McClintock, Mikels Set Sights on State Senate

After Nao, what now?

Former Assemblyman and onetime Oxnard Mayor Nao Takasugi decided last week not to run for the state Senate seat being vacated next year by veteran Simi Valley lawmaker Cathie Wright.

That leaves two other prominent Republicans--conservative Assemblyman Tom McClintock and moderate county Supervisor Judy Mikels--in the March primary race for a seat Republicans have held since the early 1970s.

“I’m greatly relieved,” McClintock said. “Obviously, Nao was the strongest opponent I could have faced. Now that’s a fight I don’t have to wage.”

Mikels said, however, that she gained even more from Takasugi’s decision, since her political bent is much closer to Takasugi’s than McClintock’s.

“It doesn’t ensure me of a win,” she said Friday, “but now the vote is not split between two moderates. Before, people didn’t know which way to jump.”

Since Takasugi’s announcement Tuesday, Mikels said, contributions and endorsements have rolled in from mainstream Republicans. She said she will announce next week the backing of five Ventura County officials who solidified their support in recent days.

As for the Democrats, county chairman Hank Lacayo said Wright’s departure because of term limits creates his party’s best shot at that Senate seat in decades.

The 19th District--which includes most of Ventura County and parts of the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys--is 42.5% Republican and 39.5% Democrat. Nearly two-thirds of its 389,000 registered voters live in this county.

But Lacayo has not been able to persuade a strong Democratic candidate to run. County schools Supt. Charles Weis and county Supervisor John Flynn had topped Lacayo’s list.

But Weis said Friday that he won’t join the race because of family considerations. And Flynn, while not ruling out the possibility, said he had not given the race a thought.

“It’s a sad commentary, but we don’t have a Democratic candidate with the fire in the belly to take advantage of this opportunity,” Lacayo said.

Nor do state Democratic leaders seem interested in investing money in a race they see as unwinnable, he said.

That leaves the race to the Republicans for now: McClintock, 42, a politician or Republican strategist since first elected to the Assembly in 1982; and Mikels, 53, a former homemaker, onetime art store owner and veteran local politician.

This two-person race, Mikels said, gives voters a clear choice between her nuts-and-bolts, district-oriented politics and McClintock’s concentration on theoretical issues.

“He’s an ultraconservative in a district that is not,” Mikels said. “You’re not up in Sacramento to advocate theory, you’re up there to champion the everyday concerns of your district. He may be great for the state as a theory person, but he’s not a good legislator for the people of his district.”

McClintock would not respond and even hesitated to mention Mikels by name. He said she is irrelevant to how he runs his campaign.

“I’m not going to get into commenting on her,” he said. “I’m going to emphasize the range of statewide reforms I’ve laid out--to dramatically reduce taxes, to decentralize state services. Those are becoming the central issues in state policy.”

A state controller candidate in 1994, McClintock is better funded than Mikels so far. He started the year with $112,000, then kicked off his campaign last month with a fund-raiser featuring former U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Herschensohn.

Mikels said her own campaign bankroll--bolstered last week by $6,600 in new contributions--will be about $100,000 after a $250-a-plate fund-raiser June 17 in Ventura. She figures it will take $500,000 to win the seat.

McClintock also has a head start in name recognition in the 19th Senate District, which comprises the 37th and 38th Assembly districts. He held the 37th Assembly seat from 1982 to 1992 while living in Thousand Oaks. And he has been a Northridge-based Assemblyman in the 38th District since 1996.

“Nobody has that level of experience in the 19th District,” he said. “And I never even had a close race.”

Mikels said that McClintock could lose some of that support when voters realize that he lives in Sacramento and not in the Northridge apartment he rents.

“That irritates a lot of people, and quite frankly it irritates me, too,” she said.

McClintock said he owns a home in Thousand Oaks and lives in Sacramento because state government is based there and it stabilizes his family. “After nearly 20 years in public policy and 14 years in public office, the worst thing that they can say about me is I’m too much of a family man,” he said.

Mikels concedes McClintock’s early advantage in Los Angeles County.

But she said she will make inroads there because of her moderate politics. Democrats outnumber Republicans by 5,000 registered voters in the Los Angeles County portion of the 19th District.

“He says he wants to cut taxes,” Mikels said. “Well, everybody wants to cut taxes. The question is, how do you do that and still meet the needs of your community? People at the supermarket want good roads and lots of police.

“Mr. McClintock is a maverick,” she said. “And if you can’t work with people, what good are your theories and your policies?”

The rap on McClintock for years has been that his effectiveness has been marginalized because his anti-tax positions are so extreme.

But last year, the Legislature approved one of his initiatives, a 25% cut in motorists’ annual car license tax.

This year, Republicans have made McClintock’s campaign to eliminate the entire car tax a cornerstone of their budget negotiations with Democrats. The budget takes a two-thirds supermajority to pass, so Republicans have some leverage to cut deals.

McClintock also cites his leadership in the San Fernando Valley’s efforts to secede from Los Angeles. He co-wrote a 1997 bill that allows Valley voters to set up their own city if they prove that the city could sustain itself.

McClintock argues, in fact, that his legislative record shows strong leadership.

“When have I ever been a maverick to the Republican cause of limited and decentralized government?” he said. “But it is true I have broken with some Republicans who abandoned those principles.”

McClintock currently serves as the policy director for the 32-member Assembly Republican Caucus, a position that shows he is a Republican leader, he said.

While both candidates say they have strong support from within their party, Takasugi and Wright have withheld their endorsements for now.

The grandfatherly Takasugi, hugely popular in Oxnard and elected three times in the 37th Assembly District, said his politics are similar to Mikels’. But he said he’ll hold off on making an endorsement.

“Philosophically I’d lean toward Mikels without a doubt,” he said.

The same is true of Wright--a political enemy of McClintock. But the senator is furious with Mikels because they disagree on whether a key county mental health program is being run well.

Wright helped set up that program and secure $5.4 million a year in state funding for it, but a scathing state audit reported last week that it is now overrun with problems.

“I’m not in any mood to discuss Judy’s campaign right now,” Wright said Friday. “I’m very angry. But she is a very strong woman, and that’s what this party needs.”