CA Campaign Update: Lots And Lots Of News

Obviously, with just over two weeks to go, there's quite a bit going on.

• CA-46: The Daily Pilot, a local paper in the district, writes about Debbie Cook:

Neither campaign would release its polling numbers, but both acknowledged that the affluent, heavily Republican coastal district that has primed Rohrabacher for victories in excess of 20 points in every election for the last decade will not be quite as friendly to the GOP candidate this year.

General frustration with the Bush administration, which has overseen the rapid deterioration of the American economy, is one of the biggest factors in heralding the turnaround for Democrats, according to UCI political science professor Carole Uhlaner.

“Given the combination of a strong, well-known current official with good funding and the change in the national tide there’s a chance that Rohrabacher could lose,” Uhlaner said.

And our pal Todd Beeton of MyDD writes up the great event for Debbie I attended yesterday. But the pivotal moment of the campaign might be tomorrow at 11:15am. Dana Rohrabacher and Debbie Cook will debate for the only time in the campaign. We all know that when Crazy Dana opens his mouth, bad things happen for him. We've seen on a national level what can happen to candidates with loose lips and an extremist ideology - ask Michelle Bachmann. So we'll be monitoring the debate tomorrow.

• CA-03: For some reason, Bill Durston is taking very seriously the Sacramento Bee's endorsement of Dan Lungren. Through his outreach to supporters, the letters to the editor in the wake of the endorsement were entirely on Durston's side. I don't think these newspaper endorsements mean much, but it is something incumbents can use in their advertising, so it does have an impact. And frequently these local editorial boards are pushing a conservative agenda that is resistant to change.

Speaking of debates, Lungren and Durston also have one tomorrow. So there should be a lot of post-debate highlights to discuss.

• CA-04: I tend to think that this story, flagged by Dante over the weekend, is just devastating for Tom McClintock, so I'm going to post it again.

Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican in a Democratic-dominated state Legislature, is the only state lawmaker to fail to shepherd a single piece of legislation into law in the last two years.

Not that he seems to mind [...]

"I came to the conclusion a long time ago that minority legislators have a choice," said McClintock, who has served for 22 years in Sacramento. "One is to tinker at the margins and win very minor victories on unimportant matters and the other is to try to drive the public policy debate on major issues, sacrificing legislative victories for broader policy victories."

I think America has had just about enough of obstructionist ideologues with no interest in governing. If the Brown campaign plays this right, McClintock is toast. This invalidates his entire candidacy. It doesn't surprise me that wingnuts are trying to wrap social issues around Brown's neck to try and distract from this. But at a fundamental level, Tom McClintock is telling the voters of CA-04 that he won't lift a finger in Congress for them. Since the Democrats will retain the majority, McClintock as a Congressman would be a press release machine without even trying to pass legislation. It's not his job, he thinks.

That is a death rattle for McClintock.

• AD-15: If Dianne Feinstein is popular anywhere, it's out in districts in the Central Valley like AD-15, and so her endorsement of Joan Buchanan is notable, also because she's a habitually lazy campaigner and doesn't do much for Democratic candidates historically. She's also endorsed Fran Florez in AD-30 and John Eisenhut in AD-26. This is the region where her endorsement can have the most effect.

• AD-36: Here's a good piece from Dick Price about Linda Jones, the longshot candidate out in this district in the Antelope Valley. She is a special ed. teacher in Palmdale and a board of Trustees member, looking to become the first Democrat to represent this area since 1974. She sounds good to me:

Indeed, after putting up token opposition in recent races and losing by landslide margins, Democrats have finally leveled the playing field, narrowing the difference between Republican and Democratic registration to just 1.6%, according to the Jones campaign. Earlier this year, the Antelope Valley Press reported that 74% of new voters were registering as Democrats, compared to just 4% as Republicans, with the remaining registering as “decline to states.”

The region’s dramatic growth has not come without costs.

“Jobs here are either in aerospace or retail, so often people have to go into Los Angeles for work,” Jones says. “A third of the people are commuting downtown—that’s hard on people, their families, their marriages, their pocketbooks, their health.”

In Sacramento, Jones would work for a “Green Jobs” initiative, diversifying the Antelope Valley workforce, for example, by fostering much-needed solar and wind power industries that would create good-paying local jobs so fewer people would have to undertake the brutal commute downtown.

It would be incredible to win this seat.

• AD-10: The Sac Bee thinks that the race between Alyson Huber and Jack Sieglock will come down to turnout:

The game-changer for Alyson Huber or Jack Sieglock could be voter turnout to cast presidential ballots, said Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of California Target Book, which handicaps legislative races.

"How they vote for Obama probably will be the most important factor," Hoffenblum said of 10th District residents, who tend to lean to the right – but by a dwindling margin.

The GOP's edge in registered voters has fallen the past four years from 6 percentage points to just 2, giving Democrats an outside chance of an Assembly upset if Obama's draw is decisively higher than McCain's, Hoffenblum said.

Well that's just devastating to Sieglock, because the excitement gap is much higher for Obama. Then again, he won't be doing a lot of GOTV in California, so Huber's going to need to run a strong operation of her own. The two candidates are even in fundraising, but Huber is getting major IE help.

• AD-80: Great new ad from Manuel Perez:



• SD-19: The money is pouring into this race, as it's the only one contested on the Senate side. Tony Strickland has outraised Hannah-Beth Jackson by about $3 million to $2 million, but 53% of Strickland's take is from business PACs. Meanwhile, Strickland dropped an illegal mailer:

Tony Strickland has reached a new low in his dishonest campaign against Hannah-Beth Jackson. Yesterday, voters in the 19th District received a mailing from Strickland’s campaign titled “Hannah-Beth Jackson’s Economic Plan.” Inside, the mailing contained Strickland’s predictable false charges about Hannah-Beth Jackson and taxes.

The mailing was clearly designed to look like it was coming from Hannah-Beth Jackson’s campaign.

Expect an ugly last two weeks.