The Contested Seat

I am going to write about politics, but in a somewhat flippant and detatched way, merely because I am seeing a rare event, a congressional race without an incumbent.  I am keeping it somewhat vague because I don’t care enough to get that invested, part of which means not using any actual names to avoid any Google search attention.  But if you’re dying for names, it is all happening in what is currenly the California 16th congressional district.  Google will spill the beans.

The current district map from Wikipedia

For background, I live in what is a safe congressional district for one party, which makes it like most congressional districts nation wide.  My disctrict happens to be safe for Democrats, but there are also safe Republican seats in the state.  This isn’t even a matter of gerrymandering so much as even when you do bipartisan districting, the two parties will horse trade to maximize the number of safe seats.  They’re incentivized to do that as to be in constant competation costs money and they’d rather save that for other races.

It hasn’t always been a safe seat.  In my lifetime it has been held by Republicans.  But since 1992 it has been held by the same person, so I have essentially had the same congressional representative for more than 30 years.  Redistricting has changed the number of the district and the boundaries defining it multiple times, and I have moved five times in that time frame, but somehow I always end up with the same representative.  She must like me or something… stop following me around!

I do not hate her, but she is like any other politician and has never failed to disappointment me at some fundamental level at least once per term.  I have written her a couple of dozen cranky emails about policy issues and vote and never recieved anything but an automated response… but I got an automated response, which put her ahead of our past state senators.

Like any successful politician, she was mostly focused on what would get her elected by claiming credit beyond the scope a normal person might find tenable.  Anything that happened in her disctrict was always something “we” did even if she had no part in it.  Pretty typical stuff; sounds good on a flyer, often irksome if you are paying attention.

I took my daughter to an event where she and our state assembly representative were speaking and had her watch how they behaved back stage.  They and their entorages treated everybody with mild-to-active disdain, made sure everybody knew they were the important people, and paid no mind to the things they disrputed or got in the way of.  We had been watching Veep together and it was pretty much a Selena Meyer skit.  Politicians being politicians.  This is the behavior we reward and there is a school of thought that every district gets the candidate they deserve in the end.

Anyway, she is finally retiring, which means that there will not an incumbent who will automatically be re-elected.  We have to make a choice now as to who is likely to represent us for possibly the next 20-30 years, which is the way this sort of thing seems to go.  Everybody hates congress, but everybody loves their incumbent rep.

This means that for the first time since the election of President Clinton, I cannot tell you who will win this congressional election because, with a safe seat, the incumbent always wins unless they have done something very dumb or have moved on to better things, like being US senator fo the state. (We’re electing a couple of those this year too, but that isn’t as interesting to me.)

Which leads me to a set of choices.  This is California, where we have had the “jungle” primary system since 2010 where all candidates for the office are on the ballot together in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, and the top two finishers face each other in the main election in November.  Who do I have to pick from?  There were eleven options on my ballot, which I have ranked below in order of how likely I think it is they will make it to the November run-off.

I have included my gut insight on what they are running on, if anything, and the pros and cons of that approach.  This is not deep political analysis.  Also, I cannot begin to care enough to endorse one of them and, having already mailed in my vote, and I will only say that it went to somebody unlikely to win. (Oh, and campaign money numbers from Ballotpedia.)

So who is on the list?

The Big City Mayor

Okay, San Jose isn’t a “big city,” even if it is the tenth most populous in the US.  It is more like mini-LA, in that it has large population based on an aggressive land annexation campaign back in the 50s and 60s.  When you say “the city” here, you mean San Francisco (which actually has a smaller population, but feels like an actual city because it is packed into a 7 mile by 7 mile square), but it is the closest thing to a big city Silicon Valley has.

Anyway, the former mayor of SJ is running and is touting all of his accomplishments, some of which seem dubious or unproveable.  How can you tell he reduced homelessness by exactly 11%?  And wasn’t that during Covid?  More important, he is running on executive branch accomplishments for a legislative job, and I am not sure those translate well… but that assumes voters know the difference between executive and legislative roles.  That would not be a safe bet.

Campaign funds: $2,206,228

Pros: Has lots of endorsements, lots of money, is well known (at least compared to this group, I couldn’t tell you who the current mayor of SJ is), and is spending a lot on flyers and ads (his ad is playing in Overwolf in the background as I write this), and has a record to run on with accomplishments to brag about

Cons: San Jose is short staffed and still in a budget crisis after his time there (I could swear I saw an officer still rolling in a Crown Vic not that long ago) which could be a red flag to some, endorsements are from some conservative groups, the district includes a lot of places outside of SJ (though maybe that is a plus for him), we tend look down on the city and its dysfunction out here in the more affluent suburbs, and he comes off sounding like a pre-MAGA Republican running as a Democrat which, while a smart play in a district with a lot of rich people, will still alienate some Dems

Chances for the November ballot: 80%

The Party Ladder Climber

A former city council person in my own little suburb and our current state assembly representative.  However, we have term limits for state offices in California, which means every two terms the music starts and everybody has to get up and find a new seat when it stops.  Term limits are a failure in my opinion as the party favorites just change roles and rarely ever have to go away.  If they can’t get elected somewhere they get a commision appointment to keep thim on hold until they can.

Such is our assembly rep.  Fully bought into and adopted as part of the Jerry Brown party machine that runs California currently, if the party endorsed non-incumbent candidates in primaries, he would get the nod.

He was also at the event above with my daughter where his staff demanded a last minute change in the speaking order so he could go first, so managed to win the “most self-important and uncaring” award for that event.  Also, once stole credit for something my wife did when sitting in the mayor’s role, so I have a personal grudge.

Campaign funds: $1,369,552

Pros: Absolutely the party machine candidate, has name recognition, and if he gets past the primary he will get the party endorsement which will assure him the seat and he’ll be there for the next 30 years

Con: Absolutely a career politicion primarily interested on furthering his career and it shows when he speaks

Chances for the November ballot: 60%

The Eternal Challenger

A recurring challenger to the retriring incumbent, he has run against her for the last few elections.  Represents a very wealthy suburb city next to my own which is so NIMBY they don’t allow sidewalks or street lights.  His campaigns tend to be running against the status quo, which is not such a big draw without an incumbent.  Despite his rhetoric, come across as a conservative due to being on the city council of said wealthy suburb.

Campaign funds: $289,503

Pros: Has some name recognition, has made it past the primary multiple times, has pulled as much as 36% of the final vote against an incumbent in a safe disctrict, better than Republicans running as Republicans, who have struggled to break the 25% mark

Cons: Follwing his past pattern of promising everything to everybody which has never won in the past, also we’re playing for real this year, so he isn’t going to get the anti-incumbent protest vote

Chances for the November ballot: 30%

The Marine

I know this person was in the US Marines because his flyers feature a picture of him in his dress blues.  His actual candidate bio says he is currently an entrepenuer and runs his own cyber security firm along with a lot of things he believes in, which all sound good, but is still an unknown.  Has the largest campaign war chest in the race, even bigger than the mayor

Campaign funds: $2,792,923

Pros: Has most campaign money in the race, ctually spending it on mailers, says a lot of the “right” things for our district, and we shouldn’t underestimate the power of voter ignorance

Cons: Saying the right things is the lowest political bar possible, otherwise has no public record to run on, flyers are very much a “throw everything against the wall and maybe something will stick” approach

Chances for the November ballot: 25%

The Shallow Duo

Not one but TWO members of the Palo Alto city council are running in the election, and I am unfairly lumping them together because they are from what we call “Shallow Alto,” where they pretend to be very concerned about many things, until actually asked to do something, at which point the NIMBY wall is erected.  The closest the city gets to caring about the poor is subsidizing housing for teachers, and that is only because good schools keep the property values high. (And then they send their kids to private school.)

Campaign funds: $610,860 (combined)

Pros: Palo Alto does represent a wealthy demographic in the valley… though they are really on the peninsula and in the 650 area code… and one of the two might break out I suppose

Cons: The pair of them together haven’t raised even half of the funds of the top three, so no ads, no visibility, and the two of them are likely to split whatever demographic they represent

Chances for the November ballot: 15%

The Two Republicans

There are always a couple.  One is running on the “Congress is broken, I’ll fix it!” line in the election guide, which is particularly ironic given that Republicans in congress are currently the ones least interested in doing anything like work.  The other wouldn’t pay the money… and you have to pay by the word to have a statement in the election guide… so showed such low commitment to the effort that they cannot be taken seriously.

Campaign funds: $15,080 for one, $0 for the other

Pros: Somebody will always vote based on part affiliation alone… the guy up the street with the Trump flag is probably on board

Cons: Money?  Are these two even Republicans?  Shouldn’t these two be rich or have Larry Ellison backing them?  I suspect the mayor got all the conservative money

Chances for the November ballot: 2%

The Non-Starters

And then there are three more Democrats who haven’t sent out flyers… at least not to my address… and who haven’t stood out at all in any way I can identify without having to read copy straight from their campaigns.  I have to keep looking at my voter guide to even tell them apart.  People only get one vote and these three are not putting in the effort.

Campaign funds: $1,549,250 (combined)

Pros: The primary isn’t until March 5, so technically there is still time left for a surge, some popular messaging between them, combined they have more money than most other candidates

Cons: Divided they have second tier war chests plus early voting has been open for days now and I mailed in my ballot last Tuesday, so it is too late really

Chances for the November ballot: Less than 1%

So my expectation is that the top two on the list will end up being the pair on the ballot in November and we will see a tug of war between money and the state Democratic machine over influence, and the machine always wins… except when it doesn’t.  But I still think the machine will pull it off it, even if they couldn’t keep Feinstein from running in her last election. (She had her own constituency and was heavily supported by Hollywood, for whom she carried water during her time in the senate.)

However, if the mayor makes it in and the climber doesn’t, then it will be a money campaign to buy the seat November.

Anyway, I supposed I can grade myself on my assessment in two weeks.