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Posted on 11/06/2008 7:58:40 AM PST by SmithL
Assembly District 15 — the bulk of which lies in Contra Costa County but portions of which also fall in Alameda, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties — is not even close to being the same district it was in 2002, when now termed-out Republican Assemblyman Guy Houston was elected to the first of three two-year stints in office.
That the political make-up of the once predominantly Republican region has changed — a fact reflected in shifting voter registration trends — was evidenced Tuesday by Democrat Joan Buchanan's clean victory in the race over Abram Wilson, the well-liked Republican mayor of San Ramon.
Buchanan, a veteran school board trustee in the affluent San Ramon Valley suburbs where both her and Wilson's children's attended school, captured 99,833 votes to Wilson's 89,013 votes, or about 52.9 percent of the total votes cast.
"The (district) is more moderate than what most people think. It's certainly not a progressively Democratic San Francisco kind of district, but at the same time it's idealogically not way out to the right either," said Buchanan, who was basking in congratulatory phone calls and e-mails and trying to catch up on rest Wednesday.
Wilson could not be reached for comment.
The assemblywoman-elect said that her "next step" will be to "go up and do some training sessions in Sacramento over the next two weeks, get oriented and learn more about the nuts and bolts about serving the Legislature."
In addition to shifting party demographics in the district, Buchanan's victory may have been influenced by the way her and Wilson's campaigns were run, analysts say.
Wilson, who got into the game late after vacillating on his candidacy for weeks, led a race blighted by disorganization and mishaps. He raised a fraction of the funds that Buchanan did and caught heat from the state Democratic party for missing several reporting deadlines for huge campaign contributions from the California GOP.
Buchanan, on the other hand, hit the ground running and never let up. From Jan. 1 to June 30, she raised nearly $400,000 — more than twice that Wilson raised in the same period.
"It's the type of district where, (in order to win) the Republican would have had to do everything right and then hope that the Democrat did something wrong — and that was not the case," said Allan Hoffenblum, a former GOP political consultant who once worked on the Assembly District 15 campaigns of retired state legislators Lynne Leach and Bill Baker.
Buchanan's win, a historic coup for Democrats, dealt a crushing blow to the California Republican Party, which poured more than $800,000 into Wilson's campaign in hopes of holding onto the Bay Area's only remaining GOP-held seat in the Legislature.
"We no longer have a single Republican in the legislature," said Hoffenblum, the current publisher of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan political publication. "It just shows the Republicans have become more of a regional party than a statewide party."
Buchanan's win over Wilson was not a landslide, but it proved that times are changing in the East Bay suburbs.
District 15, which includes Livermore, San Ramon, Alamo, Walnut Creek, Danville, Brentwood, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton and parts of Stockton, Galt and Elk Grove, has never been perceived as a 100-percent safe haven for GOP candidates, but it used to be viewed as more "heavily Republican" than it is now, Hoffenblum said.
Though both Houston and Leach, his predecessor, faced significant challenges from Democratic competitors during various runs for re-election, the voter registration numbers were on their sides.
In 2002, Republican voters held the majority, representing 44 percent of the district. Only 38 percent of registered voters were Democrats and 12 percent were voters who had declined to state their political parties.
Six years later, the registration advantage has now flipped to the Democrats, who make up 40 percent of the district, compared to 36 percent Republican and 19 percent of voters who declined to state.
The sharp rise over the past several years in the district's number of decline to state voters — most likely young moderates who ultimately voted Democratic — probably helped Buchanan as well, Hoffenblum said.
"We always knew there were a lot of Republicans in that area we used to call 'the wine and quiche Republicans' — moderate on the social issues but still very conservative on the fiscal issues," he said. "It's a district that's been trending Democratic and finally fell into the column."
Democratic coup is GOP loss in Assembly District 15 as Bay Area loses only Republican seat in state legislature
The Bay area, always infected by SFValues (SFV), has gone the way of all good hippies: to seed.
Is Rep Wally Herger still alive and kicking in the Vallejo area?
He won on Tuesday, hopefully vacationing on Wednesday.
Silicon Valley ping. It’s rough living here when you’re a conservative.
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Interesting wording choice.
Methinks someone protesth a bit too much...
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