In more than a year since state Attorney General Kamala Harris declared she is running for the U.S. Senate seat soon to be vacated by retiring Democrat Barbara Boxer, Ms. Harris’s poll numbers have not changed much.
She pulled 31 percent in the first public poll, 27 percent and 33 per cent in the two latest surveys.
This leaves her still the clear leader barely more than a month before the June 7 primary.
So far, no one has laid a glove on her, but her numbers are static.
Few seem to care. The latest California Field Poll found fully 48 percent of likely voters undecided. Most were not interested, many unaware there is even a Senate contest underway.
“Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have sucked all the air out of the room,” opined Democratic Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez the other day, referring to the presidential nominating races on the same June ballot.
Ms. Sanchez polls second in the race, at 15 percent, up from 8 percent a year ago. Three Republicans in the race, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Ron Unz and former state GOP chairmen Tom Del Beccaro and Geoge (Duf) Sundheim, had a combined 11 percent, splintered three ways.
If the undecideds eventually break in the same proportion as those who already have made up their minds, the November runoff will feature two Democrats and no Republicans, under the top two primary system that puts the two leading June vote-getters into a November faceoff.
An Odor in the Room
Soon, though, this sleepy race will become more heated. Ms. Harris has taken heat in the last two weeks for having her office represent Gov. Brown in his effort to keep secret more than 65 emails between him or his staff and the state Public Utilities Commission from 2013 and 2014, when the PUC was deciding who would pay for blunders and disasters at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Southern California Edison Co. that saw the 2012 closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station and the deadly 2010 San Bruno natural gas explosion.
Consumer groups claim it is a conflict of interest for Ms. Harris to represent Mr. Brown when he or his chief of staff, former PG&E lobbyist Nancy McFadden, might become witnesses in Ms. Harris’s ongoing criminal investigation of apparent PUC collusion with the big utilities.
Outside ethics experts agree it is a conflict. You can bet Ms. Sanchez will hit Ms. Harris on it soon. Ms. Harris refused to comment, but her office released a statement claiming there is an “ethical firewall” between lawyers investigating the PUC and those representing Mr. Brown.
Ms. Sanchez, meanwhile, will take fire in this mostly liberal state for voting to give gun makers immunity from lawsuits when their products are used in crimes.
Ms. Sanchez is not shy about answering her critics. To those who blasted her for saying between 5 percent and 20 percent of Muslims would like to see a world-wide caliphate a la the terrorist Islamic State, she says, “Those are the numbers. No experts give a number under 20 percent. I have spent 20 years on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I have visited many foreign Muslim leaders. They say it is a huge worry for them. I was just at West Point. They talked about this. It is in congressional testimony.”
Ms. Sanchez says she, like many voters, knows little about the three Republicans in the race. “I don’t know them and the voters don’t, either,” she said. So she believes she will survive past June and move on to a hot challenge of Ms. Harris and the Democratic Party establishment in the fall.
“I think the San Francisco Democratic Party establishment clearly told people other than the San Franciscan to stay out,” she said, referring to Ms. Harris. That city’s establishment has dominated California politics in recent years, giving the state leaders like Mr. Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sens. Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney.
Meanwhile, the three Republicans each hope to make it past June, but none has nearly as much campaign cash as either Ms. Harris or Ms. Sanchez.
It adds up to a potentially fascinating race, sure to become fiery as mail balloting begins in mid-May.
Mr. Elias may be contacted at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
