Gavin Newsom’s bid for Governor suffered a potential blow this week, with the exit of long-time campaign manager Eric Jaye. Under Jaye’s tutelage, the Newsom campaign cultivated the image of a “fresh face” to contrast with Jerry Brown – and heavily courted the netroots and small donors in the Democratic Party. With Jaye’s departure, strategist Garry South is effectively calling the shots. Jaye says he quit because of a “fundamental difference in how to run the campaign,” suggesting that South will take Team Newsom in a different direction. South ran the statewide campaigns of Gray Davis, Steve Westly and Joe Lieberman’s California operation – efforts that were far more traditional and establishment focused. His open hostility towards progressive Democrats – along with a record of slash-and-burn campaign tactics – will not endear Newsom to the grassroots, and threatens to undermine the image the Mayor has worked hard to convey. Liberals are already disillusioned with the choices next year between Newsom and Brown, and this development can only fuel the desire to see a third candidate jump in the race.

There are two ways to look at this news. One is the departure of Eric Jaye, who was Gavin Newsom’s top political consultant from the very start of his career. Newsom has a bad reputation for being disloyal (with examples like Susan Leal and Margaret Brodkin), and some have noted that Jaye’s departure means none of the consultants who elected him Mayor are working on his gubernatorial bid. Jim Ross opted not to get involved this time, and Alex Tourk resigned after Newsom had an affair with his wife.

But the bigger story here is Garry South – the Los Angeles based consultant that Newsom hired last summer to launch his run for Governor. At the time, it was viewed overall as a smart decision. None of the Mayor’s top advisers had experience managing a statewide campaign in California, and South masterminded the election of Gray Davis – the state’s only Democratic Governor in 25 years. It sent a message to donors that he wanted to win.

South has, however, a far more unseemly side. Known as the “King of Mean,” the “Master of Sleaze,” and the “Mouth from the South,” Garry South has a long history of openly attacking progressive causes – to elect pro-corporate moderate Democrats. In January 2007, Calitics blogger Brian Leubitz even issued an Open Letter to All Presidential Candidates – warning them not to hire Garry South as a consultant.

Bloggers expressed concern in August when Newsom hired South, but the Newsom campaign has worked hard in the past year to cultivate the netroots. Eric Jaye invested major resources in the campaign on Facebook and Twitter, using innovative technology to recruit grass-roots supporters. The Newsom operation raised a lot of its money from small donors, giving activists a sense of ownership in the campaign – who can be hit for more money in the following months.

Newsom’s approach was so effective that it was easy for bloggers to forget Garry South was even working on the campaign. In other words, Newsom had the best of both worlds – he could rely on South’s vast experience and expertise, while promoting a “new media” campaign strategy that suggested he was the “new” and “hip” candidate in the race.

But the drawbacks of a non-traditional strategy are that (a) it takes time to get results, and (b) not all campaigns can do it well, as it requires an exciting candidate and a compelling message. Barack Obama used it to win the Democratic nomination, and Gavin Newsom – who was a Hillary Clinton supporter – explicitly invited a Clinton-Obama comparison in his race against Jerry Brown. The campaign, however, was not raising enough money.

With Garry South running the show, Team Newsom risks sliding into the pattern of the other campaigns South has run – (a) the candidate spends more time on the phone hitting up well-heeled donors than engaging the grassroots, (b) harsh negative attacks on their opponents, and (c) a campaign of triangulation that is openly hostile to progressives.

In 1998, South plotted Gray Davis’ come-from-behind primary victory over two self-financed millionaire candidates. But despite running on the slogan “Experience Money Can’t Buy,” Davis relied on big corporate donors to make that happen. In the general election, South told Davis to run against the left on crime – even moving to the right of his Republican opponent. “Singapore is a good starting point,” said Davis in one debate.

Davis raised $12 million in his first year of office, in what South described as “cover your ass money” from special interests. South was unapologetic about it, telling one reporter: “we will continue raising money – whether reformers like it or not – or editorial writers or reporters, because California is filled with a lot of nouveau riche people who have suddenly taken an interest in politics.” When the energy crisis hit in 2001, South’s advice to the Governor was: “keep raising money, smash your opponents, get through the next election, and it will all go away.”

South cynically engineered Davis’ re-election strategy in 2002 – which was to interfere in the Republican primary, making sure the most right wing candidate won the nomination. This allowed Davis to scare progressives into supporting him in the general without any campaign promises – because the Republican was so extreme. Nevertheless, enough did vote for the Green Party candidate that the result was close – Davis only won by 4 points.

Davis’ shameless quid pro quo with big donors eventually led to his recall, but by then Garry South had moved on. He signed on to run the California campaign for Joe Lieberman’s presidential run – a pro-war Democrat that South argued was conservative enough to beat George Bush. Lieberman spent the whole campaign attacking Howard Dean at every turn because of his progressive principles – only to finish in fifth place.

But it was South’s last campaign that should give progressives pause – as he plays a more prominent role in Team Newsom. In 2006, South ran Steve Westly’s gubernatorial bid against Phil Angelides for the Democratic nomination – in a negative, scorched-earth campaign that can be generally described as a “murder-suicide pact.” South spent much of the election attacking Angelides as “too liberal” because he dared talk about the state’s fiscal woes – and continued to berate him, even after Angelides won the primary.

South’s attacks on Angelides reinforced all the right-wing frames that did nothing but re-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger – proving that he cared more about beating Phil Angelides than electing a Democrat in November. As Newsom runs against Jerry Brown in next year’s primary, will South advise him to go for the jugular – tarnishing Brown to the point that he risks losing to the Republican nominee in the fall?

Because if he does that, South will be doing his new client no favors. Newsom has built up a reputation with Democratic primary voters as a politician who was willing to stand up on a controversial issue – marriage equality – and take the hits. Hiring Garry South, and allowing him to call the shots in the campaign, completely undermines that message.