Just a couple random thoughts from last night’s victory for John Garamendi:
• Survey USA has been maligned by some for its robo-polling techniques, but they consistently overperformed other pollsters throughout the 2008 primaries, and they basically nailed the polling in CA-10. The final numbers track almost precisely with the final vote tally. Well done.
• These special elections largely come down to name ID, and there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. The challengers certainly tried – Joan Buchanan spent $850,000 of her own money and got a whopping 12% of the vote. But Garamendi really cruised to victory in this one.
• Katie Merrill, last seen yelling at the netroots for daring to consider a primary of Ellen Tauscher, became Mark DeSaulnier’s campaign manager, where she devised the craptacular strategy of focusing on Garamendi’s residency requirement, which approximately nobody cares about, instead of building a campaign infrastructure outside of Contra Costa County. Despite having a minority of residents, in Solano, Alameda and Sacramento counties, Garamendi picked up over 6,000 votes on DeSaulnier, who finished well back in all those regions. There was no way he could have ever won that back in CoCo, where he lost as well by 2,300 votes. Maybe introducing yourself to people outside your base would have worked better than the “neener-neener, here’s this technical non-violation” nonsense that is a proven loser.
• Lisa Vorderbrueggen still doesn’t get it.
6. I thought Anthony Woods might break into double-digits. Instead, he ended up with 8.5 percent of the vote. He is a strong candidate who was probably too liberal for the moderate 10th District but he kept the elected officials on their toes. I suspect we will see Woods on a ballot again one of these days.
This “moderate district” thing really has to get flushed down a toilet somewhere. John Garamendi was endorsed by the California Nurses Association, the most progressive organization maybe in America. He’s a single-payer advocate. He’s strongly liberal and far to the left of Ellen Tauscher. And he won. Woods’ difficulty was simply a product of name ID and a quick-strike primary. He didn’t have labor ground troops and that was that.
• Just to reiterate, there will now be a general election between Garamendi and David Harmer on November 3. Garamendi will be strongly favored.
… Woods, Buchanon, DeSaulnier, more people voted for “not- Garamendi” than the Lt Gov of CA going to DC as their congressperson. Doesn’t sound like much of a mandate.
The next time somebody says an Iraq war veteran of 2 terms and a West Point grad is too “liberal” for the district, use the word “chickensquawker.” Liberally.
For CA-3?
Hey, why not?
I agree DeSaulnier ran a crappy campaign and the three local candidates split the vote against the carpetbagger.
Garamendi will be a solid national dem vote, but he knows nothing about my little unincorporated neighborhood near Walnut Creek. At least DeSaulnier helped get a trail and signal in so the kids here could ride their bikes to school.
You’re right, Dave, that the residency attack totally backfired on DeSaulnier – but only outside of Contra Costa County. He finished with 4% in Solano County – behind even some of the no-name Republican candidates – which is nothing short of utter humiliation.
The SUSA polls, however, suggest that DeSaulnier was able to narrow the gap ever-so-slightly because of the residency issue — but not nearly enough to make a big difference.
But I don’t think it really hurt him much in Contra Costa, and might have helped him there a little. Sure, you can say he even lost his home county – but the truth is that Garamendi had such an advantage of name recognition, that I would argue he was even favored in CCC. The fact DeSaulnier held him to just 4 points there is a small consolation prize for him.
The problem with the residency attack is that DeSaulnier took the fall for being the one to bring it up. I think all of Garamendi’s challengers wanted to see it raised as an issue, but none of them wanted to be the one to bring it up – for fear of looking like a dick. DeSaulnier did, and got punished for it.
As for Garamendi’s politics, yeah you’re right. On paper, he’s a progressive. I would even go so far as to say that he’s probably the most liberal statewide elected official – which is why over the years I’ve always wanted to like him.
Trouble with Garamendi, is that he’s a condescending prick who only thinks about himself – and doesn’t listen to anyone. We were going to keep this seat blue regardless of him in the race, and I would say there wasn’t much of a difference ideologically among the top four Democrats. But Garamendi is a coward who wanted the easy way out, so he ran in the 10th – rather than the 3rd. It’s not so much a residency issue, as it was blatant opportunism.
I tried talking to Garamendi about this at the Convention, and he was his blowhard self. He could have at least humored me and listened to what I had to tell him, tell me he appreciated my input but had thought it through and decided to run in the 10th. Instead, he interrupted me, looked straight into my eyes and said “it doesn’t matter what you tell me – you’re not going to change my mind.” In other words, he said I was small and didn’t matter – and he wasn’t going to bother his little head around what some blogger punk thinks.
Ironically, Garamendi comes to the Young Democrats caucus at Convention every year – and gives the same condescending lecture about the Sixties and the Peace Corps. It’s not the kind of speech any of this group of 20 and 30-something activists haven’t heard many times before, and he just comes off as the annoying grandpa. Frankly, I’ve had enough of his condescension.
You can read more of my rant here: http://www.beyondchron.org/new…
First, it’s not name ID. Campaign polls from several camps showed that virtually every voter who cast a ballot knew several of the top contenders and in the end made John Garamendi their first choice.
As far as moderate/liberal, those terms are often deceiving, but going back to his race against Tom Bradley for Governor, John Garamendi has always made the argument that it’s important for Democrats to move away from specifically targeted government programs to those that serve a wider range of people. That’s generally why he has been identified as a moderate. But whatever you think of his outlook, to call him more liberal than Debra Bowen, Bill Lockyer or John Chiang is overstating it. But he certainly is a progressive Democrat.
I would also agree that he didn’t win because he was any type of a moderate. He won because in a race where most voters liked all of the candidates, he convinced them with help from Bill Clinton and Al Gore that he was the one who could do the best job in Washington of getting things done. The real hero of the Garamendi effort is clearly his consultant Bill Cavala (with help from the other campaigns) who was able to keep the race completely off of issues that would divide voters and keep in on competency. For example, I don’t think any candidate ever answered where they stood on gay marriage even though that was clearly a major discussion in the news before the election.
DeSaulnier also overplayed his hand on his attacks. You are right that carpetbagging is almost never a successful line of attack, but sometimes its a factor and it’s not often you have a local like DeSaulnier who ties up all of the leaders of the different political factions in an area, so I don’t think it was terrible as part of an overall strategy, but you needed a lot more.
I think where they (and all of the other challengers) fell down on the job was that they overdid their attacks without really explaining in a believable way, why Garamendi wouldn’t be good for the district. As an example, you have John Garamendi who represented farm districts for many years being attacked for his contributions from big agribusiness without even an attempt to tie those contributions into votes in the legislature that wouldn’t have been popular in an urban district. People are not dumb and they don’t respond to attacks they regard as unbelievable. They knew enough about Garamendi to know he was a good Democrat. They were never told why he might not be the best choice in a strong field. On the other hand, Garamendi never talked about his opponents, just ignoring the attacks and focused both on what he had done and on how through his years in politics, he had the contacts to achieve those goals more easily than a typical freshman congressman. There is already talk that Cavala may wind up running Jerry Brown’s campaign and although I am not a big fan, with this effort coming shortly after Jackie Speiers win, he certainly would merit discussion in anyone’s conversation about a possible consultant.
On the comments about how Garamendi should have run against Lungren, I will just repeat something I have said before. If you look at the votes that are divided in Washington, they are almost as often split within parties as they are across party lines and most of the ones that split across party lines are for show as much as anything else with the results worked out in advance on both sides. However Congressmembers do have a tremendous say in how this country is run and most of the members treasure that ability because they have things they want to accomplish. I doubt their is a single member that will take on a tough election against the other party if he can avoid it because most have too many issues they care about and even if another Democrat is elected, the agenda is still going to be different enough that no one wants to give up the safest seat possible. Not necessarily for selfish reasons, but because they have things they want to get done. That is why grassroots activities are more important than larger races, because you can more easily see the real differences between candidates and get the change you really want, not just the media created promise to make a difference.
He is always running for the next office…I’ll bet we will have another special election for CA-10. Also, 1) I don’t see Dianne letting Wittman become the first woman governor, 2) Diane is the only one with the gravitas/reputation who can redo the structural governance mess we find ourselves in. It is a legacy thing which would cement her place in history.