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CNN Live At Daybreak

Political Analyst Ron Brownstein Looks At Elections

Aired November 07, 2001 - 06:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And New York voters have chosen media tycoon Michael Bloomberg to take over when Mayor Rudy Giuliani leaves office next year. Giuliani had lent the republican his endorsement. In the races for governor, the democrats are making headlines. Exit polls project Jim McGreevey to take the race in New Jersey. In Virginia Mark Warner will succeed Republican Jim Gilmore.

And we want to keep it on politics and bring in a friend of ours here, Ron Brownstein from the "LA Times" coming to us from Washington, D.C. Ron, good morning to see -- good morning, good to see you should be the complete sentence ...

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning Daryn.

KAGAN: ... right there. Let's start with the mayor's race in New York City. Nothing like tens of millions of dollars and a little love from Rudy Giuliani to win you the mayor's race, even if a lot of people didn't think that Michael Bloomberg had a chance to do that.

BROWNSTEIN: Plus one more ingredient.

KAGAN: What was that?

BROWNSTEIN: I mean money certainly -- money certainly talked. I mean Michael Bloomberg spent enough money on television, and it might have been simpler to simply buy every voter in New York their own television. It was just an extraordinary outpouring of money in a very limited voter poll in a mayoral race -- he spent $50 million and as you say, the Giuliani endorsement to another republican, perhaps expected, but at this point Giuliani could probably be elected mayor for life.

And it obviously carried a lot of weight in the final weeks. The election final ingredient, though, was division in the Democratic Party after that bruising fought primary between Mark Green and Freddie Ferrer, the Bronx ...

(CROSSTALK)

KAGAN: Because, Ron, in New York City, you have to try really hard as a democrat to lose a race like this.

BROWNSTEIN: You do -- you do indeed and really everything has to go against you. Giuliani showed that it's possible for a republican to win, but I think that last piece, the poor performance of Green, I think the exit polls will show among Hispanic voters is probably the critical ingredient that took him down, and it suggested difficulty of managing these multi racial coalitions for democrats in the big city. Racial politics in New York is always treacherous and Mark Green sort of drowned in those waters.

KAGAN: Giuliani preventing from running again because of term limits of -- in New York. But what do you think his political future is? What will we see him doing?

BROWNSTEIN: Well unlimited. I mean I don't think we -- I don't think he's given us a clear sense. He probably wants to make some money after these eight years in office. But he certainly is viable on a variety of fronts. You can imagine him running for governor of New York someday. You can certainly imagine the Bush administration wanting to appoint him to a high profile position. My guess is that he stays associated with New York City directly for the imminent future.

KAGAN: Let's look at something that's happening in Washington, D.C. or rather not happening, and that is the lack of a passage of an aviation security bill. It almost seems unbelievable that we're this far past September 11th and Congress has yet to come up with a bill to make the skies safer.

BROWNSTEIN: It is striking, isn't it? A rather pointed reminder that there are still big ideological differences between the parties, and this is one that is really being held up by ideology. In the Senate a bipartisan 100 to nothing vote in the end for federalizing the people who do the baggage checks and screen at the airport security check-in.

In the House, a reluctance to create that many new federal employees. The House Majority Leader Dick Armey explicitly says he doesn't want to create that many new union members who would support democrats and you see this impasse. On the other hand, the events of Chicago this week give a lot of ammunition to democrats to argue that we can't rely simply on private companies to do this.

I suspect that the security lapses, post the House passage of the bill will tilt the final version a little more in the Senate direction. But this is going to be some fight -- it's going to be a tough hand-to-hand combat over designing the final aspects of this bill. There are other elements too over baggage check, whether we're going to require -- how quickly we require x-ray of all checked baggage, which is something that airlines have resisted for many years. And there are a lot of disputes in here, and this is going to be a tough one to resolve.

KAGAN: Nothing tougher out there for a lot of people than the economy. A lot of folks out of work and tough times -- democrats have come up with an idea of how they want an economic stimulus package, but republicans are saying oh, no, don't think so, not under our watch.

BROWNSTEIN: See the previous answer. Ideological divide part two -- even in the post September 11th era when the parties have gone out of their way, really bent over backwards to try to agree wherever possible in Washington. You are seeing continued ideological disputes. The House Republicans have a stimulus plan. The Bush White House would prefer a stimulus plan as well, that is entirely focused on tax cuts at this point.

The democrats are dubious of more tax cuts, particularly the elements in those plans that would accelerate the income rate tax reductions approved last spring, make them permanent. And they wanted to put more of the money into spending particularly on security- related items. I mean essentially trying to cloak their desire for pump priming spending in the national security mantel that is so popular after September 11th. Big disagreements and this is another one that is not going to be resolved easily. Both sides are sort of dug in.

KAGAN: Given your connections with the "LA Times", we would be remiss if we didn't check in on political news of California. The former Mayor Dick Riordan saying he is going to make a run for the governor's office. That's going to be a tough run for the former mayor.

BROWNSTEIN: But one in which he is potentially more competitive than the last republican nominee. You know what we saw last night in New Jersey with Bret Schundler is that in the socially liberal coastal state, you really can not run for statewide office if you oppose legal abortion and gun control.

Obviously there are parts of the country where you can do that, but along the coast, that's virtually impossible. In 1998 Gray Davis used those same issues that Jim McGreevey used against Bret Schundler last night in New Jersey -- Davis used those issues in California to really bludgeon the Republican nominee Dan Lundgren.

Riordan is moderate on those issues. That allows him to move the debate onto other fronts -- the economy, energy, et cetera, without having those sort of silver bullets aimed at him and he could be competitive. The question is whether he can hold republicans together, holding such moderate views and holding so many democrats as advisers in his campaign.

KAGAN: Well it's an interesting thing for republicans because it's kind of like watch out what you wish for. You get a viable candidate, he just doesn't represent the same issues that you wishes that he did.

BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely right. Schundler won the primary in New Jersey by basically mobilizing the conservative base against a moderate opponent, but when he got to the general election in a state like New Jersey, which is very socially moderate, he never was able to get past those issues Daryn, and he really never got up to talking about any of the things he wanted to talk about.

He was simply branded as an extremist for supporting a concealed carry law, for opposing legalized abortion, and even for his views on school vouchers. He never really got in the game. He was never in the race. Very similar to what happened in 1998 in California, very similar to what's happened in the presidential races in these states in recent years.

So at some point the party may have to say to itself, look you have to move to where the voters are and Riordan offers them more of an opportunity to do that in California. The question is whether the primary elector, which tends to be you know more ardent believers in both parties are willing to make that sacrifice of their true beliefs.

KAGAN: And besides New Jersey, besides New York City, which race did you find the most intriguing and telling of a trend that might be coming ahead?

BROWNSTEIN: Well I think that, you know, you have to look at the three of them together. Looking at these first-year elections, these sort of mid-term elections for their predictive value is difficult. In '93 they did predict the republican landslide in '94. In '97 the republicans swept these three races plus the LA mayoral and didn't do that well in '98.

I think what it says to me above all, when you look at Virginia, New Jersey and New York combined, is that the issues that mattered before September 11th, especially these (INAUDIBLE) races, mattered after September 11th. The voters divided pretty much on the same lines (INAUDIBLE) in recent elections, even with Bush's enormous popularity that wasn't easily translated into other republican candidates -- to me that suggested that the electoral keeps dividing the way it has been, we're going to have another very close battle for control of Congress next year because the two parties went into September 11th virtually a parity, and I suspect that we come out of this election with the message from the voters it's still true -- they're still a parity.

KAGAN: And on that note, we've got to go. Ron Brownstein, always good to have you along.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks Daryn.

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