San Diego County Elections : GOP Factions Must Wait to See If Either Gains Sacramento Edge

In races that could alter the partisan and ideological balance not only of San Diego’s Sacramento delegation but also of the entire Legislature, a series of dramatic primaries that have captured statewide attention remained undecided Tuesday night.

Piecemeal returns in the first hours after the polls closed, combined with absentee and write-in ballots that will not be tabulated until Thursday, left Republicans with little to do other than try to be patient while waiting to learn whether GOP moderates or ultraconservatives would claim a major tactical victory here, or have to settle for an indecisive split.

The post-election drama seems an appropriate ending for state legislative primaries that, as a whole, saw aggressive, competitive campaigns that were races in more than name only for the first time in at least a decade.

As an aide to one Republican conservative put it, “The war’s over, but it’s going to take a couple days to count the bodies.”

From the start, most public attention in the state legislative contests focused on the four Assembly primaries in which GOP pro-choice moderates endorsed by Wilson faced hard-line, anti-abortion conservatives, drawing battle lines that typified the growing statewide rift between the Republican Party’s two factions.

Although the script was essentially the same in the four races, the personalities and relatively high public profile of two ultraconservative candidates--Connie Youngkin and Steve Baldwin--kept the spotlight on their campaigns in the 75th and 77th districts, respectively.

Providing a model for other far-right candidates who tried to broaden their candidacies beyond their so-called “Christian right” origins, Youngkin consistently billed herself as a “pro-family tax fighter” and downplayed the years of anti-abortion activism that made her that movement’s most famous--and infamous--symbol in San Diego.

Twice jailed for blockading clinics, Youngkin barely mentioned the abortion issue in her race, preferring to campaign on her support for tax cuts, the death penalty, parental choice in schools, welfare reform and privatizing some governmental operations.

Unwilling to allow Youngkin to obscure her political roots, Poway Mayor Jan Goldsmith, her major opponent in the GOP primary, dismissed her as a single-issue candidate and urged voters not to be deceived by her attempt at a political make-over.

One Democrat and three minor-party candidates were unopposed in the heavily Republican 75th District.

Baldwin’s 77th District race against former Chula Vista Mayor Greg Cox not only underlined Christian fundamentalists’ crusade for upward political mobility, but also was a microcosm of what one consultant termed a “battle for the heart and soul” of the Republican Party.

Diametrical opposites on most major issues, Cox and Baldwin epitomized the struggle between the party’s moderate wing and ultraconservative ideologues who hope to move the GOP’s agenda to the right on issues ranging from abortion and gun control to education and the environment.

On a strategic level, the race also pitted Cox’s lengthy public resume against Baldwin’s army of Christian activists, for whom the primary is a critical test of their goal to move a few rungs up the political ladder from the dozens of low-level school, hospital and other community board seats they captured throughout San Diego County in 1990 in “stealth” campaigns orchestrated by Baldwin.

One Democrat and two minor-party candidates also were on the 77th District ballot.

Overshadowed by those two contests, the 76th and 78th district GOP primaries nevertheless were seen within political circles as equally important battles in the Republicans’ internal struggle.

In the 76th District, former Del Mar Mayor Ronnie Delaney faced conservative Dick Daleke and long-shot Charles Ledbetter, while former Assemblyman Jeff Marston confronted another Christian-right candidate, Dan Van Tieghem, in the 78th.

The victor of both GOP primaries will face a Democratic incumbent in the fall--Mike Gotch in the 76th and Deirdre Alpert in the 78th.

Campaigns in other districts also offered more than the normally somnolent pace seen in San Diego County state legislative elections, as redistricting, political ambition and anti-incumbent fervor combined to produce opposition for four state Assembly members.

In the new 37th state Senate District, Assemblywoman Carol Bentley (R-El Cajon) faced Assemblyman Dave Kelley of Idyllwild in a GOP showdown that party leaders tried unsuccessfully to avert, in part because it set up contentious primaries in their current Assembly districts.

With few philosophical differences between the two solid conservatives, Bentley and Kelley, who have served four and 14 years in the Assembly, respectively, sought to make the other appear to be the more entrenched incumbent. Bentley also viewed her San Diego residency as an asset in a sprawling district that picks up nearly two-thirds of its constituents in southeastern San Diego County before stretching into Imperial County and eastern Riverside County.

Assemblymen Steve Peace (R-Rancho San Diego) and Robert Frazee (R-Carlsbad) also faced primary challenges within their own primaries--in Frazee’s case, for the first time since being elected 14 years ago. That fact, Frazee argued, provides evidence of the magnitude of the anti-incumbent sentiment that provided a backdrop to so many local races this spring.

Another local incumbent, Assemblywoman Tricia Hunter (R-Bonita) left her North County district to run in a new desert district where she also faces primary opposition. Her political fate was beyond the control of San Diego County voters, because she ran in the new 80th District in Riverside and Imperial counties.