O.C OFFERS ONLY CONTEST FOR SENATE
Long Beach Press-Telegram (CA)
February 21, 2006
Culturally and politically, Orange County is a doughnut and Santa Ana is the hole -- a concentration of Latinos and Democrats surrounded by Republican-voting whites and Asian Americans.
The concentration is big enough that when the Legislature redrew political maps five years ago in a bipartisan deal, it made Santa Ana as the heart of one Democratic congressional district, one state Senate district and one Democratic Assembly district while leaving the rest of the county firmly in Republican hands.
With the 34th SD's purposeful Democratic configuration, Democrat Joe Dunn easily won re-election in 2002 but in the four years since, Republican Party leaders -- with few other opportunities to gain legislative seats -- have conducted a massive and expensive voter-registration drive that has erased the Democratic advantage.
The latest secretary of state registration numbers, dated Jan. 3, have the Democratic edge down to 1.4 points, thus making the 34th SD the single most competitive legislative district this year, and Republicans are claiming that since then they have eked out a 34th SD voter plurality.
Dunn is being forced out of the Legislature by term limits and probably will run for statewide office this year. His departure has touched off intense primary battles in both parties that will lead to a partisan showdown in November. And with few other legislative seats in which the outcome is in doubt, it's likely that both parties and myriad interest groups will spend millions of dollars, perhaps as much as $10 million, on the two-part contest to elect Dunn's successor.
The primary duels are microcosms of the ideological divisions in both parties. For the Republicans, that means a face-off between freshman Assemblyman Van Tran, the Legislature's first Vietnamese-American member and a favorite of party conservatives, and three-term Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher, a pro-abortion rights moderate. And for Democrats, it pits Assemblyman Tom Umberg against former Assemblyman Lou Correa, now a county supervisor and a moderate who draws business support. Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata backs Correa while Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez supports Umberg.
Both primary battles promise to become nasty with positions on abortion, gay marriage and other hot button issues being grist for campaign propaganda -- and ethnic rivalries and the candidates' personal peccadilloes looming as unspoken, but potent, issues. And as parties, unions, business groups and other interest groups pour money into the 34th SD this year, it's a stark reminder of how much California 's legislative elections have changed in recent years due to term limits and the bipartisan gerrymander of districts.
Although term limits force constant turnover of legislators -- roughly a third of the Legislature every two years -- gerrymandered districts mean that virtually all of the vacated seats are filled by winners of the primaries without partisan contests, depending on the designated party ownership of each district.
In the two election cycles since the gerrymander went into effect, there have been 200 legislative elections -- 100 in 2002 and another 100 in 2004 -- but voters have acted against the intentions of the political mapmakers in just five of those elections, involving three districts, for a success rate of 97.5 percent.
Another 100 legislative seats are to be filled in 2006, 80 in the Assembly and 20 in the Senate, but with the gerrymander still in place (voters last year turned down Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's measure to draw new districts), only two or three are expected to be even marginally competitive, and the 34th SD may be the only Senate district in serious play.
It is, therefore, largely a matter of bragging rights. At best, Republicans could improve their standing in the 40-member Senate from 15 to 16, still five short of a majority with no hope of getting there at least until the next round of redistricting .