NEW YORK, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- That Republican New York Gov. George Pataki would win re-election over state Comptroller Carl McCall was not unexpected. What no one predicted, at least in the early days, was how far behind Pataki McCall would run.
The first black to run for governor of the state, McCall received 53 percent of the vote out of New York City, fewer than 700,000 votes.
A black Democrat running in an overwhelmingly liberal state should, according to the experts, have turned in a better performance.
McCall faced some obvious obstacles. Pataki, the two-term incumbent, was able to raise and stockpile enormous sums of money toward his re-election. His virtual deification in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist assault on New York City raised another barrier McCall could not overcome.
Yet despite all this, the principal problems actually came from within his own campaign -- and from McCall himself -- causing his double-digit loss in this overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning state.
His campaign started two years ago amid a great deal of fanfare and excitement. McCall was the first major-party black to run for governor. His career in public service had been admirable, capped by two highly praised terms as state comptroller. He also had been president of the New York City Board of Education and a state senator.
On paper McCall, the only minority elected to a statewide office in the history of New York, was a very logical, competitive challenger to Pataki.
Admittedly, the Pataki campaign did an excellent job of co-opting those who traditionally should have been with McCall.
Pataki was able to dole out favors and chits to one bloc after another, blocs that should have been McCall's for the asking. Pataki made a sweetheart deal to lock up the support of the Health and Hospital Workers and made similar deals with other government employee unions.
The governor also promised, yet again, to support hate crimes legislation, thus appeasing gay and lesbian activist groups that should have been with McCall.
Using taxpayer dollars, the Pataki camp was able to pit normally allied groups against each other. This infighting added to the problems the already fractionalized state Democratic Party, still smarting from the ugliness of last year's New York City mayoral debacle, was experiencing.
The McCall campaign, however, didn't put up much of a fight. Perhaps its greatest failing was its inability to put forth a clear message as to why Carl McCall should replace George Pataki in the governor's mansion.
Disarray was evident on every level of the campaign.
Especially pronounced was the lack of a coherent long-term message to distinguish McCall on those issues where he should have naturally appealed to voters: education, the economy and jobs, and fighting the culture of corruption in Albany that surrounds Pataki and his cronies.
McCall's media campaign was incoherent, the result of no fewer than three consecutive paid consultants. Each one brought in his own approach to the job, separate and apart from those of his predecessor. This created a vision vacuum that allowed Pataki to set the agenda.
McCall's campaign strategists -- of whom there were many -- continually failed to seize countless opportunities and utilize their natural political assets. After former U.S. Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo dropped out of the primary, McCall's campaign failed to take any advantage of the ensuing momentum. Indeed Cuomo and his father, former New York Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo, were virtually absent from the campaign trail afterward.
This was an especially telling blow, as McCall was first appointed to his statewide post by the elder Cuomo himself.
The McCall camp also wasted its biggest asset, former President Bill Clinton. Commercials with Clinton didn't air until a week before the election. When they did, the did not articulate any substance.
These same strategists either were unable or unwilling to recognize and utilize their largest bloc of natural supporters: women -- a critical voter bloc running across all socio-economic, cultural and class lines. Without pronouncing clear distinctions, McCall's campaign did not play to its obvious strength and therefore was unable to generate excitement, especially among women.
Moreover, the notorious "Lettergate" issue was badly handled. The discovery that McCall had written letters on official stationery to several companies that do business with his office, to help his daughter get a job, turned into a serious miscalculation.
Instead of taking responsibility for the letters, written as any proud father might have done, the McCall team circled the wagons, giving the impression a cover up was in the making.
This allowed Pataki to redirect the attention of the media and voters away from his own spotty record, successfully implying McCall was somehow an unsavory or immoral candidate.
He never really was able to defend himself. Unfortunately, this so-called scandal was the first real impression many voters ever got of McCall.
Oddly, though the McCall camp realized it couldn't compete with Pataki's fundraising ability, it never changed its strategy to accommodate for the deficit.
Though the campaign could have shifted to a low-cost, grassroots, in-the-trenches model where McCall could make his case directly to the people, it never did.
Finally, there were nuts-and-bolts reasons for the scope of the loss.
There were management issues. A horde of campaign advisers -- paid and unpaid -- including former Clinton White House aide Harold Ickes, Rev. Al Sharpton, former Bronx County leader Roberto Ramirez and Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., created a campaign by committee.
Too many cooks spoil the broth and too many consultants -- paid and unpaid -- spoil a campaign. It is never a good way to run a race.
There was no clear leadership thus there was a sense the campaign was caught off guard or was unprepared for battle despite having been active for two years.
In addition, a very high profile dispute with Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe and the DNC for failing to commit more money to the race hurt McCall's efforts. Whether they were right or not, having Rangel and Sharpton blasting the national party on television for bailing out on McCall did not endear him to the white liberal and centrist voters he needed to win.
Admittedly, there were serious challenges McCall could not control, making his gubernatorial bid an uphill battle from the outset. At the same time, there was enormous possibility in his candidacy, left unrealized by the mismanagement and mistakes the campaign repeatedly made.
The day after the election, McCall told the media he accepted responsibility for his enormous defeat. In the political universe, a winning campaign is always the result of the consultants' brilliance while losing campaigns are the fault of the candidate.
In Carl McCall's case, it isn't that simple.
(Jillian Jonas is a freelance journalist in New York who writes about politics and culture for a variety of publications.)
