WHERE ELSE BUT CALIFORNIA would you find such a colorful Republican primary campaign to fill a House seat? The moderate in the race, Brooks Firestone, gave up the family business — Firestone tires — to open a winery. The conservative, Tom Bordonaro, is a quadriplegic who doesn’t much care for federal disability laws. Spicing up the mix is a dash of national politics: House speaker Newt Gingrich tried to anoint Firestone the GOP candidate. That set off ripples of protest among some of Gingrich’s right-wing colleagues, and conservative interest groups have lined up behind Bordonaro.
The Firestone-Bordonaro contest is being played out on California’s sunny central coast in a diverse district that includes Santa Barbara, Vandenberg Air Force base, and a smattering of agricultural towns. Both candidates are state assemblymen, running to fill the House seat vacated by the death of freshman Democratic representative Walter Capps in October. The first round of the open primary is January 13.
Firestone, 61, is a Columbia graduate who eschews partisanship and views public service as a “duty.” He’s the kind of Republican George Bush was before tacking right in the service of Ronald Reagan. Indeed, Firestone stands as a reminder of what most elected Republicans were like before Goldwaterites and Reaganauts came to dominate the party. The polo fields seem more his turf than the pews.
It was in 1972 that Firestone left the company his grandfather had founded to start his winery. Today, the 500-acre vineyard where he lives registers annual sales of $ 7 million. He doesn’t seem the political type — our interview was conducted at his dining-room table, over fresh pasta and the house wine served by his English wife — and he didn’t hold public office until 1994, when he was elected to the state assembly. He was five months into a campaign for lieutenant governor when former president Gerald Ford called shortly after Capps’s House seat opened up and admonished him, “Brooks, you have a responsibility to do this.”
Firestone acceded to Ford’s wish but says he didn’t know Bordonaro would be running. The two candidates have some things in common — both endorsed Steve Forbes in 1996, and both are supporting a “paycheck protection” initiative giving union members the option of stopping their dues from being used in political campaigns. But their differences are pronounced. Bordonaro, 38, is much more the Reagan Republican. He once had Oliver North in for a fund- raiser, and his campaign is emphasizing tax cuts and IRS reform, opposition to Al Gore-style environmentalism, and Firestone’s refusal to endorse Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that sought to curb illegal immigrants’ use of state services.
Bordonaro doesn’t talk much about his paralysis — he was in a car accident while a student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — but when asked, he says it’s taught him “family and faith are what matter” and “reliance on government doesn’t do anyone any good.” He says he would not have supported the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which he believes has resulted in too many lawsuits.
For all the candidates’ differences, the Firestone-Bordonaro tangle has been civil. The two were friends before the campaign began and haven’t engaged in mudslinging (their election-night parties are planned at the same hotel). The worst Bordonaro says about Firestone is that he’s a “limousine- liberal Republican.” Firestone’s televised ads, narrated by family friend John Forsythe, never mention Bordonaro.
But because the contest breaks down along ideological lines, Washington wrangling has entered the equation. Shortly after Capps died, Gingrich and the House GOP campaign committee chairman, Rep. John Linder, called Firestone and urged him to run. That didn’t go over well with California conservatives, who noted Firestone is among the three or four most liberal Republicans in the assembly.
Accusations about who did what when have been flying ever since, and the only thing clear is that the Gingrich-Linder effort backfired. Local Republicans resented it, and a group of House conservatives including Steve Largent, John Doolittle, and Dan Burton made their feelings known by endorsing Bordonaro.
Washington’s presence is also being felt through independent expenditures on behalf of both candidates. The Campaign for Working Families, Gary Bauer’s political action committee, is spending $ 100,000 on television ads urging voters to support Bordonaro and zinging Firestone for voting against a ban on partial-birth abortion (local network affiliates have refused to run the ads, disingenuously claiming the language used to describe partial-birth abortion was too graphic). And U.S. Term Limits is airing radio spots labeling Bordonaro a “career politician” for refusing to sign the group’s pledge to limit his House career to three terms.
Firestone seems to have the early advantage. He possesses a loyal cadre of volunteers and more money (early on, he wrote his campaign a check for $ 250, 000). He also seems more in sync with the district, which has traditionally been represented by people who fit his ideological profile, like Bob Lagomarsino and Michael Huffington. Andrea Seastrand, a conservative, held the seat for only one term before Capps defeated her 1996.
But for all these advantages, local analysts say Bordonaro may be in the driver’s seat. Conservatives go to the polls much more reliably than moderates, and in a special election only the most dedicated will turn out (in the 1996 assembly election, turnout was considerably higher in Bordonaro’s part of the congressional district than in Firestone’s). Moreover, the last time the district saw two Republicans square off in a moderate- conservative contest, the 1994 primary, Seastrand defeated a respected county supervisor by 23 points. And Firestone’s money advantage may be neutralized by his refusal to run negative ads.
The wild card is the electoral system: This is the first election held under California’s new open-primary law. In the first round, on January 13, voters can pick any candidate regardless of party. If, as expected, no candidate receives 50 percent, the top vote-getter from each party will compete in a March 10 runoff. That’s prompted speculation that Democrats will cross over to support Bordonaro, who they believe would be easier to defeat in a general election.
Maybe, maybe not. The Democratic nominee will be Lois Capps, the late congressman’s widow. She’ll receive some sympathy votes, but that doesn’t guarantee she’ll win. A number of factors that contributed to her husband’s victory — an 18-month, multimillion-dollar independent-ad campaign against Seastrand; a weak Republican presidential candidate — won’t be present this time. And history is clearly on the Republicans’ side: Before Capps, the district hadn’t sent a Democrat to Congress since 1942.
