Capitol Weekly got all jiggy with the fifth assembly district today, so I thought I’d take a look-see too. The seat, currently occupied by the termed-out Roger Niello, has a whole army of contenders. This is probably because the district, like Dan Lungren’s congressional seat, is rapidly changing. It’s based in the Sacramento suburbs, with all but a few of the voters coming from Sacramento County; the remaining few are from Placer County. There are a lot of disillusioned former Republicans and DTS voters here. The partisan breakdown of the electorate is 37.9 Dem, 38.8 Rep, and 19.0 DTS. Obama won the district by a smidge over four points, so it could very easily be a contested race.
Prop 8 advocate Andrew Pugno is the leading Republican in the district, which perhaps not coincidentally went for Prop 8 by nearly 10 points. Of course, this carries positives and negatives for Pugno. Sure, he’s getting a fair amount in small dollar donations from the right-wing anti-marriage equality crew, but he’s also going to end up with an army of equality supporters dedicated from keeping this guy out of office. It seems a little unlikely that marriage equality folks will get involved in the Republican primary, but expect to see some action if he does end up winning the primary over Craig De Luz, a multi-racial school board member and leader of the Californa Black Republican Council.
On the Democratic side, Richard Pan, a pediatrician, and Larry Miles, a school board member in the San Juan USD are the sort-of name candidates. On the web side anyway, Pan is way ahead with a slick looking (or at least not annoying) online presence. Pan has also garnered the endorsement of a pretty good list of electeds and party leaders, while Miles has a slightly smaller list of state level electeds, but does have a whole slew of local elected officials.
But, there are four somewhat viable candidates in the race. There is also An interesting story on Matt Gray, who is looking at the Assembly, and has a history in the Building with John Vasconcellos and lobbying for strip joints.
Finally, you have Andrew Sheehy who has a YouTube video announcing his candidacy and a Facebook page. But, if as Allen Hoffenblum mentions in the CW story, Sheehy is running as some sort of new media friendly candidate, he should think about updating his networks. But, the YouTube video in front of a random field where there may or may not have been a foreclosure nearby is fun. All kidding aside, his platform is solid, meat to the progressive base kind of stuff. Education, equality, that kind of thing. And hey, Andy, and all the Dem. candidates, feel free to post an introduction at Calitics. We’ll make sure it makes its way to the front of the site.
You may know Andy Pugno from his recurring role in the Prop 8 saga, but those are hardly his only divisive and extreme positions. And today, dozens of Sacramento women and nurses protested outside a Pugno fundraiser, saying his opposition to women’s reproductive choice makes him too extreme for the moderate district.