Six days left to go, and the chattering class is paying attention.  Here’s what they’re saying.

• The Los Angeles Times is doing their take on the ethnic divide on the race, and presents something you probably never knew–that voters tend to prefer voting for candidates of their own ethnicity over those of other ethnicities!  I guess Avenue Q was right.  Especially telling is the final quote:

“Ethnicity is a factor,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC. “But it’s not the only factor.”

My world has been rocked beyond belief.  Sarcasm aside, though–if you’re going to do a piece on ethnicity in the CA-32 race, you could at least include some of the juicier, more intriguing aspects of the race–things like, what type of support will Emanuel Pleitez draw and how will that affect the race?  What will the impact of Betty Tom Chu be?  You know–more like our coverage.

• If national media coverage won local Congressional elections, Emanuel Pleitez would be in really good shape.  Following up on the positive coverage in the Los Angeles Times about his candidacy, National Journal has what amounts to a glowing review of Pleitez’ online strategy in today’s online version.  While I think that calling Pleitez a “web candidate” in the title does him a little bit of a disservice, the point is that Pleitez has tried something relatively new for a Congressional seat: using social media to facilitate a more lateral structure as a major part of the organization.

To me, the most interesting part of Pleitez’ run against two much better known heavyweights is the fact that if the same race had been run five years ago, someone like Pleitez would have struggled to even get off the ground, much less be talked about in the same breath as the major candidates in this race.  But the creation of easy-to-use online fundrasing through ActBlue as well as the massive proliferation of social media has allowed for the creation of an entirely different element to politics that really used to only apply at a more national scale, starting with Dean and perfected by Obama.  The most interesting thing will be to see what happens when today’s Facebook generation become political heavyweights themselves–how will the traditional and currently non-traditional elements of politics interact?  I expect that at some point in the future Pleitez’ run for Congress will become a reference point for political experts about both the benefits and the drawbacks of dependence on social media as a key element in the campaign.

• Presuming that either Gil Cedillo or Judy Chu advances to the expected runoff and then proceeds to victory in July, the game of musical chairs will continue–either for Chu’s Board of Equalization seat, or for Cedillo’s 22nd District Senate Seat.  La Opinión is reporting (Spanish-language) that if it’s the latter, Los Angeles City Councilmember Ed Reyes (District 1) is going to take a shot at the seat.  That, of course, would open up a seat on the City Council as well.  Just one more reason for Democratic politicians to really support Democratic Presidents–it opens up all sorts of opportunities for career advancement.

• I’m glad we have better commenters than the people at Mayor Sam.  This nugget is particularly entertaining:

I could dream that 3 Dems could split the enough so that the R can win but that is dreaming. If we were competitive in urban areas that scenario wouldn’t be out of the question.

Some people just don’t understand that this is a consolidated Primary election.  Just to clarify: if nobody gets 50%, the top vote-getter by party will proceed to the July runoff.