Campbell shift helps DeVore

Tom Campbell is shifting his ambitions from the governor’s throne to the U.S. Senate. This obviously helps conservative Chuck DeVore in the race, as the third major person running is Carly Fiorina, another moderate. This analysis notes that. But the analysis is wrong on a couple of critical points:

1. “ ‘Chuck DeVore must be smiling from ear to ear, and Barbara Boxer must be, too’,” [Larry Gerston, a political science professor at San Jose State University] said because Boxer’s best chance of winning re-election is to face a hard-core conservative rather than a moderate…..

“His ideology — liberal on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, conservative on fiscal matters — could make him a formidable opponent for Boxer. In past races, Boxer has drawn mainly Republican opponents that she can easily pigeonhole as right-wing ideologues.”

Wrong. Boxer easily beat moderate Bill Jones six years ago mainly because he hardly campaigned at all. Six years before that, in 1998, Boxer easily beat another moderate, Matt Fong. But in 1992, when she first won her seat, she barely beat conservative Bruce Herschensohn.  Even then, she only won because Herschensohn refrained from campaigning on her 87 bounced checks on the House bank until after Democratic operative Bob Mulholland prodded the media into finding out that Herschensohn had attended a strip club.

And Campbell already has lost two Senate races, so his track record isn’t great.

2. “But sources in the Campbell campaign say some Republican heavyweights encouraged Campbell to make the switch because they believe he has a better chance of beating Boxer than either the political neophyte Fiorina or the lesser known, underfunded DeVore.”

Actually, if any nominee gets close to Boxer in the polls, GOP money will come pouring in.

3. “Tom Campbell and all the other opponents are people who are part of the establishment,’ said Fiorina’s spokeswoman, Julie Soderlund. ‘Carly Fiorina very clearly is not’.”

Actually, the opposite is true. Fiorina’s views, as far as I can tell, are fairly conventional Country Club Republican. By contrast, both Campbell and DeVore are unique, interesting candidates. Campbell, for instance, while in the House of Representatives in 1999, led Republican opposition to President Bill Clinton’s bombing of Serbia, which killed 5,000 innocent Serbians, while putting the al Qaeda-connected Kosovo Liberation Army in charge of Kosovo. (That was back when most Republicans were anti-interventionists; it’s the opposite today, Chuck DeVore, a big endorser of the interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., being a prime example.)

DeVore, an Assemblyman,  was the first prominent Republican to endorse the Citizen Power Initiative, which would reduce union manipulation of government. That’s because, unlike him, most Republicans — like Democrats — are beholden to the powerful government-employee unions.

I suspect that Fiorina will drop out. Which would leave an interesting race between DeVore and Campbell. America might finally get the intelligent debate on foreign policy — something beyond the slogans and shouting — it has lacked since 9/11.

-John Seiler