He doesn't have a chance. McCloskey is 79 years old and looks worse than Ted Kennedy. Pombo is a young, vibrant, conservative Republican who is popular in his district.
This is just an example of the lefties looking for news positive to their side. It's also a sign of desperation because if they have to resort to UCSC students doing brownie bake sales to raise money for a campaign in another distict, it's because they KNOW they can't raise money in the district at stake themselves.
My sister has the misfortune to live in Santa Cruz County (only until her husband's able to retire), and she tells me it was a conservative county until the 1960s, when liberals began flooding in, first to the US Santa Cruz campus.
When she moved there 3 years ago, she stopped at a voter registration booth one day and asked for a registration form. When they handed it to her, the Democrat Party block was already marked. She handed it back, saying she was a Republican. "Then you'll have to go somewhere else," she was told.
She and her husband wouldn't dare put any kind of conservative bumper sticker on their cars--the cars would be keyed to ribbons within 24 hours.