California Insider

A Weblog by
Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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July 31, 2003

Sharon: Gray is an "average guy"

Gray’s been on tv or radio just about every day lately, and most of the interviews have been fairly uneventful. But today he was on KQED radio with his wife, Sharon, and the interview produced a couple of quotable quotes. The best stuff came from Sharon, who, when pressed by host Scott Shafer to tell us about the real Gray, described him as “kind of the average guy” who is unable to “let it all hang out” because he grew up in an era when people didn’t brag on themselves. She continued:

“And so, what Gray has always said is, he has to be himself. The voters want to know who you are, obviously, and for some reason Gray presents himself as who he is, and they go, ‘Well, we don't know if we like that. Be a little bit different.’ But you can't be genuine if you're trying to be a person that you're not.”

Then Gray, summing up what the recall election is all about, said this:

“(The voters) have to ask themselves, when we went to the polls last November, did we mean it, and do we have a right to second guess ourselves every five minutes? That's really what's at stake.”

I imagine most California voters believe they have a right to second-guess themselves. Implying that they don’t might not be a real fruitful way to win them over.

See the entire transcript here.