April 5, 2015
The question was rhetorical. “Can a boxer be a Christian?” Garry South asked. “Because you know what he does: He pounds the crap out of another human being. He draws blood!” South, a famously pugilistic political strategist, was neither apologizing nor seeking forgiveness as he answered, very much in the affirmative, his own query. “If…
May 3, 2012
The UCLA Library recently announced it has added a collection of election campaign documents from a former California governor to its archive of political documents and materials. An assortment of videos, study groups, research, correspondence and other documents from the gubernatorial campaigns of former Gov. Gray Davis has been donated by his former campaign manager Garry South.…
April 26, 2012
Sharp-tongued Democratic strategist Garry South has long specialized in behind-the-scenes skulduggery that has shaped decades of major political races in California – and the fortunes of many candidates.
July 20, 2005
Controller Steve Westly has emboldened his campaign for the California governorship in 2006 by hiring a top Democratic political consultant. The former eBay executive appointed veteran Democratic strategist Garry South as senior adviser, shaking up a contest that until recently had seemed like GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s to lose. South was a longtime strategist for…
October 6, 2003
Garry South has a gift for gab, no doubt about it. Along with many other gifts, not least among them astonishing recall. At the end of a five-hour interview, I find my jaw sagging, perhaps from exhaustion, but also because he has just rattled off the names…
June 6, 2003
Garry South, the pugnacious political strategist who masterminded Gray Davis’ last three election victories, is signing on as a senior campaign advisor to Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph I. Lieberman. South’s appointment, to be announced today in Washington, comes as Davis faces the threat of a recall, and means the governor will have to fight back…
September 3, 2002
Garry South leans forward in his chair, smiles slyly and steals a line from a Grateful Dead song: “What a long, strange trip this has been.” South, Gov. Gray Davis’ senior political adviser, close confidant and political mastermind, is referring to this year’s gubernatorial race. But he could be talking about his own journey from…
March 18, 2002
For Karl Rove, California is a forbidding place, full of hostile Democrats. Even so, the White House’s political mastermind thought he’d found a way to establish a Republican beachhead in the Golden State: back Richard Riordan, the popular former mayor of Los Angeles, for governor against Gray Davis, the pallid and unpopular Democratic incumbent. Riordan…
March 6, 2002
Garry South leans back in his oversized leather desk chair, one lanky arm folded behind his head, his lips curling in satisfaction. Each day brings him more claps on the shoulder, handshakes and breathless testaments to his brilliance as California’s political chess master of the moment. For the last three months, he has set the…
June 19, 2001
Garry South is no expert on energy policy. But he understands voters, and a few weeks ago he dropped off a piece of intelligence at Gov. Gray Davis’s condominium that helped change California’s response to the crisis over electricity. Mr. South, the governor’s top political strategist, gave Mr. Davis an 80-minute videotape of focus-group discussions…