I just love it when non-Orange County political operatives pretend to be experts on Orange County politics.
Today's Martin Wisckol piece on the 35th SD special election is a case in point:
"We all know why the hardcore conservative Republicans are behind Harkey," said Allan Hoffenblum, whose Target Book handicaps elections in the state. "It's all about the past, nothing about now."
What do you mean "we", paleface?
Allan is speaking, of course, of the circumstances of Tom Harman's original election to the legislature in 2000, in which he took advantage of the blanket primary rules and a center-left Republicanism (courtesy of $300,000 in union IEs).
Allan's analysis is also uninformed, lazy and conceited. He took the easy quote.
No OC conservative activist that I know of wants Tom Harman in the legislature for eight more years. But the problem is no longer how Harman was elected, but what his legislative/political record as an Assemblyman has been, and the fact that he's still a center-left Republican.
Allan Hoffenblum has it precisely backwards: this is about the future -- the next eight years -- which would undoubtedly resemble the past six years.
Hoffenblum's conventional wisdom-mongering supports the premise of Martin's article: that there isn't any real difference between Tom Harman and Diane Harkey.
That's true from a simplistic legislative score card view point. But such scorecards don't take good account of Harman's environment-uber-alles philosophy: his hostility to property rights as a member of Amigos De Bolsa Chica, and his intellectually dishonest opposition to completion of the Foothill-South toll road.
In this political day and age, when staunch support for property rights has vanished from the Democratic Party and lost ground within the Republican Party, GOPers shouldn't nominate a standard-bearer who's believes environmental interests (as defined by the Environmental Left) trump the traditional functions of American government such as building infrastructure and securing our property rights.
It's also important to consider that Tom Harman hasn't lifted a finger to help Orange County Republicans since 2000. If he was more savvy or politically mature (or both), he would have let bygones be bygones and spent the last three terms mending fences. If he had done so, then maybe he'd have the endorsement of more than just a single OC Republican legislator. And if he was as conservative as he claims he is, the fence mending would have been very difficult.
Harman's decision to remain an OC political wallflower aside, I think Martin's article is wrong. There are indeed stark distinctions between Tom Harman and Diane Harkey in some vital areas. Some things are more important than other. And the quality of those distinctions -- the principles they turn on -- outweigh that they may not be great in quantity.