CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“DE LEON AIMING FOR AN UPSET OF THE AGES”
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“DE LEON AIMING FOR AN UPSET OF THE AGES”
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein had almost
$10 million on hand after winning a 44.2 percent plurality of the June primary
election vote; Kevin de Leon had far less than $1 million left over after
finishing second with just over 12 percent, enough to get a spot in the
November runoff election, but insufficient to scare anyone.
Feinstein even won fellow Democrat de
Leon’s own state Senate district in eastern Los Angeles County by a comfortable
10 percent margin.
De Leon’s percentage of the primary vote
was somewhat less than the 12.6 percent won by the previously little-known Sacramento
area Republican activist Elizabeth Emken in 2012, the last time Feinstein stood
for reelection. Feinstein won a 49.3 percent plurality in that primary, and
beat Emken that fall by more than a 60-40 percent margin.
Emken was a Republican, so very likely
took almost all GOP votes in the runoff. But de Leon has positioned himself as
far to the left of Feinstein as any Democrat could, and so won’t draw many
Republican votes in November. One late-July poll indicated almost half of all
Republican voters will leave the U.S. Senate category blank on their ballots.
Feinstein has never before run against a fellow
Democrat, but two years ago, the moderate Democrat and former Congresswoman
Loretta Sanchez of Orange County got 54 percent of Republican runoff votes.
All these items give the more moderate
Feinstein a huge advantage over de Leon this fall. They help explain why de
Leon has trouble raising money from Democratic donors, who would rather put
their dollars into congressional districts the party might flip from red to
blue, and not make an enemy of the formidable Feinstein, a former mayor of San
Francisco.
Put it together and it’s clear de Leon
may need an act of God to take over the Senate seat Feinstein has held since
1992.
The primary vote also indicates it
will probably turn out to be irrelevant that de Leon had a near-victory with 54
percent support at the California Democrats’ state party convention last
spring, which easily topped Feinstein’s support, and later won an endorsement
from the Democrats’ executive committee, which comes with some plugs on
campaign slate mailers this fall, plus monetary and volunteer worker support.
This happened because the bulk of both
party convention delegates and executive board members today are far to the
left of both Feinstein and mainstream Democratic voters, as made clear by the
primary results. The current makeup of the party organization is the result of
a big push by 2016 supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during
local party caucuses early in 2017.
In fact, exit polls in June showed
Feinstein winning about 70 percent of all votes cast in the Senate race by
Democrats.
And yet, de Leon does not appear fazed
by the difficulty of the task before him. “Once people make the connection with
me, they say, ‘It’s time for a change, I’m with you,’” he told a reporter after
the primary.
But in this huge state, with
population and geographic size similar to major nations like France and the
United Kingdom, it’s difficult to connect directly with enough voters to
overcome all Feinstein’s advantages.
So de Leon often lapses into the “it’s
time for a change” mantra, code words for “Feinstein is too old.” She turned 85
on June 22 and is the oldest member of the Senate. But not even de Leon suggests
that makes her ineffective.
“To say he has a message is a
stretch,” said Feinstein’s longtime campaign consultant, Bill Carrick. “He’s
trying to say ‘she’s not progressive and I am,’ but that gets shot down every
day by what she’s doing in Congress.”
Feinstein is known as the Senate’s
leading gun-control advocate, is a strong abortion supporter and on those
grounds was among the first Democrats to declare opposition to President
Trump’s newest Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
The bottom line today is that
Feinstein enjoys a lead of at least 22 points in recent public polling and even
with a party endorsement, de Leon does not appear to have either the means or
the money to overcome that margin.
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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