(Righting a bit of a wrong here. This should have been frontpaged when it first appeared; not everything is or should be about the day-to-day slugfest. – promoted by jsw)
For lack of a nail, the shoe was lost;
for lack of a shoe, the horse was lost;
for lack of a horse, the rider was lost;
for lack of a rider, the message was lost;
for lack of a message, the battle was lost;
for lack of a battle, the war was lost;
for lack of a war, the kingdom was lost.
Northern California Democrats have been hearing a lot lately about how the CDP is targeting two of our most important races, CA-11 and AD-15. Both of these districts have historically elected Republicans, with CA-11 holding a 5.5% Republican registration advantage and AD-15 recently dwindling to a 2% Republican advantage. Now that the AD-15 seat is turning over due to term limits, the CDP is hoping to pick up a new Democratic Assembly seat while protecting the sole Congressional gain that California Democrats made in 2006.
Unfortunately, the Democratic definition of “targeting” seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to catnapping. Take, for example, the City of San Ramon elections for mayor and City Council that were scheduled for this November.
As is true in most locales, San Ramon’s city offices are considered non-partisan. Yet in San Ramon, the mayor and the entire City Council are all Republicans, despite the fact that city-wide Democratic registration stands at 9,988 compared to 10,589 Republicans, with a pool of 6,033 DTS voters.
So exactly what happened to San Ramon’s November 2007 election? Well, there’s not going to be an election. That’s because when the August 10 filing deadline rolled around, nobody had filed to run for mayor against the Republican incumbent; nobody had filed to run for City Council against the Republican incumbents. With nobody challenging them at the polls, the three incumbents were appointed to new terms on August 20.
So how does the lack of a nail lose the war?
Well, for starters, San Ramon’s incumbent mayor, H. Abram Wilson, is also running for the Republican nomination for AD-15. As the highest-ranking elected in the race, he has excellent name recognition and a sizable network of supporters, all of which led to him being considered by many as the early favorite in the Republican field. But his pesky mayoral race was widely viewed as a big negative, siphoning his time, money and energy away from the AD race. Would he be able to spend the bulk of 2007 running for mayor and then immediately jump into a heated AD race?
He addressed those questions head-on earlier this summer:
San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson has loaned his campaign $95,000. He has received $18,474 from other contributors.
Wilson described his loan as a pragmatic jump-start to his Assembly campaign, which he’s running concurrently with his re-election bid for mayor. San Ramon city elections will be held in November; the Assembly primary election is June 2008.
“People have asked me if I’m committed to the Assembly race because I am running for mayor and how could I do both,” Wilson said. “But when people see that you are willing to put your own funds in, they will see that you believe in yourself and you believe you can win.”
As of August 10, all of Wilson’s troubles vanished. Freed up from any work or expense in that mayoral race, he’s been able to focus exclusively on the AD-15 seat. That means that, three months ahead of schedule, all of his fundraising activities, along with all of his time and energy, are able to be fully deployed into the Assembly race, and the doubt that plagued his candidacy has been cast aside. Wilson’s position as the frontrunner seems stronger than ever.
And if Wilson wins the primary, he is clearly the most difficult of the Republican candidates for a Democrat to defeat. Genial, experienced, and very careful to present himself as a “moderate” Republican, Wilson’s presence on the November 2008 ballot would make the AD-15 seat that much more challenging for a Democrat to win.
But it’s not just AD-15 that’s impacted by the San Ramon race. As one of my readers pointed out, Jerry McNerney also has a dog in this hunt:
Why should building a farm team should be the responsibility of McNerney’s team?
He is the sole beneficiary. The farm team helps by eliminating officeholders down ballot that could be hostile and sling arrows at every opportunity they get. […]
Now I envision [Republican Congressional candidate Dean] Andal’s people using those GOP officeholders to close ranks and rally their base to take down McNerney, probably in direct mail to San Ramon and Danville voters, maybe not even use party affiliation, but just the fact that they are local office holders and they support Andal. It will be something like, “The entire City Council of San Ramon supports Dean Andal. Join us, as he shares our commitment to low taxes and economic growth” — or something like that.
So the Democrats’ inability to field a single candidate in San Ramon has serious consequences for a whole host of other races. And exactly who is to blame? Well, the list is long. As another of my readers pointed out, there was a fundamental failure at the local Democratic club and Central Committee level to get involved in the race and recruit candidates.
Likewise, with the CDP bragging loudly all year about how they were targeting AD-15 and CD-11, one might have imagined that, in addition to money, they would provide a little planning and a little effort on the ground. And, frankly, it just wasn’t that hard to look at the AD candidates, see Wilson as the strongest contender, and think, “Gee, maybe it would be good to throw up a few roadblocks to his campaign — like, you know, a competitor in his mayoral race.”
Then there’s Jerry McNerney, the Congressman who represents San Ramon. As the regional party leader, he had both the opportunity and the responsibility to recruit good candidates for the San Ramon races. And let’s face it, McNerney’s involvement in the race wouldn’t just have been an altruistic party-building mechanism; it would have come back to help him immeasurably — a classic win-win.
But instead, all of these Democrats complacently snoozed through the San Ramon city elections. So here we have, in this one race, a ripple that has the potential to be felt over a very large area. A contested race in San Ramon might have resulted in a Democratic counter-balance to the all-Republican San Ramon city government, might have helped build the Democratic base locally, might have helped develop a bench of Democratic officeholders, might have hampered the strongest Republican in his AD-15 primary race, and might even have shored up Jerry McNerney’s Congressional base. We’ll never know, though, because it didn’t happen.
This post is an amalgam of posts found here and here and here at The Progressive Connection.
