McKeon and the Orange County Democrat served together in the House of Representatives from 1997, after Sanchez was elected, to 2015, when McKeon retired. For six years, McKeon was the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, which Sanchez still sits on.

“I have worked closely with Loretta for many years and have seen firsthand her ability to put partisanship aside and work with Democrats and Republicans to help move policies forward that better protect our troops and the homeland,” McKeon said in a statement. “Her military knowledge and committee experience is needed in the Senate.”

Because of her longtime seat on the Armed Services Committee, many of Sanchez’s biggest accomplishments have been military related, including changing how sexual assaults are treated in the military.

Path to victory

Sanchez hopes to win the Senate seat being vacated by Democrat Barbara Boxer with a coalition of Latinos, Republicans, independents and the leftover Democrats who don’t support the establishment candidate and front runner, Attorney General Kamala Harris.

In recent months, Sanchez picked up notable right-leaning endorsements from popular conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, the former Republican mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan, and the Libertarian-leaning editorial board of the Orange County Register.

Polling favors Harris

Harris led Sanchez in the primary, 40 percent to 19 percent, with the results split among 34 candidates. Polling since has consistently shown Harris with a comfortable lead.

A Public Policy Institute of California poll released last week showed Harris leading Sanchez by 18 percentage points, with 28 percent of respondents saying they’d skip the race entirely and 14 percent (largely Republicans) responding they were undecided.

Of her four key voting blocs, Sanchez only leads among Latinos. Harris leads among Republicans, independents and Democrats. 

Good morning! Happy Monday.

New polling and a surprise endorsement light up the path to victory for Loretta Sanchez’s quest for the U.S. Senate — but both also illustrate the challenges ahead.

Sanchez — a Democratic congresswoman from Orange County — is hoping to cobble together enough votes from a mix of Latinos, Republicans, independents and Democrats to carry her past Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris, the frontrunner.

Harris won first place in the June primary by a wide margin — 40 percent to 19 percent — with the vote split between 34 candidates. Polling released Friday gives a clearer picture of how the two candidates stack up head to head, showing Harris in a comfortable, yet surmountable, lead.

And while the polling suggests Sanchez still faces significant difficulties winning over Republicans, Hugh Hewitt, a popular conservative radio host from Orange County, endorsed her on his show on Thursday, giving Sanchez her second high-profile Republican endorsement since the primary.

CalWatchdog has more:

In other news:

• Speaking of high-profile endorsements in the Senate race, Vice President Joe Biden is considering endorsing Harris. The Los Angeles Times has more. 
• The Voice of San Diego dissects Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s decision to present her boyfriend an award for Veteran of the Year, finding trouble with the decision and hypocrisy with the reaction. 
• A new report finds the use of “dark money” dipped in California recently, reports Capital Public Radio.
• “Facing a torrent of accusations, a for-profit company that operates taxpayer-funded online charter schools throughout California has reached a $168.5 million settlement with the state over claims it manipulated attendance records and overstated its students’ success,” writes The San Jose Mercury News. 

Legislature:

• Gone ’til August.

Gov. Brown:

• On vacation.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @Sal_DiCiccio @dandelcampo2

Sanchez — a Democratic congresswoman from Orange County — is hoping to cobble together enough votes from a mix of Latinos, Republicans, independents and Democrats to carry her past Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris, the frontrunner.

Harris won first place in the June primary by a wide margin — 40 percent to 19 percent — with the vote split between 34 candidates. Polling released Friday gives a clearer picture of how the two candidates stack up head to head, showing Harris in a comfortable, yet surmountable, lead.

And while the polling suggests Sanchez still faces significant difficulties winning over Republicans, Hugh Hewitt, a popular conservative radio host from Orange County, endorsed her on his show on Thursday, giving Sanchez her second high-profile Republican endorsement since the primary.

Polling

To win, Sanchez will likely need around a third of Democrats, the vast majority of Latinos and more than half of independents and Republicans to cast their ballots for her.

A Field Poll released Friday showed Harris with a 15-point lead (39 percent to 24 percent). The good news for Sanchez was that 22 percent of respondents were undecided, the bad news was that 15 percent — a large portion of which were Republicans — said they’d vote for neither.

Harris led among voters in nearly every category, including among Republicans, independents and Southern California voters (Harris is from the Bay Area).

Sanchez, however, had a strong lead among Latinos, a nice lead among voters ages 18 to 39, and a slight lead among voters making less than $40,000 annually.

Republicans

Perhaps the most troubling data point for Sanchez was the 31 percent of Republicans who said they wouldn’t vote in the Senate race, essentially saying they would just skip over that race on the ballot without one of their own to choose from.

Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant who specializes in Latino issues, said he doubted the Republican undervote will be as “significant as other Democrat demographics” and believes Sanchez has a chance to win in November.

“I think there’s a very real shot,” Madrid said. “Difficult, certainly; but absolutely possible.”

Fragile coalition

Sanchez walks a fine line in appealing to Latinos and Republicans, as the former is increasingly dissatisfied with the latter.

And she can’t veer too far to the right and hope to win a large chunk of Democrats or vice versa. After all, Sanchez is still a partisan Democrat and has strong support from Democratic lawmakers and constituencies, including unions. 

While some Republican insiders have reached out to Sanchez, introducing her to donors and voters behind closed doors, few are willing to make overt displays of support. 

Endorsements

Republicans like Hewitt who have come out in support of Sanchez give cover to other Republicans who may have a tough time voting for a Democrat by finding her to be the moderate candidate, or at least the lesser of two evils.

The Libertarian-leaning Orange County Register Editorial Board endorsed Sanchez during the primary (while Republicans were still in the race), primarily for voting against the Iraq War in 2003, for voting against the PATRIOT ACT (which expanded the federal government’s use of surveillance against U.S. citizens), and for opposing the 2008 bank bailout.

Hewitt called her the more “moderate” of the two candidates and said he would occasionally find consensus with Sanchez in military and defense issues — Sanchez sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. 

“You and I are not going to agree a lot, but occasionally, we’re going to agree on Armed Services and some Defense appropriation issues,” Hewitt told Sanchez on air Thursday. “I’m not going to agree with your opponent ever.”

In June, Richard Riordan, the former Republican Mayor of Los Angeles, endorsed Sanchez for her opposition to the Iraq War and for her ability to work across the partisan aisle to pass legislation. 

Congressional Quarterly recently listed Sanchez as one of the 25 most influential women in Washington, for being a “debate shaper and swing vote.” For the majority of her nearly two decades in Congress, she’s been in the minority party, meaning most accomplishments have been made with an element of compromise.

“I’ve known Loretta Sanchez for many years, she is tough and not afraid to take a stand on important issues,” Riordan said at the time. “(Sanchez) knows how to work with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.”

Sanchez actually used to be a Republican, dating back to high school in Anaheim. But similar to Latinos today repulsed from the Republican Party by its presumptive presidential nominee, Sanchez switched when she heard former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan warn of the “illegal invasion” of Mexicans coming across the country’s southern border, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Uphill climb

Even if Sanchez can unite behind her Republicans, Latinos, independents and leftover Democrats, she still faces an opponent in Harris who has statewide name recognition and the full backing of the Democratic establishment, which in California has so often proven to be enough. 

For every play she makes for one group, she risks alienating voters of another group. Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio said, for example, attacking Harris, the attorney general, as being soft on crime was a decent strategy, but risks losing appeal among progressives.

And despite Sanchez’s moderate profile as a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Caucus and her independent streak on larger issues, she still has a fairly liberal voting record in the House.

“It’s an uphill climb,” said Maviglio. “What credentials does Loretta Sanchez have to appeal to Republicans? She’s been a partisan Democrat in the House. Is she less liberal than Kamala Harris? Only by a hair. That’s not a convincing argument.”

CBS 13 reported 1,500 people showed up to apply and enroll in person. The health fair was sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the California Endowment and Covered California.

“People in Sacramento got a chance to sign up for the new health insurance option in person if they didn’t want to do it online,” CBS 13 said.

“No waiting lines, no problems with computers, people are able to sign up today,” said Betty Williams, Outreach Coordinator with Covered California. Williams is the former director of the NAACP in Sacramento, current Sacramento County ACLU director and lost a bid recently for the Sacramento City Council.

Even with 300 Covered California “assisters,” by the end of the day only 10 people completed applications, the Sacramento Bee reported.

CalWatchdog.com reader John Thomas Flynn told me he emailed Sacramento Bee reporter Richard Chang with questions, after the enrollment celebration, and after he read Chang’s story, “Health care sign-ups proceeding, at least in California.”

“I was told that they need 24 hours to approve the applications,” Chang wrote back to Flynn, in an email forwarded to me. “Therefore, I reported it as 10 enrollments completed. They were completed, but we don’t know whether they’ve been approved.”

Only 46 other applications were started. Oddly, Medi-Cal application numbers were not available for the event, even though some people attended just to sign up for Medi-Cal, according to the Bee.

Enrollment figures?

Covered California released its first enrollment figures Wednesday, showing only a small portion of the state’s 5 million uninsured had signed up.

According to Covered California CEO Peter Lee, “Thousands are enrolling. That is the loud and clear drumbeat that California enrollment is working.”

However, an “enrollee” isn’t truly “covered” until he or she has made a payment and been issued a policy, just as in the real world of insurance works. No payment, no insurance plan.

“With some of the snags that we’ve had in the past 40 days, it’s to be expected with something brand new like this; but, I do expect it to smooth out and it to be a humongous turnout,” said Williams.

“Sign-ups are proceeding all right. They got 10 of them on Saturday.…with 7 million uninsured, that means they’ll need 700,000 more enrollment parties,” Flynn quipped.

Defiant Board

The Covered California Board of Directors voted 5-0 Thursday to continue scurrying toward the state’s year-end deadline to cancel more than 1 million private, individual health insurance policies.

Covered California board members said existing policies are being terminated because they do not meet the new requirements under the federal Affordable Care Act.

The defiant decision by the Covered California Board, in opposition to President Barack Obama’s directive this week to extend existing health plans, demonstrates the left hand doesn’t know what they right is doing.

Granting privileges

The California Legislature and the new Covered California health insurance exchange have been handing out more than $500 million in taxpayer dollars to contractors. Much of the money is going for “outreach” and “education programs” connected to voter registration drives through the health exchanges, as I wrote in a recent story.

The California NAACP received $600,000 for door-to-door canvasing throughout the state, targeting African Americans. And the ACLU is actively involved in registering new voters through Covered California enrollments. Is it any wonder Betty Williams is an Outreach Coordinator for Covered California?

Covered California announced in May it would award $37 million to 48 organizations to “conduct outreach and education programs” on how Californians can access “affordable health care coverage.”

Covered California calls these “partnerships,” and the goal is to “increase awareness about the new benefits, to educate targeted audiences, and motivate consumers.”

“The Obama administration granted $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange,” I wrote. “The $910 million was targeted not for actual health care, but for bureaucratic spending. This included $360,000 a year for the executive director, and other rich compensation packages for exchange employees.”

Radio host exposes Covered CA ‘con’

National radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt discussed Covered California on his show this week. As for the “Covered California is working fine” declaration, Hewitt linked to my recent story about trying to enroll. And he talked about why there are no numbers on current enrollees.

“In fact, the state exchanges — while not all as abjectly miserable failures as Healthcare.gov — are close behind the federal failure in ineptitude and some are actually worse,” said Hewitt, who broadcasts from Southern California.

Hewitt asked the questions the mainstream press will not:

* “Who, if anyone, has actually made a payment to their new health plan? Almost certainly no one, which Lee will excuse as unnecessary right now.

* “Who, at least then, has gotten a real bill? Who has in hand a policy that will pay claims incurred after 1/1/14?

* “How many people have a new insurance card in their wallet with a policy number and a known price, deductible and doctor network?”

He said of his home state, “The biggest con of all seems to be running out of California, where the huge flaws in the ‘CoveredCA.com’ scheme are getting easier and easier to understand as a fraud upon the people of the Golden State, even as the Los Angeles Times and other MSM outlets flee the facts.”

The Los Angeles Times story he was referred to was headlined, “Healthcare plan enrollment surges in some states after rocky rollout.” It claimed, “A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.”