Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : POLITICS : A Less Costly Race May Prove a Wiser One, Too
Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande would rather be lieutenant governor, but it costs too much.
The $4-million campaign chest believed necessary to win the office is more than Nestande could hope to raise, so last month he switched to a more economical campaign--one for secretary of state.
Now things have started looking up for Nestande. The California Republican Assembly, the largest conservative Republican volunteer organization in the state, voted to endorse Nestande over one of its own members, 184 to 54.
What is that worth? Nestande’s campaign manager, Ron Rogers, said that in practical terms it means campaign literature can state that “the oldest Republican organization in the state has endorsed Bruce Nestande.”
And former CRA president Steve Frank said that the endorsement can draw the attention of contributors to statewide campaigns.
Frank added, however, that CRA endorsements are most effective in local rather than statewide races. In some statewide campaigns, the CRA has had notoriously bad aim. For example, no CRA-backed candidate has won a U.S. Senate election in California in 20 years. The CRA gave Republican candidate Pete Wilson only eight votes in 1982. Wilson went on to win the nomination and the office.
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