The turnover on this website of late is so high that many of you are probably unfamiliar with Ron Shepston, who has for the past year used the Ron Shepston for Congress account. Perhaps fewer of you remember when he was a frequent contributor here, starting in 2004, under the handle CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream. Ron is a longtime Koster/Kossack, excellent on the issues that most of us care about, and tomorrow he will face his first electoral contest: a primary for CA-42.
I was working in Ron’s campaign from the start through the end of last year and still participate as an occasional volunteer, small donor, sometime writer/editor, and sometime advisor. Ron’s "brain trust" includes many familiar names from this site: thereisnospoon, hekebolos, and dday among them.
Today, I don’t speak for the campaign, though I’m making calls tonight and tomorrow once I’ve posted.
I just want to tell you why I voted for Ron, and why – if you’re one of the (statistics would suggest) large number of people reading this who live in CA-42 – you should do so too.
Ron Shepston is running against the execrable – though I think the term the campaign finally decided on was "ethically challenged" – Rep. Gary Miller. This guy is a howling wingnut. His posturing aside, his only real purpose in Congress seems to be propping up the real estate industry in the San Gabriel Valley, Orange County, and the Inland Empire. He is a large and wealthy developer; his primary supporter – or should I say "constituent?" – the Lewis Group is an even larger one. He is also one of the most ethically corrupt members of Congress. Don’t take my word for it: he’s on the CREW list, for the third year running.
So: except for being a wealthy candidate in a conservative district, he’s beatable, just like Pombo and all of the others in 2006.
Miller ran unopposed in 2006, when his scandals starting coming out. That was a shame; no one could capitalize on his corruption. This year, he has attracted three challengers. One is running what I will charitably call a "virulently anti-immigrant" campaign; he appears not to have any money and that’s all I’ll say about him. The second is Ron: a Vietnam-era veteran, an avionics engineer, a volunteer firefighter who stopped working (and campaigning) for two weeks to fight last fall’s Santiago Fire, a grandfather who bikes something like 60 miles a day – and one of us. The third is, like Ron, a nice guy: a attorney and school board member from Montebello.
Montebello – that’s a problem. Because the district starts in Mission Viejo, stretches through the Canyons where Ron lives, curls up into San Bernardino to pick up Chino and Chino Hills, and then stretches west though the bottom of the San Gabriel Valley and the top row of cities in Orange County, before, at its furthest extreme, it stops in eastern Whittier, at Whittier College.
Montebello is more than five miles from Whittier College. It is 30 miles from what I’d estimate as being around the center of the district, in Yorba Linda. It is about 50 miles from Mission Viejo. The straightest route to Michigan Viejo requires driving through several other Congressional districts.
That may not seem like a long way on the prairie, or in the huge districts of Montana and South Dakota, but in L.A. it seems like a different time zone.
You can learn a bit from looking at the candidates’ FEC reports that were due on May 14. Taking away Chau’s $19,000 loan to himself, the campaigns are roughly equal. (Ron, I know, has loaned his own campaign money since then.) What I think you can see is their respective strategies.
Ed Chau believes that the Asian community that lives in primarily the San Gabriel Valley part of the district can be convinced to come out in unprecedented numbers and move him past Miller. Ron, a resident of Orange County, which contributes about half of the district’s votes, is counting on support from OC along with decent showings in the San Gabriel and Chino parts of the district, which are not so lopsidedly Republican. But what you learn about Ron’s strategy is this: he has contributions from all over the country. Where did they come from? Some come from far-flung relatives and old friends – and an awful lot from bloggers, primarily from those on this website.
Here’s the secret to defeating Gary Miller: whoever is going to beat him will probably need to get a little lucky. There will have to be further developments in his scandal, enough to get it in the news and get through to the voters of the district that this is not someone they should want to represent them – like Pombo, like Doolittle, like Mark Foley, like Bob Ney. (Remember, he's already most of the way there.) Without that, this will be a hard race to win – although this year, who knows what might happen? Ron will have more money with the Presidential primary competition no longer sucking up so much oxygen and with the identity of the nominee settled. So, for that matter, would Ed Chau.
With that – well, which of them would would be better placed to take advantage of a new development in the Gary Miller scandal?
Would it be Ed Chau, whose plan appears to be relying on the notion that Asian voters in the San Gabriel Valley -- a tough constituency for Obama, by the way, so not automatically disposed to rally to turn out this year -- will be energized this year into coming out to vote at a rate that they haven’t done in the past?
Or would it be Ron Shepston, who would be able to call on the netroots to take another juicy Republican Congressional scandal and send it reverberating through the blogosphere and into the media, where it would stand a chance of becoming a national scandal creating problems for Republicans nationwide?
As I said, I’m not speaking for the campaign. I’m supporting Ron because he’s a friend, a progressive, someone with good values and good ideas. He's someone what many people on this site have seen fit to support.
But I also know that victory will likely depend on Gary Miller’s next scandal coming earlier rather than later – and on the Democratic candidate being able to capitalize on that.
In voting for Ron, in other words, I’m not just voting for him -- I’m voting for us.
If you live in CA-42, I hope that you will do the same.