SACRAMENTO >> Losing U.S. Senate races in California is old hat for the GOP. The party has lost every one since 1988.
But getting wiped out in the June primary to replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer would be a new low for a party drifting toward irrelevance in the Golden State — one that even many Democratic leaders don’t want to see happen.
That, however, now appears increasingly inevitable. With 34 Senate candidates on the June 7 ballot — and only the top two vote-getters advancing to November’s general election — none of the three leading Republicans in the race have polled close to Democrats Kamala Harris, the state attorney general, and Loretta Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman from Orange County.
The expectation of an all-Democratic contest in November is already setting the tone for the primary race. Harris and Sanchez have held their fire, differing more on style than substance. And Bay Area Republicans Tom Del Beccaro, George “Duf” Sundheim and Ron Unz — desperate to emerge from the pack — have floated bold policy proposals and quarreled over who should exit the race to give the party a better chance of surviving to November.
If none of them break through, it would mark the first time the GOP is shut out of a major statewide race since California voters overhauled the primary system six years ago.
“That would be catastrophic,” said Del Beccaro, a Lafayette resident and former state party chairman who opposed the 2010 initiative that stopped political parties from holding their own primaries and getting a guaranteed slot on the November ballot. The measure was aimed at encouraging political moderation.
Sundheim, a former state party chairman who supported the measure, was more sanguine about the party’s plight.
“I’m willing to eat the porridge,” the Los Altos Hills resident said. “If our party isn’t strong enough to make it to the top two, shame on us.”
A showdown in November between Harris and Sanchez isn’t a rosy scenario for Democrats either, said David McCuan, a professor of state politics at Sonoma State University.
“Democrat-on-Democrat violence is the last thing the party wanted to see,” he said.
Not only does it mean more time and money going toward a safe seat, it could also keep Harris, a budding national star and heavy favorite to win the seat, at home campaigning instead of working battleground states for Hillary Clinton, the likely presidential nominee, and other Democrats.
“In the dark recesses of the night, what Democrats really desire is a sacrificial Republican,” McCuan said. “Instead, it looks like Harris is going to face a pesky challenger that she’ll have to fend off.”
Harris has jumped out to a big lead in the money chase. Through March, she had raised more than $9 million — roughly triple Sanchez’s haul. Sundheim led Republicans with a modest $382,638.
One issue that could divide the two Democrats in the fall is water.
Both support the twin tunnels, Gov. Jerry Brown’s $17 billion infrastructure project that could send more Northern California water south. But Sanchez supports U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s drought legislation that seeks to bridge the divide between environmentalists and farmers, while Harris hasn’t yet taken a stand on it.
Harris, who has the backing of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, is also less willing to consider pumping more water to farmers at the expense of endangered species such as Delta smelt, a finger-sized fish that gets little respect in most agricultural circles.
“When species are dying, you have to take that seriously,” Harris said.
The biggest difference between the two Democrats so far has been temperament. While Sanchez has spoken off the cuff on the campaign trail, most famously saying that from 5 to 20 percent of Muslims support establishing an Islamic caliphate, Harris has been reserved, presenting herself as a seasoned technocrat.
“I’m actually quite obsessed by the need for adoption of technology by government,” said Harris, an Oakland native who in 2014 moved to Los Angeles after marrying attorney Douglas Emhoff.
Harris has touted her success in securing a $20 billion settlement from predatory lenders and defending consumers from for-profit colleges and pharmaceutical companies.
Sanchez hasn’t backed down from her statement about Muslims — and has criticized Harris for lacking candor.
“She hasn’t really flushed out her positions and said where she stands on things,” Sanchez said. “On the other hand, I’m straightforward.”
She touts her national security credentials as a senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee: “No one else in the race has legislative experience; no one else has national security, military and homeland security experience.”
One thing Sanchez shares with her Republican rivals is that she’s faced pressure to stay out of the race — in her case to clear the field for Harris.
“The insiders decided way ahead of time who was going to be their candidate,” she said. “But the insiders aren’t the voters.”
The biggest outsider among the leading Republicans is Unz, a physicist and entrepreneur who championed a successful 1998 ballot measure to mandate accelerated English language immersion in schools.
Unz says “gay marriage is nuts,” opposes affirmative action and thinks Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. But he wants to decriminalize drug use and boost the federal minimum wage to $12 an hour. The wage hike, he said, would reduce illegal immigration by making many of the jobs they do more appealing to U.S. citizens.
Unz also wants to scale back legal immigration, which he said has pushed down wages for ordinary workers.
He’s the only leading Republican in the race who has been planning to vote for Donald Trump in the June primary — even though they have many areas of disagreement. “If he simply represents a wrecking ball aimed at the Republican establishment, that is fine with me,” said Unz, a Palo Alto resident.
If Unz is the race’s iconoclastic libertarian, Del Beccaro might be its tea party insurgent.
He wants to enact a 15.5 percent flat income tax and subject every regulatory constraint on business to cost-benefit analysis. Any rule that costs more than $200 million in economic output should require congressional approval, he said.
Del Beccaro opposes new gun control measures and supports the U.S. Senate’s refusal to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
He says he’ll work to find common ground with Democrats on issues such as national security — and wouldn’t be a rubber stamp for congressional Republicans. “I’m not an establishment guy,” he said.
To Del Beccaro, the biggest establishment figure in the Republican field is Sundheim, who tried in vain to get the GOP candidates to agree on criteria by which the weakest ones would drop out to boost the party’s chances of surviving the primary.
“I never believed Duf would keep his word,” Del Beccaro said, explaining why he refused Sundheim’s overture.
Sundheim, who chaired the state GOP during the successful recall of Gov. Gray Davis, has the backing of key party figures, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, and mega-donor Charles Munger Jr., of Palo Alto.
Of the major Republican candidates, Sundheim has struck the most moderate tone. He supports gay rights, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and says the Senate should consider Garland’s nomination. He’s also called for establishing more community banks and criticized Harris for not taking more guns out of the hands of convicted felons and others not permitted to own them under state law. And like Del Beccaro, he sees little merit in the twin tunnels project.
When asked why he’s a Republican, Sundheim, a big advocate of pension reform, said: “Because clearly I don’t want the unions telling me what to do.”
