Campbell leaves governor's race to run for U.S. Senate

[Borderwatch]

there were few surprises Thursday when Tom Campbell announced he was dropping his bid to become California's next governor to enter the race for U.S. Senate.

But the former Silicon Valley congressman pleasantly surprised public-interest groups when he agreed to let the Mercury News and the Bay Area News Group post his 2008 returns on newspaper Web sites — apparently the first candidate in the country running for a major office to do so.

"We'd like to see other candidates doing what he's doing,'' said Bill Allison of the Washington-based Sunlight Foundation.

The Mercury News and the newspaper group last week asked the four major candidates for governor to release 10 years of federal and state tax returns. Campbell was the only one who didn't balk, even though he knew he was changing races. He said he would release more returns later and that his only concern was protecting his wife's privacy. The other gubernatorial candidates — former EBay CEO Meg Whitman, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and Attorney General Jerry Brown— indicated they might be open to the idea but didn't make any specific promises.

In the GOP Senate primary, Campbell will now face former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Irvine.

Campbell's campaign on Thursday released an internal poll that shows him beating both his new opponents handily, with Campbell at 31 percent, Fiorina at 15 percent and DeVore
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at 12 percent. The survey of 438 likely Republican voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percent.

"Everything has led me to this moment,'' said Campbell, addressing skeptics who say he's changing races in midstream simply because he can't win the gubernatorial primary. "This is the most important thing I can do in public service.''

New cheerleader

Campbell also pointed out that his change of heart is not without precedent. In 1982, he said, Pete Wilson was running for governor when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate. He later beat Jerry Brown in the general election, eventually becoming governor eight years later.

Campbell spent much of Thursday's news conference stressing his fiscally conservative credentials, noting that the National Taxpayers Union Foundation had once rated him the "cheapest man in Congress'' because of his reluctance to spend federal dollars.

With the federal deficit soaring out of sight, Campbell said, the nation's fiscal path is "suicidal."

Campbell, a one-time state senator, is a former five-term congressman. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Harvard. He often points out that he was also the last California finance director who oversaw a balanced state budget. He has also been a Stanford law professor and the dean of the University of California-Berkeley's business school.

In a hotel conference room at the Fairmont San Jose packed with supporters, Campbell was accompanied Thursday by George Shultz, the U.S. secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan.

Shultz, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, took on a new role as cheerleader-in-chief for the campaign, leading several choruses of "Go, Tom. Go Tom'' as he jerked his arms and smiled.

In Los Altos Hills on Wednesday night, Fiorina was already depicting Campbell as a career politician. But Shultz, Campbell's honorary campaign chairman, said political experience is good, not bad.

"He's been in the arena,'' Shultz said. "He's thought about these issues all his life.''

Campbell acknowledged that he was unable to compete financially in the governor's race after two mega-rich opponents — Whitman and Poizner — each contributed about $19 million of their own money. Campbell, who was running second to Whitman in two polls, raised only about $1 million.

Strong name

Federal law bars Campbell from moving the money he's raised for his gubernatorial campaign into a new Senate account. He will have to start fundraising essentially from scratch, likely returning whatever money he has left in his account for governor and asking supporters to send another check.

While Fiorina, has already lent her campaign $2.5 million, her pockets aren't as deep as those of billionaire Whitman and Poizner, a former valley entrepreneur.

DeVore and Fiorina will no doubt try to focus the electorate on Campbell's generally liberal positions on abortion, guns and gay rights.

Campbell, a "maverick'' before the term became politically chic, has pretty strong name recognition among voters, having run unsuccessfully twice for U.S. Senate.

In the 1992 Senate race, he lost the GOP primary to a hard-core conservative after singer Sonny Bono siphoned off moderate voters. In 2000, he won the primary but lost in a landslide to the popular Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Mike Zapler of the Mercury News Washington Bureau contributed to this report. Contact Ken McLaughlin at 408-920-5552.

# Tom Campbell immediately agreed to the request, mailing his 2008 tax returns and saying would release other returns as long as his wife"s privacy was protected. In 2008, he filed separate returns from his wife. The returns showed he made $440,989 in 2008. He earned $254,087 as dean of UC-Berkeley"s Haas School of Business and had $186,622 in other income. The bulk of that "” $107,773 "” was for work he did for the Visa International Service Association, which establishes the rules and standards for the Visa payments network. He paid $128,291 in federal taxes, $37,134 in state taxes. He gave $9,715 to charity.
# James Bognet, manager of GOP hopeful Steve Poizner"s campaign, said the campaign will eventually make available tax returns and other financial information "in a process which maintains Steve and his family"s personal privacy.—
# Jillian Hasner, manager of GOP hopeful Meg Whitman"s campaign, said only that Whitman intends to make "financial reports available to Californians in a way that does not compromise her or her family"s private information.—
# Steve Glazer, senior adviser to Attorney General Jerry Brown"s campaign, said Brown would consider the request when he officially enters the Democratic primary.