Many Vie to Replace Harman in Congress

The retirement of Rep. Jane Harman, who until recently represented part of Los Angeles in Congress, has produced a rare, wide-open opportunity for Golden State Democrats to win a coveted congressional seat. The response has been spirited, with no fewer than sixteen candidates set to appear on the ballot in today’s non-partisan primary. If no candidate receives a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will compete in a June 12 runoff.
 
Among the leading candidates to replace Harman, who stepped down at the end of February to become president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, are Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn and California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, both Democrats. Bowen has the advantage of widespread name recognition, while Hahn is a popular Los Angeles lawmaker with the backing of the state, and likely the national, Democratic Party.
 
Other candidates in the running include teacher Marcy Winograd, who received an impressive 41 percent of the vote in last year’s Democratic primary against Harman, and Dan Adler, a colorful Disney executive whose campaign manager is the actor Sean Astin. Adler has gotten attention (much of it mocking) for a series of nontraditional ads that highlight the racial diversity of the district’s electorate, including two featuring Adler’s son and former child star Patty Duke using the same expletive to emphatically attest to Adler’s competence and efficacy.
 
The Los Angeles Times editorial board has endorsed Hahn, joining Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and the L.A. County Federation of Labor in supporting the councilwoman. Meanwhile, Bowen is backed by several non-profits and interest groups, as well as former Democratic National Committee Chair and Vermont Governor Howard Dean.
 
Among the Republicans who have joined the campaign are Redondo Beach Mayor Mike Gin, Hermosa Beach Councilman Kit Bobko, and businessman Craig Huey. Huey, who recently loaned his campaign half a million dollars, claims the support of local Tea Party Republicans.
 
The district, which covers Los Angeles’s Pacific coast and includes Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Venice Beach, has a Cook Political Report Partisan Voting Index of D+12 and has significantly more registered Democrats than Republicans or unaffiliated voters. Even in the 2010 Republican wave, Harman easily won a sixth term with 59 percent of the vote.
 
Adam Probolsky, Redondo Beach Mayor Gin’s pollster and president of Probolsky Research, a Newport Beach–based Republican polling firm, sees the special election as a test of California’s new “top two” primary system, in which all candidates compete in a primary regardless of party, and the top two finishers face off in the general election. “It is a model going forward for consultants, pollsters, and parties to understand and analyze this race,” he says. “If you do have two Democrats against each other [in a runoff], how do you campaign in the general? Both parties will be looking at that because theoretically there will be similar situations in Republican districts.”
 
Chris Crotty, a political consultant with Crotty Consulting, a California-based Democratic general consulting firm, predicts that Bowen and Hahn will move on to the July runoff. “Hahn has been getting a lot of assistance from Jane Harman and the folks in D.C.,” says Crotty. “While Debra [Bowen] has run a decent race with the money that she has, and arguably fits the district better, it will end up being Janice [Hahn].”
 
Both Crotty and Probolsky point out that while the district is strongly Democratic, it has a conservative bent and will likely support a moderate candidate. “I’ve worked in cities and done races in that area, especially in the South Bay part of the district, and even the Democrats are pretty conservative,” says Crotty. “They don’t take well to folks that are liberal.”
 
This explains why the left-leaning Winograd, who pulled in more than 40 percent of the vote in the 2010 primary, has performed poorly in a crowded field with more conservative Democrats in the race. If Winograd had run a stronger campaign, Probolsky suggests, she might have locked down a larger share of the district’s liberal voters, increasing the chances that a Republican would advance to the runoff. “It is a disappointment, from a Republican perspective, that she hasn’t had the traction that she had in the past,” says Probolsky.
 
As of May 8, Hahn had spent nearly $423,000 to Bowen’s $338,000, but neither has received the attention and earned media that Adler’s unconventional ads have. The most recent public poll of the race, a Public Policy Polling survey from February 17 and 18 that pitted Bowen against Hahn, showed Bowen leading with 33 percent of the vote to 29 percent for Hahn.
 
Few expect turnout of more than 20 percent for the special election, but those voters who do participate may have a significant impact on how California’s political consultants approach primary politics going forward.
 Noah Rothman is the online editor at C&E. E-mail him at nrothman@campaignsandelections.com