Tom Campbell defies the political norm

FROM SACRAMENTO — Tom Campbell is a rarity. He's a politician who carefully thinks through contentious issues and takes positions based on his notion of good government.

Good politics seem to be a low priority, if one at all.

Not that all politicians are finger-to-the-wind opportunists. Each varies by degree between being a policy wonk and political survivalist. But Democrats tend to genuflect to labor, particularly public employee unions. Republicans tend to cower before the anti-tax crowd, to name one.

Campbell is practically all wonk.

And he must have missed the memo to rookie politicians about going along to get along.

Combine that with a courtly manner often seen as aloofness -- his strongest words tend to be "dang" and "gosh" -- and it helps to explain why Campbell, 56, never has achieved quite the political success his experience and intellect would seem to warrant. He has served two stints in the U.S. House and one in the state Senate, representing Silicon Valley, but has lost two races for the U.S. Senate.

He also was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget director for a year. He holds a Harvard law degree and a doctorate in economics. He's on leave as the head of UC Berkeley's business school.

Campbell currently is teaching at Chapman University in Orange, trying to become better known in Southern California as he runs for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination.

His odds of winning are low. He's a moderate in a party where conservatives are the dominant activists. Moreover, he's not rich.

Campbell's up against two megabucks opponents who can easily finance their own campaigns: State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and political novice Meg Whitman, a former EBay executive. Both are playing to the party's hard-right by emphasizing their no-tax stands and attacking the budget-fix ballot measures negotiated by Schwarzenegger and the Legislature.

The linchpin and main target is Proposition 1A, which would create a spending cap and rainy-day fund. The idea is to prevent Sacramento from blowing all the windfall revenue in boom times, and require it to horde a pile for use when the economy goes bust.

But the measure's Achilles' heel is a bill demanded by Republican negotiators: If voters reject the spending cap, taxes enacted in February will expire after two years, rather than four as planned. The GOP lawmakers didn't realize that Prop. 1A would then be interpreted by the media and public as a measure to "extend" the taxes by two years. That jeopardizes voter support for the GOP's long-sought spending controls.