{"id":101,"date":"2012-04-26T12:06:11","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T12:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.ruudmedia.com\/gsc\/?p=101"},"modified":"2017-12-06T12:23:48","modified_gmt":"2017-12-06T12:23:48","slug":"democratic-strategist-garry-south-reveals-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/democratic-strategist-garry-south-reveals-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Strategist Garry South Reveals Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Democratic strategist Garry South inside his home office at Santa Monica, CA.<\/p><\/div>\n

Sharp-tongued Democratic strategist Garry South has long specialized in behind-the-scenes skulduggery that has shaped decades of major political races in California \u2013 and the fortunes of many candidates.<\/p>\n

\n

Now, like a magician drawing back the curtain shrouding his biggest secrets, South is doing the unthinkable in the political world: He\u2019s making public a room-size treasure trove of private memos, secret campaign strategy plans, never-seen TV spots and correspondence, as well as results of his efforts to dig up dirt on election opponents.<\/p>\n

South\u2019s rich archive of materials will soon be known as the UCLA Library\u2019s Garry South Collection of Political Research,university<\/a>\u00a0officials said this week.<\/p>\n

\u2018Tremendous insight\u2019<\/h3>\n

In the competitive world of political consulting, where trade secrets are guarded like family recipes, the new political collection may represent one of the most complete collections illustrating how the sausage of political campaigns is made in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it gives tremendous insight into what goes on behind the scenes,\u201d said\u00a0Gary Strong<\/a>, the former California state librarian who now heads the UCLA library. \u201cThe more we can demystify it, the more enlightening it will be for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The South archives, to be formally inaugurated this month, present a complete portrait of insider dealings and strategies behind the campaigns of\u00a0Gray Davis<\/a>, the Democrat who was twice elected governor after serving as lieutenant governor and controller.<\/p>\n

South has advised campaigns, including\u00a0Gavin Newsom<\/a>\u2018s 2010 run for governor and\u00a0Joe Lieberman<\/a>\u2018s thwarted presidential bid in 2004. But the strategist, whom Newsweek once called \u201ca one-man brain trust of the battlements of Fort California,\u201d has been most closely linked with Davis, whom he served as chief of staff and senior adviser for years.<\/p>\n

\u2018A lot of luck\u2019<\/h3>\n

Davis, reached this week in Los Angeles, called the cache of campaign materials for UCLA \u201cterrific. It\u2019s great for the university, and it\u2019s a wonderful tribute to Garry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former governor, an attorney for the Los Angeles firm Loeb & Loeb, said the release of materials detailing his campaigns are \u201cgoing to be very instructive to the public. They\u2019ll see that campaigns are part planning, part preparation \u2013 and a lot of luck.\u201d<\/p>\n

South said the record of his political dealings includes \u201ceverything from focus group tapes, all the TV spots that were done, all the internal strategy memos,\u201d polls and private correspondence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to give them the fullest record I could possibly give them on how these campaigns are really run,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The unusually complete documentation of a slice of California political history was preserved because the self-described \u201canal-retentive\u201d strategist meticulously catalogued the strategy and materials related to Davis\u2019 campaigns and guarded them in a \u201cclimate-controlled\u201d storage room.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most interesting part of that mix may be what\u2019s known in the campaign business as \u201copposition research.\u201d The collection contains everything South researched on major public figures and business leaders who ran against Davis \u2013 or who posed a political threat to him.<\/p>\n

The dossiers<\/h3>\n

The rich cache includes materials on challengers such as former Los Angeles Mayor\u00a0Richard Riordan<\/a>, former GOP gubernatorial candidate\u00a0Dan Lungren<\/a>, and Democratic businessman and former Northwest Airlines top executive\u00a0Al Checchi<\/a>and Republican millionaire\u00a0Bill Simon<\/a>, who both made unsuccessful runs for governor against Davis.<\/p>\n

Riordan was expected to present a serious challenge to Davis in the 2002 governor\u2019s race until the GOP candidate felt the sting of research culled from South\u2019s library. The moderate Republican\u2019s poll numbers plummeted 60 points in three weeks after South found a long-forgotten videotape of Riordan calling abortion \u201cmurder,\u201d a charge that served as a coup de grace to his campaign in pro-choice California.<\/p>\n

Rare material<\/h3>\n

South\u2019s material is being prepared and digitized for public viewing, and it will lend even more heft to a growing collection of political memorabilia and material at UCLA. The university library has increasingly dedicated its efforts to \u201charvesting\u201d political and campaign websites, stuff that \u201clives and dies quickly\u201d on the Web, librarian Strong said.<\/p>\n

UCLA\u2019s library, he added, has captured websites of the 300-plus candidates who ran in the 2003 recall election that targeted Davis, allowing them to be available for study long after they disappeared from the Internet.<\/p>\n

The gift of such an archive of political materials is a first for Strong\u2019s institution \u2013 and a remarkable donation from a political strategist, he said, because South was willing to make his trade secrets public.<\/p>\n

In political campaigns, \u201coriginal source material is extremely hard to get access to and actually get your hands on,\u201d the librarian added.<\/p>\n

South said he waited a full decade after his last campaign with Davis before opening his trove to public scrutiny \u2013 timing that\u2019s no accident.<\/p>\n

It means, he said jokingly, that the \u201cstatutes of limitations have expired.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carla Marinucci<\/a>\u00a0is the\u00a0San Francisco Chronicle<\/a>\u2018s senior political writer.\u00a0cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sharp-tongued Democratic strategist Garry South has long specialized in behind-the-scenes skulduggery that has shaped decades of major political races in California \u2013 and the fortunes of many candidates. Now, like a magician drawing back the curtain shrouding his biggest secrets, South is doing the unthinkable in the political world: He\u2019s making public a room-size treasure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garrysouthconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}