How did little-known Republican Craig Huey outpoll
Democratic Secretary of State Debra Bowen in last week’s Special Election in
CD36?
Sixteen candidates qualified for that special election
ballot: five Democrats, six Republicans and five affiliated with another party
or no party at all.
The district, stretching from Venice to the Los Angeles
Harbor community of San Pedro, is safely Democratic, with Democrats outnumbering
Republicans 45% – 27%, with 22% being independent.
Two heavyweight Democrats entered the race: Los Angeles
Councilmember Janice Hahn of San Pedro, and Secretary of State Debra Bowen, of
Venice, who had previously represented much of the district as a state senator
and assemblymember.
The third Democrat of note was Marcy Winograd, an anti-war
activist who had twice run against Jane Harman in the Democratic Primary, the
last time being 2010 when she received 41% of the primary vote.
On the Republican side, the best known at the beginning of
the race was Mike Gin, the openly gay Chinese-American Mayor of Redondo Beach
But the first Republican to formally announce his candidacy
was Craig Huey, the owner of his own marketing firm, and an evangelical
Christian political activist from Rolling Hills Estates (located outside the
district).
This was CA’s first congressional special election that was
run under the new "Top Two Open Primary" law, with all sixteen candidates
appearing on the same ballot and the top two vote getters, regardless of party,
going against each other in a July 17 Runoff election.
The conventional wisdom among most political observers was
that due to the district’s heavy Democratic registration, and the high name ID
of the two leading Democrats, that Hahn and Bowen would most likely come in
first and second, making this the first race to see a runoff between two
candidates of the same party.
It didn’t happen.
Not surprisingly, what did happen is that the two candidates
who both spent the most money and worked the hardest became the two top vote
getters.
On the Democratic side, it was Hahn who raised the most
money. And it was Hahn who ran the more aggressive campaign among the two, with
Bowen continuously on the defensive and complaining about her opponent’s
negative mailers.
And Winograd, receiving just under 10% of the vote, played
to role of spoiler, taking votes that would have most likely have gone to Bowen
if Winograd was not on the ballot.
The biggest spender among them all was Republican Craig
Huey, who lent his campaign $500,000. He
hired veteran GOP consultant Dave Gilliard, received endorsements from a bevy
of well-known conservatives, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Tom McClintock
and ran a multi-media mail, cable TV, radio campaign that focused on an anti-tax,
anti-Obama Care-anti-deficit agenda that appealed to the many like-minded
voters in the district. It also appealed tea party activist throughout L.A.
County, who came into the district to walk precincts and get-out-the vote
telephone calls for Huey.
None of the other Republicans, including Gin, were able to
come close to raising or spending that kind of money.
The result is that on Election Day, Huey received 22% of the
votes cast, 750 votes ahead of Debra Bowen.
Now, the real upset will be if Huey defeats Hahn in the July
runoff election.
But Huey’s strongly held views on social issues —
anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage — in a libertarian inclined coastal district where
57% of the voters voted NO on Prop. 8 to ban gay marriage and 64% voted for
Obama, makes that highly unlikely.