The Bradley Effect Was about Guns, Not Racism

Abstract

THE CALIFORNIA Journal of Politics & Policy Commentary The Bradley Effect Was about Guns, Not Racism Joe Mathews* The New America Foundation Nelson Rising, chairman of Tom Bradley’s 1982 campaign for California governor, still remembers the phone call. Bradley called him shortly after 4 a.m. on a long election night, when it was clear Bradley had lost to Republican attorney general George Deukmejian. “You were right,” Bradley told Rising a bit wearily. With those words, Bradley, the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, acknowledged that a political mistake had cost him the governorship. And, despite all the theories that the election produced a “Bradley effect”—a supposed www.bepress.com/cjpp Volume 1, Issue 1, 2009 secret racist vote undetected by polling—the mayor himself knew that his loss had different causes. The main cause was guns. Against Rising’s advice, Bradley had endorsed Proposition 15, a statewide ballot initiative that would have put a freeze on purchases of new handguns. Bradley and Proposition 15 both had a lead in the polls when Bradley decided to back the initiative. But there was a huge backlash against Proposition 15 in conservative California precincts. The resulting turnout was so overwhelming that it took down Bradley—just as Rising had predicted in a campaign meeting months earlier. “I will never forget that meeting,” Rising recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t own a gun. I don’t intend to own a gun. If I could design a world without guns, I would. But Tom, if you support this, you can’t win.’” *Joe Mathews is an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. An abbreviated version of this story appeared in Politico.