As The Media Obsesses Over New York Special Election, It Ignores Leftward Lurch In California Special Election

THINK PROGRESS

In the past few weeks, conservatives and their allies in the press have obsessed over the special election in New York’s 23rd congressional district. Pundits have claimed that the rise of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman as the likely winner in that race is a “referendum on the Obama-Biden spending agenda” and evidence of a rightward shift in the nation’s politics, despite the fact that this particular district in New York hasn’t elected a Democrat in a century.

While pundits have obsessed over the special election in New York, they’ve completely ignored another race that evidences a progressive resurgence. Today, voters in California’s 10th congressional district will go to the polls to elect a member of congress to replace former Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), who was brought into the Obama Administration to serve as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security.

As The Nation’s John Nichols notes, CA-10 is a far more competitive district than NY-23:

If [NY-23] elects a Republican Tuesday – and, though Hoffman is running on the Conservative Party line, he is now backed by local, state and national GOP leaders and organizations – the district will hold to the pattern it has been on since Ulysses Grant was president. On the other hand, California 10 was represented by a Republican until Tauscher beat him in 1996 – and in the past century, Republicans have represented the core counties of the district more frequently than Democrats. In other words, California 10 is the more historically competitive turf.

Despite the competitiveness of his district, Democrat John Garamendi leads Republican David Harmer by ten points in the latest polling.

What makes Garamendi’s lead all the more impressive is his progressive stances. While CA-10 was previously held by a Democrat, Tauscher legislated as a centrist. A member of the business-friendly “New Democrat Coalition,” Tauscher was a supporter of rolling back the estate tax, tightening bankruptcy rules, and expanding free trade agreements. Following the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2006, she famously warned her colleagues to not run “over the left cliff” by passing too much progressive legislation.

Garamendi, on the other hand, is an unabashed liberal. He is a strong supporter not only of a public option, but of a single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system, supports the creation of an exit strategy from Afghanistan, and actually defeated the hand-picked candidate for the Democratic endorsement.

If he is elected, and he likely will be, it will mark a dramatic leftward shift in CA-10. But with all the media coverage of NY-23, most Americans may never know that.