CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“STYMIED HOUSE DEMOS MAY GIVE STATE A REAL SENATE RACE"
Democrats in Congress will never say
so publicly, but they know they have little or no hope of taking back control
of the House of Representatives until 2022 at the earliest.
That’s because gerrymandering in
states like Texas and Georgia and North Carolina has concentrated the many
Democratic voters in those places into just a few congressional districts,
leaving all the rest safe for the GOP.
It’s the same thing Democrats did in
California before the advent of the Citizens Redistricting Commission which
drew today’s lines and led to a slew of highly competitive races last year,
with more to come in 2016.
This reality has heavy implications
for the U.S. Senate candidacy of Kamala Harris, California’s attorney general
and a former San Francisco district attorney.
For the less chance veteran Democratic
members of Congress believe their party has to regain control of the House, the
lower they rate their own chances for ever becoming powerful committee chairs
effective at pushing their agendas. So long as their party is doomed to
minority status, they can do little more than try to fend off Republican
proposals they see as outrageous.
Like many in hopeless situations, they
begin to look elsewhere. This is one reason former Democratic committee chairs
from California like Henry Waxman and George Miller retired from Congress. It’s
a large, unstated reason for the departure of the latest announced retiree,
Lois Capps of Santa Barbara.
As they cast about for ways to be
effective, Democrats had nowhere to go except retirement through the first
several years of the current GOP domination in the House. But then Democratic
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer announced she’ll retire after next year. Chances for
Democrats to take over the Senate are much stronger than in the House, because
no party manipulation of district lines is involved there.
That’s why, as other prospective
Democratic rivals of Harris’ Senate candidacy began to drop out – people like
Lt. Gov. and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – members of Congress kept seriously examining the
Senate race.
Among
them are Orange County’s Loretta Sanchez, Xavier Becerra of East Los Angeles
and Adam Schiff of Burbank.
Each
would bring unique strengths to a race with Harris, who so far has only two
declared opponents, Republican Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside and Tom
Del Beccaro, a former state GOP party chairman.
Sanchez,
an 18-year House veteran who upset longtime Republican incumbent Robert (B-1
Bob) Dornan in 1996, and Becerra, a member of the Democratic House leadership,
are not likely to oppose one another. But neither would likely be scared off by
Schiff.
All
are liberals and would bring a Southern California presence to a statewide
Democratic scene long dominated by San Francisco Bay area politicians like
Boxer, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Newsom, Gov. Jerry Brown and state party
Chairman John Burton.
If
Sanchez, Becerra or Schiff can arouse resentment in Southern California of that
northern domination, any of them could be a formidable candidate against
Harris, a protégé of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
Sanchez
or Becerra would also bring a Latino element into the race, the same factor
that drove Villaraigosa’s brief flirtation with a run. Neither they nor Schiff
have had brushes with scandal, unlike Villaraigosa and Newsom, both
with histories of womanizing.
For
sure, Democrats have depended on Latinos for their dominance of California
politics, but have never propelled a Hispanic into a top-of-the-ticket slot
like governor or the Senate. That could change next year.
Any of the three Congress members
thinking seriously of a Senate run would run one risk Harris does not have: She
does not have to give up her current office to run, while they would need to.
But the new Democratic reality of
long-term minority status in the House changes their equations a bit. All are
frustrated at their inability to regain power anytime soon, which greatly
reduces the risks of making a run.
So it’s a safe bet at least one of the
three will jump in, and pretty soon, giving voters a much more interesting race
than they’d have if Harris were in effect awarded the office by default.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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