“GOP Rep. Wally Herger’s retirement today has already opened the door for one Republican up-and-comer: state Sen. Doug LaMalfa,” Politico is reporting.
“Jon Fleischman of the Flashreport confirmed overnight that LaMalfa will run for Herger’s far northern California-area district and that he would have the endorsement of Herger. Fleischman also reported that Dave Gilliard, a consultant who worked for Herger, will run LaMalfa’s campaign.
“We’ll get a better sense in the days ahead of who else might be interested in running for the seat, which after the state’s latest round of redistricting strongly favors Republicans. But Herger’s endorsement will carry some weight and likely help to clear the field for LaMalfa.”
The rest of the article is here.
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Others will look at this race: for example, I’ve heard that Ted Owens is interested in being a Congressman. But LaMalfa has a big lead in this one with his current role as state senator and Herger’s endorsement. I’d be so bold as to predict “game over.” I’ve met Doug several times, including once with his Gran Torino behind us in the Fourth of July parade. He’s a staunch conservative, but not as much of a verbal bomb thrower as some of the others (though his recent screeds against Jerry Brown were higher pitched than usual). One interesting tidbit: LaMalfa did endorse Doug Ose, not Tom McClintock, for Congress.
http://sierrafoothillsreport.com/2009/07/04/lamalfa-takes-on-keene-in-a-gran-torino/
Our new district is interesting because the exchange of the main population centers of Placer and El Dorado Counties with all of Butte County (Chico) and I believe all of Siskiyou County has the former 4th being less conservative. Yet on the other hand Wally Herger’s district has become more conservative with the additions of Modoc, Lassen, Sierra, Plumas, and Nevada Counties. Unfortunately the democratic party will only run conservative democrats in the misguided theory of taking republican votes. Here is what a New Deal Democratic President had to say about such theories.
“Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time” – Harry S Truman
Jim Reed who seems to be very nice man lost to Herger in a less conservative district by 14% points in 2010. He is running again on a platform of a moderate democrat on positions that we hope to be the final compromise. One believes the final product came from a shared view but it rather came from a compromise.
Here is how it suppose to work and how it works today
1= New Deal/ Great Society Democrats
3= Compromise
5= Reagan Revolution Republicans
Left 1 2 3 4 5 Right the compromise would be a 3
Today
Left 1 2 3 4 5 Right the compromise is a 4 due to the democratic party running on a 3 or moderate/ corporate platform.
Hopefully there will be a democratic candidate from OWS that will challenge this theory and will begin to start shaping what being progressive means and challenging the distorted propaganda version of what progressives stand for that FOX and our Tea Party republicans put out as truth.
Ben,
This is a great way to explain things!
By the way, Congressman Paul would be a ten on your scale.
John
John,
President Obama is a four on the scale. The republican party likes it this way because it allows them to claim he is a one distorting the perception what liberals stand on. The perfect example is calling Obamacare communist. The signed law is almost identical to Nixon’s health care reform in the 70′s and the mandate came from the heritage foundation and has been a traditional conservative idea. Communist health care would look like the VHA and Obama care isn’t even in the same ballpark.
As for the republican strategy of retiring Herger to make room for the next republican party rep La Malfa it is a very smart move.
Don’t know much about LaMalfa except for his polarizing and “members only” campaign slogan, “He’s one of us”.
As opposed to?
I don’t think he’ll be representing his district’s constituents very well. Just a selected gaggle of them and to the detriment of our beautiful country.