David Harmer is the decided underdog in the special election to fill the seat of fmr. U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher’s (D) Bay Area ‘burbs seat, but his campaign is touting a poll that it claims positions Harmer within range of capturing this seat, vacated when the former New Democrat leader was shunted off to the State Dept. by the Obama Administration.
Harmer sees an opening in this, one of those affluent districts that reported dramatic swings to Obama over Kerry last November. Few in this tech-heavy constituency winced when Obama uttered his infamous cultural war gaffe in nearby San Francisco about Middle Americans who “cling to guns or religion.” But suburban voters here do, as CQ’s Politics in America notes, “tend to be more fiscally conservative” even though they “share their Bay Area neighbors’ views” otherwise.
With that in mind, Harmer’s wisely sticking to the economy as he takes to the airwaves to lampoon his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a career California pol, trying to choke him with his own words and paint him as an aloof, unrepentant tax and spender.
He might be onto something here.
CQPolitics predicts that Garamendi “can be expected to be a reliable vote for the Democratic Party leadership if he is elected to Congress,” in contrast to Tauscher, a former stock broker and the head of the trade boostering New Democrat Coalition.
Even though Lefty bloggers howled when Tauscher spearheaded efforts to limit the scope of the bankruptcy reform bill, a centerpiece of Congressional Democrats’ and Obama’s agendas, Tauscher’s business-friendly approach proved popular here. Voters returned Tauscher to Washington, repeatedly, in numbers that outperformed already healthy Democratic presidential candidates’ scores in this district.
Garamendi’s campaign did not return repeated calls to this blogger inquiring whether he would have signed onto a letter with his possibly future fellow freshman House Democrats, raising concerns to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that a proposed surcharge, to pay for health care reform, on high income earners would smother small business and “discourage entrepreneurial activity.” The impetus behind the letter was Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), an openly gay internet entrepreneur. Voters in his similarly Obama-smitten, New Economy suburban district didn’t mind his orientation any more than those in CA10 do the goings-on in nearby San Francisco. But the former entrepreneur Polis decided to speak up when his constituents balked at the hit Democrats’ economic agenda threatened to their pocketbooks.
Garamendi seems oblivious to this not uncommon vein traceable in affluent, highly educated Democratic electorates. He hasn’t been in tune with local issues since his days in California’s State Senate. Holed up in Sacramento and Washington since, Garamendi’s unimpressive nomination – he mustered a mere quarter of the vote in a jungle primary against three opponents with regional, but deeper, bases – seems thanks name recognition racked up through decades of lackluster campaigning. It’s not inconceivable he could face a spirited primary challenge from a local pol in 2010.
CA10 has indeed become tough territory for any Republican this side of Schwarzenegger. A culturally conservative Mormon in a district that the Examiner’s senior Political Analyst Michael Barone describes in his Almanac of American Politics as generally tolerant of, if not necessarily sharing in, nearby San Francisco’s notorious cultural norms, Harmer certainly has his work cut out for himself.
So, it’s no surprise that a close, local observer is skeptical of this Harmer campaign-commissioned poll and the rosy numbers they’re peddling, but whether or not Harmer is headed to Capitol Hill is not the ultimate point.
If Harmer can significantly outperform regular Republican numbers here, it will betray evidence that a message of confident, uncompromising fiscal conservatism can gain traction even in the heart of Obamastan.
And if Garamendi limps to Washington, battered and bruised from Harmer’s “tax & spender” hammering, he might see the light. If he begins to speak up for the high-earners that sent him there, other skeptical Democrats, like Polis & Co., might be emboldened to rein in the Democrats’ regulatory ambitions. If he toes Nancy Pelosi’s line, he might face an Ellen Tauscher-style New Democrat challenge in 2010.
