GOP Retains Cunningham’s House Seat in Special Election

With about 90% of the precincts reporting, it looks like the Republican Party has kept control of the House seat in California’s 50th Congressional District. Former lobbyist and GOP banner-waver Brian Bilbray has 56,130 votes, or 50% according to the Los Angeles Times. This is 5% ahead of local school board member Francine Busby’s 51,292 votes. The pundits will make much of this, but in reality, there are no lessons here for November.

On the personal level, Mr. Bilbray suffered from being a lobbyist in a nation that hates special interests (while conveniently ignoring the fact that everyone is a special interest). Meanwhile, Ms. Busby appeared to many to be over-reaching – Congress is a long way from the local school board. To make up for the personal flaws (or to accentuate those of their opponents), the national Democratic Party apparatus threw $2 million into the race, while the GOP spent $4.5 million. That's a lot of money to spend for a job that doesn't come with stock options.

The district carries a Republican advantage in registration, 44% to 30% with 22% independent. Nonetheless, this isn’t dizzy liberal San Francisco nor John Birch Orange County. George Bush carried the district with a comfortable 55% of the ballot while California as a whole backed John Kerry for president in 2004. Disgraced and convicted former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham held the seat since the 1990 election, four years before the GOP landslide.

Democrats tried to make this a race about corruption, and the fact that there was a special election (a by-election in any other English-speaking nation) at all to fill the seat for the next 6 months summed it up. The local congressman took bribes and is in jail. Meanwhile, San Diego has had the mayor and city council members in trouble with the law. Nonetheless, it looks like that was only good for 5-7% in a race where a 12% swing was needed. The ugly truth is most American congressional districts are so gerrymandered that most are a lock for the incumbent. At most 50 seats are in play, and more than likely just 30, this year.

At the same time, Mr. Bilbray played the immigration card and ran against the president and his policies. Mr. Bilbray prefers to build a fence (Tijuana is an hour’s drive, so some of his pals may get fence-building contracts), and ship the illegals back to whateveritis-astan that they came from. Quite how he’s going to work that out in a state where former governor Jerry Brown, the departing Mayor of Oakland, won the Democratic nomination for attorney general remains to be seen.

This race was never a litmus test of anything. There was a swing against the GOP but not enough to unseat the party, and really, unless the Democrats win, the margin of defeat is a moot point. The Liberal Party of Britain excels at moral victories, and hasn’t elected a Prime Minister in decades. There are other, more significant places to watch; the media just looked at this one because it was a special case. One should never generalize from special cases.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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