California kingmaker Michael Berman preferred anonymity
A go to with Michael Berman, the political savant and California kingmaker who died final week, was a throwback to a different time.
He labored from a shabby workplace, blinds drawn to thwart any ray of daylight. A blue pall of smoke hung from the ceiling, like a nicotine curtain.
Lunch may need concerned a distilled drink, or two.
However it’s not Berman’s defiantly unhealthy life-style that stood out among the many tanned and exquisite who surrounded him within the shiny climes of Beverly Hills and the Westside.
Somewhat, it was his extraordinary political acumen, coupled with a ardour for anonymity.
It was a placing trait a long time in the past, when Berman was on the peak of his powers because the operational brains behind Los Angeles’ highly effective Berman-Waxman political machine.
It’s all the extra notable in as we speak’s period of relentless self-promotion, when even essentially the most middling political strategist turns up at postelection seminars, in podcasts and on the gaseous cable talk-show circuit.
Berman spoke sparingly to reporters and barely agreed to be recognized when he did so. After information broke Saturday evening of his passing at age 75, the Los Angeles Occasions scrambled to discover a {photograph} as an instance Berman’s obituary.
There was none available.
“He ran stuff,” stated Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a retired USC political science professor and longtime buddy of Berman. “He didn’t run for stuff.”
Earlier than time and method overtook it, the Berman-Waxman machine was an irresistible power in California politics, grooming candidates for positions from Metropolis Corridor to Sacramento to Washington.
The principals had been Michael Berman; his older brother, Howard; and their former colleague within the UCLA Younger Democrats, Henry Waxman.
The machine’s forte was campaigns and political communication. And it was years forward of its time.
Michael Berman and his cohorts had been pioneers within the bundling of marketing campaign money to elect like-minded ideological allies in addition to the artwork of refined concentrating on and voter persuasion. It’s normal political apply as we speak, however one which was comparatively new and fairly labor-intensive a long time in the past.
Tom Epstein recalled the way it labored in a 1977 particular election for state Meeting. After knowledge had been hand-collected from voter data, canvassers obtained particular demographic data to make use of as they knocked on doorways in West L.A. and Santa Monica.
“We got 4 color-coded brochures with totally different images and messages focused at totally different audiences,” stated Epstein, a marketing campaign staffer within the Meeting contest, who went on to work as a political strategist within the Clinton White Home.
“One was for older individuals,” Epstein recalled, “one for youthful individuals, one for Republicans and one for middle-aged Democrats.”
It was decidedly low-tech, however efficient. Democrat Mel Levine received the race and ultimately served alongside Waxman and Howard Berman in Congress.
In fact, Berman was hardly infallible.
Earlier than his brother moved to Congress in 1983, he helped wage a pricey, ugly and in the end unsuccessful struggle to put in Howard Berman as Meeting speaker, which tore the Legislature aside.
Berman, who didn’t imagine in polling, suffered the results when he struck out in a pair of 1992 U.S. Senate races. (Levine and Grey Davis had been defeated by Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, respectively, within the Democratic primaries).
No matter Michael Berman considered these highs and lows remained unstated — for public consumption, anyway.
“He noticed no proportion in getting his face on the market,” stated Invoice Boyarsky, a former L.A. Occasions political author and metropolis editor.
“He noticed no proportion in being good to a reporter, doing a reporter any favor or having any dealings with the press,” stated Boyarsky, who hosts a podcast, “Inside Golden State Politics,” with Jeffe. “It wasn’t of any worth to him.”
What Berman cared about was profitable elections, which, for a very long time, he did as a rule.
Mark Z. Barabak is a Los Angeles Occasions columnist.
