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Thursday, September 5, 2002 |
There he goes again
William Simon is the Republican candidate for governor of California, and he's been managing the miraculous job of making incumbent governor Gray Davis (who's been described as "like Bill Clinton, but without the reputation for integrity") into a frontrunner. Simon's running on the idea that his experience as a businessman compensate for his total lack of government experience.Several weeks ago, a jury ruled against him in a $78 million civil fraud lawsuit against his family firm, brought by a former business partner; his defense was that he wasn't really running the business so he didn't know what was going on. Now he's relying on the Jeff Skilling/Ken Lay "I didn't know what was going on" defense again, by managing to come out both for gay rights (when responding to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group) and against them, when his conservative backers put pressure on him. Apparently the only thing he actually stands for is the idea that he should be allowed to buy himself a governorship, regardless of his lack of experience and principle.
"I do not believe that sexual orientation should be a factor in the recognition by the state of such relationships" (August 27th)
"I (have) stated that 'marriage is an institution that should remain between one man and one woman'. I stand by that statement." (September 1st)
By the way...guess how he explained the contradiction? He claims his first response wasn't authorized, and he didn't know anything about it, despite it having come from his campaign, with his signature on it. But, really, he's qualified to run the biggest state in the U.S. Just trust him.[San Francisco Chronicle: Simon backs off on gay rights GOP candidate for governor recants under pressure from religious right ]
Update: now he claims that he never signed it, and that he wasn't in control of his staff. If that was so, surely he could have said so a week ago, when the story first hit the papers.
[San Francisco Chronicle: Simon blames staff for fiasco on gay survey]
What a long strange trip it's busy being
I've been in California for the last week and a half, seeing friends and attending WorldCon in San Jose. Normally, I pack a set of system disks for my Macintosh with me when I travel, but this trip I didn't get around to it. As you might guess, my Mac blew out during a software install last week and has been out of commission till I could rebuild it (thanks to Bill Humphries for his help!).
I"ve got some blog entries partially written up in my Palm, which will be posted after some editing. In the meantime, it's good to be back.
