Gerald C. Lubenow, ed., 310pp, $21.95
Over a January weekend in early 1999, the men and women who had managed the political campaigns of Gray Davis, Al Checchi, Jane Harman, and Dan Lungren met on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, to spend two days rehashing the race. This is the third time this elite group of California’s leading political operatives, journalists, academics, and political junkies has gathered to dissect the outcome of the all-out battle they waged to see who would govern the nation’s richest and most populous state. They approach one another, warily perhaps, as peers bound together by their professional passion for politics and their ability to play the game at the highest level. They are all here, the men and women who devised the strategy, wrote the ads, raised the money, did the polling, and plotted the ground game. For anyone who wants to understand politics in the golden state, this book is a must read.
The Institute of Governmental Studies would like to extend a special thanks to Technet, the Silicon Valley consortium of high tech companies linked by their concern for politics and the public interest. Their generous gift made the conference and this book possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gerald C. Lubenow is the director of publications at IGS. He has chaired each of the three quadrennial conferences and edited this and the two previous volumes on the California governor’s race.