ShareThisWhen the Legislature reconfigured California's congressional districts after the 2000 census, it ratified a bipartisan political deal aimed at preserving the numerical status quo -- and in Ellen Tauscher's case it meant preserving her re-election prospects while making her life a little more difficult.
Tauscher had won her congressional seat in the eastern suburbs of the liberal San Francisco Bay Area by knocking off a Republican incumbent. But she had hewed to a centrist line that irritated liberal activists and compounded that ideological heresy by refusing to back San Franciscan Nancy Pelosi's bid for congressional power.
Tauscher's punishment, or so it seemed, was a newly drawn district that sprawled farther east, into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that has few residents and voters but is the flash point for California's battles over water.
Tauscher got some changes that restored portions of her previous district, then won re-election handily to four more terms. But this year, with no prospect of moving up in a House dominated by Speaker Pelosi, Tauscher opted out of Congress, accepting a State Department appointment from President Barack Obama.
Tauscher's departure has touched off a duel among congressional hopefuls that will culminate on Sept. 1 in a special election, with the top vote-getting Democrat virtually guaranteed election in a Nov. 3 runoff. Democratic voters hold a nearly 20 percentage-point edge over Republicans in the 10th Congressional District.
The biggest political question is whether John Garamendi, California's lieutenant governor and a persistent office-seeker and officeholder in California for more than three decades, can find a new political life in Congress.
Garamendi -- a former insurance commissioner, state assemblyman and state senator -- was planning to run for governor next year, but had little chance of prevailing against better-known, better-financed opponents such as Attorney General (and former governor) Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.
When Tauscher accepted the Obama appointment, Garamendi quickly segued into a bid for Congress, noting that the district's eastern boundary bisects his home on the Sacramento River near Walnut Grove. But Garamendi must overcome two state legislators, Sen. Mark DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, and a handful of other candidates, including Anthony Woods, an Iraq war veteran tossed from the military under its "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The congressional campaign has seeped into the state Capitol by placing both legislators on the spot in a series of votes dealing with the deficit-plagued state budget. They have been reluctant to vote for deep spending cuts, even those advocated by their party leaders, apparently fearing backlash from liberal interest groups such as unions.
At one point, DeSaulnier voted for one of the major spending cut bills under pressure from Democratic Senate leaders, even though the measure lacked enough Republican votes to pass, creating some internal dissension.
(E-mail Dan Walters at dwalters@sacbee.com. Back columns, www.sacbee.com/walters.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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