Bill Simon looks the camera square in the eye and walks right toward you. He‘s wearing a beautiful shirt the color of the Ionian Sea. He’s trying to smile. He says: ”Do you know me?“
Then he explains who he is: an honest, humble Republican candidate for governor, defamed and marginalized by the huge-spending Gray Davis machine. He‘s run his own business, he says, created many jobs. You should vote for him. Even if, until just now, you had no idea who he was.
The debut of this tentative, televised message to the masses kicked off last weekend’s fall state GOP convention of a California Republican Party whose independence has been recently curtailed by the national GOP. The little spot could not have been more of a contrast to the sizzling speech Simon made there to 600 party faithful. On Saturday night, in the Orange County heart of the GOP habitat, a confident Simon accused Davis of everything from ethical weirdness to instigating the state‘s tumbling economy and failing school systems. He got standing applause.