DOES THE REPUBLICAN PARTY really want Tom Bordonaro to win a House seat? The 38-year-old state legislator is the GOP candidate to succeed Democrat Walter Capps, who died last fall, in the coastal California district around Santa Barbara. The race is the most critical in the country between now and mid-term elections in November, its significance going far beyond the prospect of Republicans’ gaining one Democratic seat. If Bordonaro wins in this first election since the Clinton sex scandal broke, it would be an enormous psychological breakthrough for Republicans. It would dissipate their fear of Clinton, spur their fund-raising, and improve their chances of gaining House and Senate seats in the fall. Meanwhile, Democrats would be demoralized, less likely to rise to Clinton’s defense, and weakened for the November elections.
What’s amazing about the race is that Bordonaro, a mediocre campaigner and poor fund-raiser, is running even with Democrat Lois Capps, who’s seeking to succeed her husband. What’s also amazing is how little the Republican establishment has done to help Bordonaro, a fervent social and economic conservative. True, Bordonaro irritates GOP leaders. After all, House speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. John Linder, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, had anointed moderate state assemblyman Brooks Firestone as the candidate to oppose Capps. But Bordonaro, promising not to vote to retain Gingrich as speaker, challenged Firestone in the January primary and won. Just as bad from Gingrich’s standpoint, Bordonaro was boosted by $ 100,000 in TV ads aired by the Campaign for Working Families, the PAC run by one of Gingrich’s most outspoken Republican critics, Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council.
Since the primary, Bordonaro has muted his criticism of Gingrich in the interest of Republican unity. “He has not changed his mind,” says spokesman Todd Harris, but he no longer repeats his vow to cast a vote against Gingrich. In any case, Bordonaro now has Gingrich’s endorsement and also Firestone’s. Yet after two trips to Washington to meet with officials at the Republican National Committee and NRCC, he still hasn’t gotten the kind of financial backing the national GOP is capable of. Now the two committees claim that they (along with the state party) will steer roughly $ 700,000 in campaign aid to Bordonaro. Mostly through direct mail, voters in the district will be ” touched by our money between 17 and 22 times,” NRCC political director Ed Brookover says. But the national GOP is not planning to broadcast independent “advocacy ads” on TV to echo Bordonaro’s campaign themes. The excuse is Bordonaro agreed to raise money on his own to buy TV time.
This arrangement isn’t working. For most of last week, while Capps ads were on TV, Bordonaro wasn’t on the air at all, though 30-second spots are relatively cheap since the district consists of a single media market. And the March 10 election was less than three weeks off. Bordonaro just didn’t have the money to pay for ads. Even now, funds are only “trickling in,” Harris says, and Bordonaro expects to be outspent 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 by Capps. Worse for Bordonaro, U.S. Term Limits has gone on TV to denounce him for refusing to back a six-year limit for House members. And both the Sierra Club and a pro-abortion group are expected to air television spots backing Capps and zinging Bordonaro. All Bordonaro has is his own skimpy TV buy, plus new ads by Bauer attacking Capps for opposing a strict ban on partial-birth abortions.
Compare all of this with the backing the GOP gave last November to Vito Fossella, who was seeking to replace Susan Molinari in the House seat on Staten Island. Fossella got normal NRCC assistance, plus help in fund-raising. But what blew open a close race and produced a Fossella landslide was a week of RNC-financed ads on New York City television. The ads, which cost about $ 800,000, eviscerated Fossella’s opponent. The Democratic National Committee couldn’t match them, and probably wouldn’t be able to in Santa Barbara either. Yet the national GOP holds back. Party officials insist the Bordonaro campaign wants it that way. But not the Bordonaro people I’ve talked to. Says campaign manager Jim Kjol of independent ads paid for by the RNC: “That would be great. Absolutely.” Asked if Bordonaro would like them, Todd Harris says, ” Of course.”
The failure to buy TV ads isn’t the only way the GOP has undermined Bordonaro. For nearly a month after the primary, national party leaders sat by as Mike Schroeder, the California Republican chairman, refused to assist Bordonaro. This contrasted with the aid the state party had given Republican Tom Campbell in a special House election in San Jose in 1995. Then, five staffers were dispatched to buttress the Republican drive. But there was a difference: Democrats had made the race a referendum on Gingrich. (Campbell won handily.) This time, Schroeder maintained that Bordonaro, by declaring he wouldn’t vote to continue Gingrich’s speakership, had violated an obscure party rule against renegades who refuse to back their legislative leaders. So he wouldn’t deploy staffers or allow mail with absentee-ballot applications to be sent. He relented only after Gingrich and Gov. Pete Wilson intervened, but even then he blocked a mailing that attacked illegal immigration — he demanded the tax issue be used instead The result of all this? The Bordonaro campaign was left weeks behind in lining up absentee voters. Democrats gloat that 62 percent of the first 25,000 absentee ballots to come in were from Democrats, while only 22 percent came from Republicans.
The truth is, Bordonaro might still win even without full-throttle backing from the national and state parties Capps looks shaky. She has responded defensively in a new TV ad to the partial-birth-abortion issue. And she’s suddenly agreed to a half-dozen debates with Bordonaro. But despite her shortcomings as a candidate, Capps has a first-rate campaign operation guided by Bill Carrick, one of the Democratic party’s ablest strategists. In a tight race — and both sides say it will be decided by only a few percentage points — the sheer magnitude of party support, especially on television, could be pivotal. Republicans have the capacity to deliver a lot more help than the Democrats. So far they haven’t done it. Maybe the national GOP establishment would prefer to lose the seat rather than see a victorious social conservative and Gingrich foe march triumphantly into Washington.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
