Election 2006 Watch: U.S. Senate: Mundell v. Feinstein

The Sunday Los Angeles Times has Senate Race a Symbol of GOP Woes.

Bill Mundell has carved a lonely spot for himself in California politics: The wealthy technology executive is the sole Republican openly weighing a serious run to unseat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“If I make a decision to go forward with this, I will give Dianne Feinstein a run for her money,” said Mundell, whose last campaign, a state Assembly race, ended in defeat 19 years ago.

Oh, Please!

Bill Mundell may be able to buy his way into a Republican nomination victory in June 2006 only because no candidate in their right mind would ever consider running against long time incumbent Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein. Nobody has come close to beating Feinstein, the former San Francisco Mayor, in a California statewide race.

The absence of a well-known candidate to run against Feinstein highlights the Republican Party’s continuing struggle to overcome the Democratic dominance of California that solidified a decade ago.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Gary Jacobson, a UC San Diego political science professor who described prospects for a broad Republican recovery in California as bleak.

A fast rise in the ranks of independent voters — now 3.7 million in all — has eroded both major parties in California. But registered Democrats still outnumber Republicans, 7.2 million to 5.7 million.

California demographics mark the state as blue and despite what other pundits may say, Dianne Feinstein is a moderate Democrat who satisfies the needs of most independent voting Californians.

Because independents typically side with Democrats, voting patterns reflect an even stronger tilt. Democrats hold eight of 10 statewide offices. By wide margins, they outnumber Republicans in both houses of the Legislature and in California’s delegation to Congress. President Bush lost California by 1.2 million votes to Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry.

And do you think conservatives who run the California Republican Party will be able to stomach Mundell who:

Has never held public office in California or anywhere, and actually lost a California Republican Primary Assembly election almost twenty years ago.

Is not Pro-Life and supports abortion:

I’m in favor of a woman’s right to choose, provided that she makes the choice within a period of time that is consistent with, I think, consensus ethical norms,” he said. “So I am not a supporter of partial-birth abortion except in the case that the mother’s health is in danger.”

Supports Gay Marriage.

Has been married only two years and has no children.

Launched Californians for Fair Redistricting, Proposition 77, which last week was ordered off the November special election ballot because an office manager submitted the wrong copies to the California Attorney General’s office.

Fails to support agricultural subsidies for California Central Valley Farmers.

To stem illegal immigration, Mundell said, the U.S. needs to promote economic growth in Mexico. He suggests that Mexico cut taxes and give landowners the right to drill for oil on their property.

“If I was a senator from California, I’d be in Mexico visiting with [President] Vicente Fox once a month,” he said.

Feinstein strategist Bill Carrick dismissed a Mundell campaign to unseat the senator as “a suicide mission.”

“She embodies what California values are,” Carrick said, “and represents them pretty dramatically in the Senate.”

Flap has to agree with Carrick on this one.

Senator Feinstein is 72 years old and has served in the U.S. Senate since 1992. No candidate will dislodge her from her seat unless she chooses to retire or health concerns force her to step down.

Should this occur, then Republicans will certainly field a better candidate than Bill Mundell.

Stay tuned.

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