Capps and Bordonaro Vie for a Small Group of Centrist Voters
BY STEVEN T. JONES
Tom Bordonaro hopes you’ve changed your mind.
For the fourth time in less than a year, voters on Nov. 3 will cast ballots for a representative from the 22nd Congressional District, due to the untimely death of former Congressman Walter Capps.
The first three times–in January, March, and June–more voters wanted Democrat Lois Capps than Republican Tom Bordonaro. But voters do change their minds in this district. In 1994, voters chose Republican Andrea Seastrand over Democrat Walter Capps, only to choose Capps in the rematch two years later.
And both insiders and outsiders say the Bordonaro-Capps race for this pivotal seat will be close, probably decided by a few percentage points. So with the right factors
falling into line, Bordonaro could beat Capps.
It’s a battle for swing voters, those in the middle of the political spectrum. The problem is, we don’t have many of those.
Jeff Gill, a Cal Poly political science instructor who holds doctorate degrees in both statistics and political science, has used his training to do statistical models on the voting pattern in the 22nd District and has discovered that our district is different than most in the country. We’re bimodal, rather than unimodal.
Using markers on a dryboard in his office, Gill explains the difference, drawing a large arch on a graph with the word "Liberal" on the left side and "Conservative" on the right.
This is a unimodal curve, he said, with the most voters in the middle of the political spectrum and steadily fewer voters as you move out toward the political extremes. Gill said the unimodal curve is the most typical across the country.
Then he draws a new graph with our bimodal curve, which has two humps dropping down into a depression in the center. It indicates there are big and numerically equivalent groups of liberals and conservatives in the 22nd, with only about 10 percent of voters in the middle.
"The campaigns can count on 40 to 45 percent of the electorate in their pockets on day one," Gill said.
Gill even has recent anecdotal evidence to support his analysis, pointing to Bordonaro’s upset defeat of popular centrist Republican Brooks Firestone in January. The conservative voter base supported Bordonaro, while Firestone got stuck in our centrist depression.
This dynamic leaves the Capps and Bordonaro campaigns fighting for that roughly 10 percent of voters in the middle, knowing there’s little chance of voters from their base switching camps, hence campaign messages like the "mainstream, independent" label Capps has adopted.
For a voter who is pro-choice and for gun control, Gill says, "Does that person have anywhere to go but Capps?"
But in a such close race, each campaign also has to make sure their base of support shows up at the polls, bringing into the mix the strength of each campaign’s get-out-the-vote apparatus, questions over how the Clinton impeachment will influence turnout, and what their voting records say about Capps and Bordonaro.
"It's going to be close, probably within a few percentage points. Our polls show us neck-and-neck, statistically, among likely voters. It depends on which turnout model you use," Bordonaro said. "We'll know Nov. 3 for sure."
Voting Record
One key way the Bordonaro campaign hopes to reverse the outcome of the March election is by trying to hang the "liberal" label on Capps, dissecting her voting record in Congress and focusing on votes they believe will cost her support from the center.
"I really think the true difference between now and spring is that Lois now does have a vote record," Bordonaro said. "She has had to make the tough decisions that are required of someone in office. I have a vote record. So I think this go-around is going to be much more about the differences between the two candidates, philosophically and on issues."
To make the case that Capps is to the left of centrist voters, Bordonaro is focusing on votes against some Republican bills–like eliminating the IRS and using the military to stop illegal immigration–and trying to tie her to the more liberal members of the House of Representatives.
"Around 90 percent of the time she votes with [representatives] Maxine Waters and Joe Kennedy, and the other 10 percent of the time her votes are scattered here and there. Now, 90 percent of the time is usually an A in public school, so I think that we've found out she's a liberal," Bordonaro said.
Yet the record of voting with liberals is extremely misleading, say both Gill and Capps, because even political opposites will vote with one another most of the time. That’s just how Congress works.
"The vast majority of votes are so mundane and routine that there is near unanimity," Gill said, noting that Capps also has a voting record of nearly 90 percent with conservative Speaker Newt Gingrich.
"You can find a 90 percent voting record with a lot of different people," Capps said. "What I want to concentrate on is what this district wants and has been telling me."
And while Capps did vote against conservative centerpieces like a two-thirds vote requirement for Congress to raise taxes, she has also parted with Democrats to cast centrist or even conservative votes on many issues, including taxes, crime, and campaign finance reform.
The most high-profile example this year was her support for House Resolution 4579, the Republican tax cut package that was passed 229-195 with the critical support of 19 Democrats, mostly those in hotly contested races like ours.
"Get rid of the marriage penalty? Overwhelmingly, people on the Central Coast said they wanted that done. I listened. I went back to our constituents," Capps said. "It wasn't a partisan decision for me. It was what I believe the people have sent me to Washington to do."
Bordonaro also says the Capps voting record doesn’t reflect her true beliefs and predicts she’ll show her true stripes at some point in the future.
"When you're in the minority party, you can really vote the way you want to in a targeted district," Bordonaro said. "If you watch what she is doing, she's using a few Republican votes to try to cover up her real record, and it's a smart thing to do, but it's a political thing to do. It's not something she believes in, but it's something she's done to make it look like she does represent the average voter on the Central Coast."
But Bordonaro doesn’t think a few conservative votes by Capps will translate into winning conservative support on Nov. 3.
"Bottom line in campaigns is you can't out-Republican a Republican or out-Democrat a Democrat," he said. "If you want to throw this campaign into a battle over tax cuts and who's going to eliminate the IRS, throw me in that briar patch. I would love to take her on on all the tax-and-spend issues. That's not her ground; she doesn't have credibility on that ground. Did she vote for a bill that reformed the IRS? Sure. But that bill was like putting lipstick on Godzilla; it's still an ugly beast that needs to go away."
Bordonaro said he would have supported the bill, which would phase out the IRS in favor of a flat tax or national sales tax. Labeling Capps a liberal may be difficult based on her voting record, but Bordonaro’s record in the Assembly clearly puts him in the category of "conservative," with a strong pro-business, less-government, and tough-on-crime focus.
"I believe that his appeal is to a conservative ideology, that is partisan, that is extreme, not in the center," Capps said.
While he might dispute the "extreme" label, Bordonaro embraces the "conservative" one.
"My message is still a message of lower taxes and smaller government and increasing public safety and reforming education," Bordonaro said.
Impeachment
At summer's end, Republican politicians across the country wore wide grins and spoke about riding President Clinton's sex and perjury scandal into a Republican sweep in the November elections.
Today, with polls showing public opposition to the removal of Clinton from office, the jury is still out on what impact the Clinton scandal and impeachment hearings will have on this congressional race and others around the country.
"I want there to be very little [political ramifications from Clinton's scandal], because it comes down to what this race is. It is a large local election, the largest locality," Capps said. "The people's House is comprised of 435 distinct localities, each sending a representative to do their district's business, but also to act in the national interest."
She doesn't believe Clinton will be a significant factor in the race.
"The national media would have us believe it's critically important. But when people talk to me, most of the concern is about our schools, our health care, and how our life together is here on the Central Coast," Capps said.
But Bordonaro hopes and believes Clinton's situation will have a big impact on this race, and that impact could sweep him to victory.
"What it does is unifies the Republicans, gives them a reason to come together, a rallying point, so to speak, to work for all the candidates and come together. The Republicans are unified, I can tell you that," Bordonaro said. "I think that's what it's done more than anything. It's helped my fund raising, I can tell you that. What it does on the other side, it disillusions. It disillusions Lois Capps' base and it excites mine. And these campaigns nowadays are all about turnout. Because turnout is so low, the key is getting your people to the polls."
In fact, Bordonaro is trying to make Clinton a campaign issue, criticizing Capps as opposing impeachment because she supported the Democrats' limited impeachment inquiry–"She refused to vote for the impeachment inquiry," Bordonaro said–rather than the open-ended one approved by Republicans.
"Voting is an emotional thing. It's not something that is cerebral, it's something that is visceral. And [the Clinton impeachment] gives Republicans a rallying point and reason to go to the polls," Bordonaro said.
Mobilizing Voters
Whether it's voting records or public outrage over what's going on in Washington, both campaigns are desperately looking for whatever it takes to get their supporters to cast ballots.
"Turnout is the key. It's a swing district. It's a challenging district, for both sides, and I'm glad to be on the side that believes the more who vote, the better," Capps said.
Conventional wisdom dictates that a large turnout usually benefits Democrats, because Republicans are more consistent voters. But Bordonaro believes getting a stronger turnout of conservative voters is the key to his victory.
"[In the spring] we really dropped the ball in getting our base out, and she did a helluva job," Bordonaro said. "Now, we have over 300 active volunteers. That's a veritable army."
And these days, ensuring a strong turnout isn't just an election day effort. More and more voters are choosing to vote by absentee ballot. Gill predicts 40 percent of the vote in this election will be by absentee ballot.
Santa Barbara County elections officials have so far sent out about 50,000 absentee ballots, fully half of the voter turnout from the March special election (there are 224,325 registered voters in that county: 95,974 Democrats and 83,844 Republicans).
In San Luis Obispo County about 32,000 absentee ballots have been pulled so far. There are 133,869 registered voters in SLO County, 51,304 Democrats and 58,971 Republicans, and the March election saw 75,845 ballots cast, 28.4 percent of them absentees.
In years past, absentee ballots usually leaned toward Republican candidates. But the Capps campaign efforts to increase absentee voting by Democrats has leveled the playing field in the 22nd District.
"We started a tradition of absentee voting, voting by mail, which has traditionally been a Republican thing to do," Capps said.
In March the Capps campaign canvassed the district hard, distributing absentee ballot applications and making sure by phone calls, mailers, and knocks on the door that her supporters voted.
"We had a lot of odds to overcome then, because nobody was thinking about elections. We thought we were going to have a terrible turnout, and we had a very good turnout," Capps said.
The Bordonaro campaign plans to be just as effective with the upcoming election.
"We've been building that structure since March, that grass-roots structure that is so important, and I'm quite satisfied with where we are today," Bordonaro said. "On election day, we're going to have a minimum of one person per precinct, to make sure ID’ed voters, the ones we know are our supporters, that they vote. And we have a system to track that that is very high-tech.... A lot of elections are who turns out votes. That's the big key, who gets their people out to the polls."
Capps said her campaign isn’t taking any support for granted, especially given how weary 22nd District voters are of this contest.
"We were going to have to work hard anyway," Capps said. "Somebody just said to me a half-hour ago in the street, and said he was a supporter and voting for me, 'But my son said I already voted for her three times. What is this?' There is a lot of, 'What, didn’t we just send you back there?' So I'm actually focused on that more than the Clinton thing. This is an unusual year for the congressional district. We're going to have work hard to get out the vote."