Sun May 03, 2009 at 17:11:53 PM PDT
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| Watch out for the conventional wisdom; it'll bite you every time. So in the CA-10 race, the conventional wisdom is that with John Garamendi's entry into the race, he becomes the immediate frontrunner by virtue of his name recognition, his long experience, and his fundraising capacity. But what if those things have been overestimated? After all, Garamendi had all of those things when he ran for Lt. Governor in 2006. How did he do then? Well, the answer is... not too well.
The Secretary of State site doesn't break down the results of the Lt. Gov. primary by Congressional district, so we'll just have to look at the county-wide results, where Garamendi lost by anywhere from 9 to 19 points in the counties that comprise CA-10:
| John Garamendi | Jackie Speier |
|---|
| Alameda County | 30.1% | 49% | | Contra Costa County | 37.6% | 50.3% | | Solano County | 38.9% | 48.2% |
Note: I've omitted Sacramento County from the chart (the county from which Garamendi hails) because it's such a small part of the district, with only 652 registered Democrats eligible to vote in the CA-10 primary.
Now, the Draft Garamendi movement is proposing that Garamendi would be better suited to a run in CA-03 against Dan Lungren. Just for the sake of comparison, here are the primary results from 2006 for the counties that make up CA-03:
| John Garamendi | Jackie Speier |
|---|
| Alpine County | 55.7% | 31.8% | | Amador County | 58.5% | 33.8% | | Calaveras County | 62.7% | 30.1% | | Sacramento County | 42.1% | 47.2% | | Solano County | 38.9% | 48.2% |
All of which is a kind of long-winded way of saying that Garamendi's perceived advantage in the CA-10 race may end up amounting to what most of the conventional wisdom in politics amounts to... not much. These numbers would certainly indicate that CA-03 holds a lot more promise for Garamendi than CA-10.
Flip it... |
| babaloo :: What The Numbers Say About John Garamendi In CA-10 |
| In the same vein, in response to my cross-posting of yesterday's diary to Bear Flag Blue an anonymous commenter there made the following assertion:
One argument I've heard is that Garamendi's base is in CD-03. That's simply not true. He has a lot of friends and support here, but he is Lt. Gov. of the state of California and former Insurance Commissioner. Last time I checked those were both statewide offices. I submit his base is the entire state.
That's an interesting assertion, but one which has no factual basis. Again, not to be too tiresome, but if you look at the Lt. Gov. primary results, you'll see that Garamendi had a pretty dismal showing throughout most of NorCal and only eked out a narrow victory over Jackie Speier because of his overwhelming support in SoCal. (Or maybe it was just a lack of name recognition on the part of Speier, a NorCal legislator.)
You know, I've facetiously suggested that Garamendi might as well run in CA-50 for all the district-specific knowledge he brings to the race in CA-10, but the reality is that he might stand a better chance down in a SoCal district than he would in either CA-10 or CA-03.
So here's an idea. There's a special election being held in CA-32 on May 19 that could get Garamendi to Washington to implement his big ideas even more quickly than the CA-10 race (since time seems to be of the essence for Garamendi). Looking at his Lt. Gov. numbers, they really seem to like him in Los Angeles County, which comprises Hilda Solis's old district, CA-32:
| John Garamendi | Jackie Speier |
|---|
| Los Angeles County | 53.6% | 24.6% |
Or if that's just too soon, Garamendi could always opt to run in one of the districts that encompass Orange, Riverside, or Ventura Counties. The numbers suggest that he would do much better there than he would in either CA-10 or CA-03.
| John Garamendi | Jackie Speier |
|---|
| Orange County | 55.9% | 24.7% | | Riverside County | 52.6% | 25.7% | | Ventura County | 54.5% | 24.7% |
And heck, they even have UCs in the districts down there. |
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