Dunn Credits Winning Message

The sweet smell of success for Democrat Joe Dunn’s winning state Senate campaign came nestled in the delicate blooms of 20,000 mums.

For three days leading up to last Tuesday’s election, Dunn and his campaign workers delivered the pink, red and white flowers to every female voter in the district older than 60, regardless of party registration. He attached a simple note asking for their vote.

“We could tell from the excitement out there that we were going to win,” said Jeanne Costales, who chairs the Orange County Democratic Party and helped with the giveaway.

Dunn’s surprising victory over state Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove) in the 34th Senate District race not only ousted one of the GOP’s wealthiest and most ideologically driven politicians in the 1990s, it also gave Democrats a sweep of the top federal and state seats in the county’s central cities.

In overlying districts, Democrat Lou Correa upset Assemblyman Jim Morrissey (R-Santa Ana), and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) fended off Republican challenger Robert K. Dornan.

“Joe won the old-fashioned way--hard work,” said John Hanna, a former county Democratic chairman. “It was his first time running for election, and he ran into some brick walls with people who thought he couldn’t win. But he kept after people. He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

While the flowers gave the campaign a scent of victory, Dunn’s surprise 2,700-vote victory over Hurtt was grounded in more traditional politics: money and message.

Two months ago, Richard O’Neill, one of the local party’s benefactors, took Dunn to a Los Angeles fund-raiser for Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco). O’Neill wanted to persuade Burton to send campaign money to Dunn, a trial lawyer who had raised about $150,000 on his own at that point.

“Burton showed a tremendous amount of interest,” O’Neill said. “He said, ‘If you put up a dollar, I’ll put up a dollar.’ It really got things going.”

Buoyed by Burton’s backing, Dunn picked up $650,000 in the campaign’s final weeks. But Burton delivered an equally important gift that night: a winning message to use against Hurtt.

In polling the district’s voters, Senate Democrats discovered that Hurtt was favored but was not well known. When voters were told about Hurtt’s high absentee record in the Senate, his favorable ratings plummeted, O’Neill said.

Hurtt’s absenteeism became his Achilles’ heel, giving Dunn a message that resonated throughout the district and particularly with working families.

“I really think it was simply him not showing up for work,” Dunn said. “There’s no doubt this was an issue in the district, that he just wasn’t here.

“But I also don’t think Rob took us too seriously,” Dunn said. “He was giving money away to other candidates instead of focusing on his own race.”

Hurtt, who has spent millions on religious conservative candidates, lent his own campaign $700,000 from his business and an additional $45,000 from his personal funds. By contrast, he had spent $300,000 of his own money to win the seat in a 1993 special election.

In mail to voters, Dunn hammered at Hurtt as a missing-in-action ideologue out of touch with the district. One piece had Hurtt’s image on a milk carton. In another, Sheriff Brad Gates, a Republican who retires next month, criticized Hurtt’s absences on key law-enforcement votes.

Hurtt fired back, telling constituents that he missed Senate votes because he was caring for his sister, who had suffered a stroke.

He painted Dunn as a liberal who was soft on crime and as a trial lawyer representing litigants who sued police departments. Several Hurtt mailings contained favorable quotes from Sheriff-elect Michael S. Carona.

Dunn, meantime, hired a veteran campaign manager and attended meetings with ethnic voters, lawyer groups and labor unions, stressing a common agenda of workers’ rights and consumer protection.

O’Neill said he figured Dunn would win when four pieces of Hurtt campaign mail hit the Friday before the election. By that time, Assembly Democrats had tracked a strong trend in absentee ballots supporting their candidates in the county’s central cities.

On election day, Dunn’s work fused with the strong campaigns run by Sanchez and Correa to give him a 2,700-vote victory.

Hanna said Dunn initially wanted to run against Morrissey but was talked out of it. Correa was the obvious candidate because he lost to Morrissey two years ago by only 93 votes.

Instead, Dunn, who moved last year from Rancho Santa Margarita to Santa Ana, was encouraged to run either for Hurtt’s seat or for the open 68th Assembly District seat, which Republican Ken Maddox won Tuesday. Since Hurtt earlier this year hadn’t drawn a Democratic opponent, chiefly because of his personal war chest, Dunn decided to try his luck.

Enjoying his victory late last week, Dunn said he’ll focus his legislative agenda on issues that mattered most to the voters he met while walking in the district: education, safe communities and a healthy job environment.

“I consider myself a very moderate individual who is pragmatic in my views about political issues,” Dunn said. “The focus should be ensuring that our money is spent well and in the right places.”