(Given the acrimony between the two Republican candidates, anything can happen in AD-72. Give it a look. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
I have been making a pain of myself elsewhere for the pastcoupleofweeks (and believe it or not, there are more diaries where those come from) on behalf of John MacMurray, the sole Democrat running in the AD-72 race for the seat once occupied by the man with two nicknames: "Hot Mike""Spanky" Duvall. (Is it cruel to continue to make sport of Duvall? Yes it is. Gotta problem with that?) I've been trying to get people from across the country to phone bank, and if you're amenable to spending some time over the next two days getting out the vote, your assistance would be most welcome. (Note: I am not formally affiliated with the campaign.) My hope has been both to help John do well in the race and to demonstrate that, when a special election comes down the pike, progressives and other Democrats can, conceivably, prove themselves to be a "rapid deployment force" from their own cell phones to help tip a race.
How that goes, we'll see. (Or, maybe when it comes to the latter proposition, we won't.) I come here not to cadge your support, but just to talk about the race -- because someone here should be doing so.
For a short time after Duvall resigned -- deserving victim of an apparent leak from a Republican political saboteur, to my knowledge as yet unidentified -- it looked like this might be a mano-a-mano fight between 2006 and 2008 Democratic nominee John MacMurray and somewhat unpredictable Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby. Then, for a time, it looked like Democrat Sharon Quirk, Mayor of Fullerton, might enter the race on the Democratic side, but she was not able to make the race for reasons, as I understand it, not involving politics. Meanwhile, the former Assembly member in the district, Dick Ackerman, has -- I'm sorry to sound sexist in saying this, but it seems to be the case -- dispatched his wife Linda to run for the seat, despite the relocation of the Ackermans to outside of the district in Irvine. Norby and Dick Ackerman reportedly have a feud going back to the Fullerton City Council.
The race, judging from yard signs and mailers, has been expensive and dirty on the Republican side. In my area, mostly Brea and Fullerton, Norby appears to have won the battle to throw his opponent's yard signs into the trash, while his "NO ACKERMAN -- IRVINE CARPETBAGGER" signs still bloom on street corners everywhere. (MacMurray's signs also did not survive the purge -- of course.)
Ackerman has been doing better in the mailboxes, especially a couple of weeks ago when we had a mailer a day for her. (She's apparently been going after the Democratic vote, despite being, from what I can tell, the more obnoxiously and reliably conservative of the two main Republican candidates.) But while she's spent nearly $200,000 in this race to Norby's $150,000 (and MacMurray's maybe $15,000), it turns out that a lot of the most charged material may have come from a separate source.
For example, look at this:
This is a truly impressive hatchet job, even by Republican standards. To get what looks like a straight story, I actually had to go to Matt Cunningham's column in RedCounty, where he -- oh yeah, I am linking to it -- nails down its provenance. Its the work of "Citizens for Accountability LA," an ugly little PAC, but even more specifically, according to Cunningham, the contribution of Ed Roski, billionaire owner of Majestic Realty.
What's Roski's beef with Norby? As seems to be true of a lot of things recently, it goes back to Roski's plan to build an NFL stadium in the city of Walnut, just over the Puente Hills from the northern part of the district. Norby has been a loud opponent of this, even writing an op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune warning them of a San Gabriel Valley power grab. Cunningham describes the ad as "so over-the-top as to be unbelievable, and ultimately ineffective"; while the jury's out on the last part of that, I'll go along with the former.
So can a $15,000 campaign, staffed by gutty and doughty volunteers, defeat two ones hovering in the high $100,000s range? You probably know which way to bet. But MacMurray does have a couple of theories that could lead to victory: one in the primary, and one in the general election.
Here's the theory in the primary: a great GOTV campaign -- hence my desire to get people onto the friggin' phones -- gets an unexpectedly large percentage of the Democrats who came out in 2008 to come to the polls. Meanwhile, the Republican behemoths tear themselves apart so badly that Republican turnout is suppressed. Republicans stay home and MacMurray, unimaginably, ekes out just over 50% of the vote in the primary.
Hey, it's a theory. You get no points for knocking it down, so let's let it do what good it can over the next 40-plus hours.
The second theory is this: the loser in the race could decide that rather than letting the hated Republican opponent sink their tendrils into office, it would be better to see a one-term (actually half-term) Democrat elected and then try to knock them out of office next year.
Likely? Not very. But stranger things have happened.
If, say, Ackerman's attacks on Norby as a sexist monster vaulted her into winning the race, might there be some muttering consensus among Norby Republicans that it would be enjoyable to see Ackerman fall flat on her ass -- and still perhaps win the seat back in less than a year? Norby would still probably be running for County Clerk if he lost the primary -- he's been raising money for it -- so maybe he couldn't afford to stick the shiv in her himself, but that doesn't mean (he might be quick to point out) that he can control his supporters. Might they come out for a MacMurray '09/Norby '10 ticket? Again -- it's a theory.
Does this matter to me, as I've spent the past weekend and longer often on the phone and frequently flogging the race? Not really. I've seen the sacrifice that candidates like John MacMurray make, just to be in position to capitalize if the other side slips. (Oh, would that Spanky Duvall had been caught bragging in mid-October 2008!) The imperative, I think, is to support them with one's effort when and as one can; if my time will have been wasted here -- well, I've done worse things with it. And if MacMurray -- a nice and funny guy whom I've described as a tradition American meal of hambone, cornball, and self-effacing mashed potatoes and gravy -- somehow wins, then I'll be proud to have played a small part in it. (I'll build up that role, of course, as the story goes national -- and it would!)
So yes, go up to that link and make a few calls, if you can, especially on Tuesday. If we have a 50-state, a 57-county, a (within Orange County) 34-city strategy, it means being willing not to have someone else do all the work, but to stand with them as they fight the good fight.
I'm happy to have done what I could -- well, part of what I could -- for John, win or lose. Perhaps you'll join me?
Poll
Is it worth others -- and you -- helping in AD-72?
