A Battle Looms to Succeed ‘Duke’

The downfall of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in a bribery scandal has cleared the way for a surprisingly competitive race for his San Diego County congressional seat, a contest that will test the strength of Democratic efforts to regain control of Congress.

In a poor political climate for the GOP, analysts say, a suburban coastal district of California -- even one that leans as Republican as Cunningham’s -- is just the kind that could prove the leading edge of a potential national tide against the party.

Yet Democratic candidate Francine Busby faces a steep uphill battle, thanks to a California congressional map drawn to protect incumbents of both major parties. The district was shaped to strongly favor a Republican, so it would take a major political shift for voters there to put a Democrat in Congress.

And therein lies the trouble for Democrats trying to expand their hold on California’s congressional delegation -- and win back control of the House.

The bipartisan gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts after the 2000 census all but wiped out competition between the two parties. As a result, none of the state’s 33 Democrats in the House faces any viable threat next year from the GOP, strategists say, and only two of the 20 Republican incumbents seem to stand even a slim chance of trouble in November: Reps. Richard W. Pombo of Tracy and, to a lesser extent, David Dreier of San Dimas.

Nationally, independent analysts say that plausible Democratic scenarios for taking over the House assume the party will capture not a single Republican seat in California -- or perhaps just one: Cunningham’s. And for Busby or any other Democrat to win a district as heavily Republican as Cunningham’s, it would take a political “earthquake,” said Gary Jacobson, author of “The Politics of Congressional Elections.”

“Republicans will rightly become very nervous if she wins,” said Jacobson, a UC San Diego political science professor.

Even if she loses, a strong showing by Busby could still spell trouble for Republicans nationally as the 2006 midterm elections approach. The Iraq war, President Bush’s unpopularity, the indictment of top Republicans and other factors have soured the national outlook for the party. Republicans lost the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races last month, and California voters rejected the ballot measures pushed by GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In Cunningham’s upscale district, which includes Carlsbad, Encinitas, Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, Escondido and part of San Diego, history offers Democrats a glint of hope: U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein narrowly carried it, as currently drawn, in her 2000 reelection. Another Democrat, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, finished just 312 votes behind her Republican rival there last year.

“If Mars is aligned with the moon just right, yes, a Democrat, on paper, could win this seat,” said Allan Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan election guide. But, he added, “Everything would have to go right for Busby, and everything would have to go wrong for the Republican.”

A self-described Encinitas “soccer mom,” Busby, 54, is a Cardiff School Board trustee who teaches a “Women Changing the World” class at Cal State San Marcos. She is a former Republican who became a Democrat in the late 1990s, a switch prompted, she said, by the “extreme direction” taken by the GOP.

When Busby first ran for Congress last year, Cunningham easily defeated her, 59% to 37%. At the same time, Bush carried the district over Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, 55% to 44%.

This time, Busby has assets she lacked in 2004, most importantly more money: She has already reported raising nearly $250,000 -- exceeding what she spent on the entire campaign last time. Her endorsement by Emily’s List, a national group that pools money for women who back abortion rights, offers a rich source of more cash.

Another potential edge for Busby is the unpredictable nature of any special election for an open seat. In an August special election in Ohio, a Democrat who served in the Iraq war as a Marine reservist fell just short of winning a vacant House seat in a staunchly Republican district.

Working in Busby’s favor, too, is the fractured Republican field. Roughly half a dozen Republicans are running in the April 11 election, which could produce a bruised GOP nominee to face Busby in a June 6 runoff that will occur if no one wins more than half the vote. Busby is the only major Democrat on the April ballot.

Cunningham resigned from Congress after pleading guilty last month to taking at least $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors.

Republicans say they are confident they can hold the seat. “Outside of Cunningham’s resigning, nothing has changed in this district,” said Carl Forti, communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

On the Iraq war, a large source of the party’s woes nationally, Republicans in the race so far have lined up behind Bush. In a district bracketed by the Miramar Marine Corps base on the southern end and Camp Pendleton just to the north, it is a sensitive topic, overshadowed in the campaign, at least at this early stage, by immigration and ethics. Busby opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but now favors a “comprehensive exit strategy” rather than immediate withdrawal.

Still, in a nod to the difficult national context for Republicans, the GOP candidates have been keeping their distance from Bush on other matters, especially his plan to give some illegal immigrants “guest worker” status.

“I’m not satisfied with President Bush’s record on immigration or fiscal responsibility,” said Brian Bilbray, a lobbyist and former GOP congressman running to succeed Cunningham.

The Republican candidates also dismiss the significance of Cunningham’s payoff scam. One of them, former Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian of San Marcos, ran down a list of scandals that have scarred Democrats, adding: “They can’t say there’s a monopoly on corruption.”

Busby, however, has made ethics her main campaign theme, vowing to restore “honesty and integrity” to Congress. Surrounded by guests around a crackling fireplace at a recent house party in Rancho Santa Fe, she joked about the Duke-Stir, the yacht supplied to Cunningham by a Pentagon vendor. Once the laughs faded, she said the U.S. Capitol “has had a ‘for sale’ sign out in front of it for way too long, and I’m running for Congress to take that ‘for sale’ sign down.”

Her approach will offer Democrats an early test of their national strategy of attacking what they call a Republican culture of corruption. Across the country, Democrats are spotlighting the Cunningham bribes and the indictments of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

In the San Diego area, a spate of local corruption cases has enhanced the potency of such attacks, analysts say.

“Theoretically, the ground is pretty ripe for an anti-establishment, anti-status-quo kind of campaign,” said Amy Walter, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report newsletter in Washington.

Still, Walter said, Republicans hold an edge in the race, the only one in California of the 28 House contests that the Cook Report rates as most competitive in 2006. In the June primary, analysts say, only a handful of California incumbents -- John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville), Bob Filner (D-Chula Vista) and Lynn Woolsey (D-Petaluma) -- face much risk from challengers.

The dearth of competition in California is no accident. Under a bipartisan deal, state lawmakers carved safe districts for incumbents in 2001 by strengthening domination of each district by voters of one party or the other.

In 2000, there were nine California congressional districts where the gap between registered Democrats and Republicans was narrower than 5%, which, in essence, kept those seats in play for both parties. Now, there are none with gaps that narrow.

In Cunningham’s district, 44% of the registered voters are Republicans, 30% are Democrats, and 22% list no affiliation.

Since 1966, three Democrats have won House seats in California districts where Republicans outnumber Democrats: Lynn Schenk, Jane Harman and Ellen Tauscher, according to UC San Diego professor Jacobson. Like Busby, all three were moderate women running in affluent coastal districts. But in none of those cases did Republicans outnumber Democrats by anywhere near the margin they do in the 50th District, Jacobson said.

“It would be historically unprecedented,” he said, “for a Democrat to take a seat that was this Republican.”

Times staff writer Doug Smith and data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.