By Adam Graham-Silverman
Incumbency is perhaps the best predictor of elections. Only nine House incumbents lost in 2000. So “open seat” races, those in which there is no incumbent on the ballot, account for much of the partisan competition in most election years.
But not all open seats are created equally competitive. Take this year’s contest in California’s strongly Democratic 39th District — which has barely registered with politics watchers, nationally and even locally.
A multi-candidate Democratic primary March 5 appears certain to nominate the 39th District’s representative for the 108th Congress. The Republicans will have a nominee, but one who is unlikely to have a chance to win in November.
The seat was created in redistricting by the Democratic-dominated state legislature to elect a Hispanic Democrat. It is a U-shaped constituency carved out of the five central Los Angeles districts, four of which are solidly Democratic.
The district includes the Long Beach home of five-term Republican Rep. Steve Horn, but not much else of his current 38th District. Horn announced last September that he would not seek re-election this year.
With the seat a virtual lock for the Democrats, the party’s nomination becomes a prize worth fighting for. And it appears the three Democratic primary front-runners are doing just that.
Attracting the most national attention is labor activist and attorney Linda Sanchez. She is seeking to join her sister, California Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who has been a darling of Democrats since she unseated conservative Republican firebrand Robert K. Dornan (1977-83; 1985-97) in 1996.
But Linda Sanchez is a relative newcomer to the new 39th District when compared to her opponents, state Rep. Sally Havice and Hector De La Torre, a councilman in South Gate, the district’s largest city.
Not Laid Back in L.A.
These leading candidates are all Hispanics, as are 61 percent of the 39th District’s residents. Yet Hispanics, whose numbers include a large number of recent immigrants, make up only about 37 percent of the district’s registered voters, according to the California Target Book, a political almanac. The remainder of the district includes many liberal-leaning whites and sizable numbers of black and Asian voters.
Sanchez, Havice and De La Torre say they are running on issues that appeal to voters of all races and ethnicities, such as improving schools, law enforcement and public parks.
Labor groups, state legislators and politicians have divided their allegiances fairly equally among the candidates. Some groups, such as the California Federation of Labor, have endorsed all three.
The 39th District contest is being overshadowed by a competitive, ad-heavy governor’s race in which Democrat Gray Davis is seeking re-election.
So in order to draw attention to their House race and differentiate among the candidates, someone will have to resort to campaign attacks, said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles and a professor at Loyola Marymount University.
But so far, the candidates have mainly been touting their own credentials and trying to raise enough money to run competitive campaigns.
Sanchez is getting plenty of help from her House incumbent sibling, a talented fundraiser, as they try to become the first team of sisters ever in Congress.
“Loretta has been spending some time introducing [Linda] to people who have endorsed her and offered to support her and help her in fundraising across the state,” said Carrie Brooks, a spokeswoman for Loretta Sanchez. Brooks added that most of the fundraising has been done in California.
Linda Sanchez recently received the endorsement of EMILY’s List, a political action committee that supports Democratic women who favor abortion rights.
Brooks said Sanchez, who worked on several of her sister’s campaigns, independently decided to run for the seat.
Sanchez, however, must counter an impression of opportunism, even carpetbagging. She is executive secretary-treasurer of the Central Labor Council in Orange County, the mainly suburban jurisdiction south of Los Angeles. But the 39th District lies entirely in neighboring Los Angeles County.
“I do not think you can win a campaign solely because your sister is a member of Congress,” said Havice spokesman Karl Frisch.
Havice said that, as a state assemblywoman, she was able to increase funding for schools and police in her area. But Havice also has to introduce herself to many 39th District residents. By her campaign’s own estimate, her assembly district only overlaps about 40 percent of the congressional district’s population.
De La Torre points to his work as vice president of the Gateway Cities Council of Governments, a power-sharing organization comprised of several Los Angeles-area communities, including all those in the district. He claims credit for several new schools in the area, the first new parks in South Gate in decades and a moratorium on diesel truck depots along the heavily trafficked freeways that cut through the district.
De La Torre also has Washington experience, serving as a congressional staffer and later as chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration.
But De La Torre may have to work to persuade district voters that he is untainted by political scandals, in which he has not been implicated, that have hit South Gate. Several other city council members face a recall amid charges of voter intimidation and fraud. Local reports say police suspect the city’s treasurer of being involved in the 1999 non-fatal shooting of South Gate Mayor Henry Gonzales.
“Many people may associate all those troubles with him even though he hasn’t been implicated in any of the wrongdoing,” Guerra said.
Democrats’ Trophy
Two Republicans, investment executive Tim Escobar and consultant Richard Owens, also will face off in the March 5 primary. But they are unlikely to make much headway: Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore defeated Republican George W. Bush by a margin of 27 percentage points within the new district’s lines.
Horn might have been tempted to make a stand in the 39th if he would have been running from a position of strength. But Horn barely won in 2000 in his current, much less strongly Democratic district, eking out a 49 percent to 48 percent victory over Democrat Gerrie Schipske (who this year is vying to face Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher in the neighboring 46th District).
The open 39th is essentially California Democrats’ claim on the one-seat reapportionment added to the state’s current 52. Democrats are expected to expand their advantage over Republicans in the state’s House delegation from 32-20 to 33-20.
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