OFF TO THE RACES; A Delusional Decision (by Condit

To hear some accounts, national Democratic strategists are wringing their hands over the delusional decision of Rep. Gary Condit, D-Calif., to seek re-election. The theory goes that Democrats are apoplectic about the chance of losing a seat that could make the difference between majority and minority status in the narrowly divided House.

No question, Republicans have recruited an exceedingly competent candidate in state Sen. Dick Monteith. And while Democrats would have a very difficult time holding onto California's 18th District if Condit won the nomination, it is extremely unlikely that he will survive his March 5 primary. And given the beefed-up Democratic numbers in the newly redrawn district, it is pretty unlikely that state Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, the probable Democratic nominee, will lose the general election, even to Monteith.

First, some history. In 1981, Rep. Phil Burton, who was to partisan gerrymandering what Babe Ruth was to homerun hitting, offered to make this district more liberal and Democratic for then-Rep. Tony Coelho.

Coelho demurred, preferring an agriculture-oriented, moderate district better suited to him to a more urban-oriented, liberal district that party mappers offered to construct by adding working-class, liberal Stockton.

Ten years later, Condit, even less liberal than Coelho, also turned down the offer to make this district more liberal. The district was a perfect blend for him, Democratic enough to keep him out of re-election difficulty, but not so liberal as to cause him problems in a primary.

Democrats, who control the state House, Senate and governors' office, added Stockton, changing the voting patterns of the district fairly significantly.

While George W. Bush won 53 percent of the vote in the old 18th district, under the new lines, he would have received only 45 percent of the vote.

This result might not be sufficiently Democratic for Condit to hold the district, but it almost surely would be enough for just about any other Democrat to hold the seat.

So how will Condit do in his primary? The only scenario for Condit to win a primary is for the anti-Condit vote to be split three, four or five ways and his hard-core base to provide enough traction to push him over the top. There is no run-off in California.

But assuming that the signatures on Condit's filing petitions, turned in Friday, meet the legal test, he will face only one real opponent, Cardoza, and four others. None of the four has name recognition or obvious access to funding.

What's more, San Joaquin County now constitutes about 30 percent of the district, with all but about 13,000 of those residents new to the congressional district. These folks are even less likely to have warm and fuzzy feelings for Condit.

The district is now 42 percent Hispanic -- it was 36 percent before. In a Democratic primary, these voters would give Cardoza an even bigger boost against Condit.

While it is true that no evidence ties Condit to the disappearance of former intern Chandra Levy, he totally mishandled the situation and, polling clearly shows, lost the confidence of voters in his district. Factor in his inability to raise money -- Roll Call reported last week that Condit has received no contributions from political action committees since July -- and it is really difficult to see how the guy can pull this out.

Perhaps one of the more bizarre analyses of this race came from Sally Bebitch Jeffe, a political science professor at the University of Southern California. Quoted in Monday's New York Times, Jeffe suggested that since the Sept. 11 tragedy, voters are "really against negative campaigns," putting Condit's opponents in a bind, because "how do you get at Gary Condit if tearing him down won't work?"

Excuse me! Why would someone need to go negative against Gary Condit? What could an opponent possibly need to say about Condit that has not been said, ad infinitum, on national television?

If ever a challenger could run nothing but positive ads, Cardoza could. In fact, Condit is the one who would have to go negative, reaching a stratospheric level comparable to his own negative ratings to have the slightest chance of winning.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that on Sept. 11, when the spotlight moved away from the Condit-Levy affair, the lawmaker somehow concluded he was off the hook, forgotten and forgiven. Perhaps the resurrection and survival of Bill Clinton, lo those many times when he looked politically dead, gave the wrong lesson to others, who really are dead.

OK, I am going to go out on a limb here. My prediction is that Condit will drop out.

I hope not. Condit is the best chance the Republicans have for taking the district.

For condit to drop out of the race, he would first have to admit that, whether or not he had anything to do with the Levy case, he was guilty of hindering the investigation to avoid the bad publicity. As a democrat, this is impossible, in that such a statement would involve the truth. There is a codicil in the by-laws that forbids the truth when a lie makes them sound better.

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