley, but there’s not a lot of [campaign] money in those areas. So you’ve got this weird situation where Republican candidates are coming from the Bay Area, and they’re much more socially moderate than the median voter in a Republican primary.”

Miller also discusses Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s decision to not run for governor. According to Miller, Villaraigosa “had an ideal platform to launch a bid for governor but decided against it last year, after a bout of bad publicity surrounding the breakup of his marriage and his city’s economic troubles.” Miller concludes by noting that “he would’ve been a natural.”