Images in Primary--and Paid--Colors

About the only time you hear California’s June 2 primary election mentioned on television is in the paid ads of the gubernatorial candidates themselves.

The only way to induce most Los Angeles television stations to cover the California governor’s race may be to have the four leading candidates chase each other on a freeway. When it comes to noticing state government at all, in fact, stations here know the way to Sacramento like they know the way to Slovenia.

Their news priorities are elsewhere.

An exception came Wednesday, when some stations (KTLA-TV Channel 5, KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCET-TV Channel 28) televised a morning candidates’ forum sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.

Otherwise, newscasters here have found the governor’s contest as inviting as manure.

Not that TV is devoid of gubernatorial aspirants. There’s plenty about them--unfortunately nearly all of it from the candidates in slickly made, exactingly choreographed paid commercials that have been yada yada-ing on the airwaves as often as talk of NBC’s “Seinfeld.”

How these primary candidates--Republican Dan Lungren and Democrats Al Checchi, Gray Davis and Jane Harman--relate to voters via TV may not be as crucial to their election prospects as how often they’re seen.

In the near-absence of serious gubernatorial coverage on TV, these spots (nearly all of them 30 seconds long) and their content assume added weight. And because they are scripted, acted-out docudramas, they should be rated not only for truth and fairness, but also by the same criteria applied to productions in the entertainment realm that rely in part on fiction.

The lineup:

* “Lungren,” starring Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who, as the presumptive Republican nominee, has run fewer ads than his Democratic counterparts.

The confidence and relaxed, conversational glibness that Lungren displayed during Wednesday’s forum come across in his TV spots, too. Based on this small sample, the camera likes Lungren, who has two sets of nearly identical spots--one with a man as narrator, the other with a woman, presumably in the cause of wooing female voters. That’s show biz.

Family values are as hot a ticket in politics as in entertainment TV. Thus, Lungren’s meat-and-potatoes shot features the candidate and his wife smiling warmly and holding hands while strolling toward the camera between two lines of cheering, sign-waving supporters. “It sounds corny, but my best friend’s my wife,” Lungren says in one spot. As presented here, in fact, it doesn’t sound corny at all.

If you’re not quite sure about Lungren, his ads deploy manipulative music to help persuade you of his worthiness. The tactic of using emotion-swaying orchestral music is standard in both TV electioneering and entertainment, and is also being used by Lungren’s Democratic counterparts when they attack each other.

* “Davis,” starring Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, a veteran political trouper who handled himself rather well on live TV during the 90-minute forum. Based on his paid spots, though, here is a guy who should never again venture near a camera. At least not in this format.

His ads present him as stunningly rigid and grim, as if he were facing a Checchi firing squad instead of a lens.

There is Davis at his desk, wrapped in a suit coat while stiffly examining documents, as if stapled to his chair. There he is, too, with that TelePrompTer glaze across his eyes, stiffly proclaiming, “Our children’s futures are at stake.” And there he is in a stock classroom shot meant to convey a commitment to education (see also “Harman” and “Checchi”), giving young kids clumsy high-fives as if playing patty-cake. How can someone who high-fives with hands of stone be a serious candidate (see “Checchi”)?

Looking even worse than Davis in Davis ads is Checchi in Davis ads. In one Davis attack on the millionaire businessman, we find Davis again in a classroom, sitting amid kids while pointing to a picture in a book--a positive image of a man voters can trust. Then . . . cut to a photo of Checchi that looks like a “Wanted” poster, as the background music turns sour and the voice-over accuses him of mudslinging: “What kind of man would try to smear his opponents?” To help you decide, up pops a photo of a shifty-looking Checchi glancing sideways. Would you buy even a used skateboard from this man?

* “Harman,” starring Jane Harman, a prosperous Torrance congresswoman who appears comfortable in front of the camera and also at ease blasting Checchi for blasting her. One of her spots, for example, uses downbeat music in challenging Checchi’s criticism, then upbeat music when offering “the truth about Jane Harman’s record.”

Harman has all the stock shots, too. We see her hanging out with elderly folks, for example, and with college students in an auditorium, speaking to and counseling these people without being pushy, and, of course, always being willing to listen.

You notice right away that Harman is on the move. Reminiscent of some current TV news ads featuring the station’s reporters, many of her spots open with her walking briskly toward the camera, a subtle message that she is no mere pontificator, but a doer, a woman of action: “Leadership is more than just talking,” she says in one spot. “It’s about working with communities to get results.”

There she is again touting her pro-choice position, this time walking at the head of a group of women picked presumably because they are rather short, so as not to physically diminish the smallish Harman. Don’t expect Harman’s handlers to shoot her walking with the Lakers.

* “Checchi,” starring fabulously wealthy Al Checchi, not only telegenically handsome but also a high-fiver (he does it with style in one of his own classroom shots) of whom California can be proud.

Checchi has by far the largest ad bank in this crowd (33 vs. a handful for the others). His attack ads take no prisoners and strategically employ a velvety female voice (a male narrates his positive ads), apparently so that he can score negative points without sounding excessively shrill or like a big palooka clobbering a woman when his target is Harman.

But the camera is no ally of Checchi’s. Just as he often seemed ill at ease during the candidates’ forum, so, too, are his TV spots almost robotic, his gestures mechanical, as if he were having some kind of out-of-body experience. You can almost hear a director shouting, “All right, Al--take 23!”

Although each of the candidate spots makes you wonder about the public’s gullibility--does anyone really believe these campaign videos tap spontaneity?--that’s especially so with Checchi’s. Are viewers buying this?

As Checchi in one spot expresses his “zero tolerance for domestic violence,” we see a woman watch timidly from her doorway as two cops lead off a handcuffed man. It’s obviously staged, so what are voters to infer from it--that Checchi could host “America’s Most Wanted”?

Meanwhile, there is Checchi in another spot, informing one of his swarms, “I don’t think people should be grading a test they can’t pass.” This supposedly impromptu session appears to be happening in the middle of a street. Were these people walking across the street when Checchi stopped them? Was he standing in the street when they rushed over to hear his sage counsel?

Even more memorable are Checchi’s other crowd sequences, like one in which he becomes kindly Mr. Chips with 10 kids he walks with, his hands on the shoulders of two of them. Or when walking through a rural area at the head of about three dozen adults, draping his arms across the shoulders of some of the children who are flanking him.

Why are they in this wooded area? Where are they going? And why is Checchi going there with them?

Better still--if you like standard campaign camp--are shots of Checchi, his wife and their three children padding along a beach, and a close-up of the candidate alone, eyes dreamily gazing toward the Pacific, supposedly thinking great thoughts as a narrator boasts about him, “Real world experience. New ideas.” Or maybe he’s just whale-watching.

There’s nothing like the sea for giving a candidate inspiration in front of a camera. It’s a picture of Checchi that you can imagine Harman and Davis viewing, hoping for a tidal wave.

In any case, should newscasters summon the inspiration to cover this race beyond an occasional sound bite, the applause will be resounding in some quarters. If that doesn’t happen, paid ads will continue to be Californians’ dominant TV resource for learning about the four leading lights for governor.

And the state’s multitudes will cast votes June 2 based largely on image and other disingenuous propaganda instead of facts.