Wednesday, April 28, 2010

D6: Republican Desperation

From this week’s CityBeat:

Strategy session

The Republican Party of San Diego County revealed its campaign strategy for the San Diego City Council District 6 race in a document filed last week in federal court.

The filing—a declaration from the party’s treasurer, April Boling—says the party wants to double candidate Lorie Zapf’s war chest with a $20,000 contribution, which would put her on equal footing as “frontrunner” (Boling’s words, not ours) Howard Wayne, a Democratic former Assembly member. The GOP plans to pay workers to go door-to-door on Zapf’s behalf and use its offices to phone-bank for the candidate.



What does it mean when the endorsed candidate of the GOP Central Committee, the Lincoln Club, and the Associated Builders and Contractors of San Diego cannot compete financially with the leading Democrat in the race? Two things come to mind:

1) The Republicans in San Diego can’t raise the money for Zapf which betrays a weakness at the heart of “machine” they wish to be.

2) The Republicans in San Diego don’t want to raise the money for Zapf which makes sense if she says hateful things and then denies ever saying them even when presented with evidence. Or files lawsuits when she’s representative of a lawsuit abuse group.

Kudos to Team Wayne for putting the Republicans in a position that they have to go to court to do what they cannot do politically; raise money for their candidate. So much for being opposed to an activist judiciary.


All of that is contingent on whether the court lifts the city’s restriction on donations from parties to candidates. The court already knocked down the rule but left it temporarily effective until the City Council approves new rules allowing donations with caps. That hasn’t happened, but the council was set to discuss it after our deadline on April 27.


As of yesterday, the City Council placed a limit of $1,000 per party per candidate.


“We are 110 percent committed to Lorie Zapf and will vigorously support her in every way that we can,” County GOP chair Tony Krvaric tells CityBeat—a silly remark, really, since it implies that the Republicans will violate any limit set by the city by 10 percent.


Given the desperation of the local GOP, violations of limits by 10% may be too kind.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The GOP is not reacting to Howard Wayne, they are afraid of Kim Tran, who has been walking precincts for the last six months in the District and has signs in over 700 residents yards and business storefronts. Zapf may not even make the runoff. They are in face saving mode.