Incumbent Congressman fails to garner support from former
opponents
The fight for Richard Pombo’s seat in Congress veered in a new
direction recently.
Incumbent Congressman fails to garner support from former opponents
The fight for Richard Pombo’s seat in Congress veered in a new direction recently.
In a move predicted by political animals and academics alike, the two Republican candidates who failed to win the 11th district Congressional primary officially threw their endorsements last week to the Democratic challenger, Jerry McNerney.
Former Congressman Pete McCloskey and newcomer Tom Benigno did so with relish during a press conference at McNerney headquarters in Pleasanton.
“You know, I never really thought I’d be doing this,” McCloskey said. “I’ve been a Republican for 57 years. My family has been Republican for four generations. But I’ve concluded two things: Jerry McNerney is an honest man; Richard Pombo is not. I’m confident that Jerry McNerney is an honorable man who will vote his conscience.”
It means Pombo, perhaps for the first time since he landed the seat in 1992, will have a fight on his hands to keep his job.
“If I were Pombo I’d be slapping babies and kissing butt,” said McCloskey’s press secretary, Robert Caughlan of San Mateo. “I’d be nervous.”
The Pombo side doesn’t see it that way.
“He (McCloskey) changed his position on 55 issues for political expediency, including the Iraq War, environmental funding, taxes and immigration,” said Carl Fogliani, Pombo’s campaign manager. “He has zero credibility.”
In an interview with The Pinnacle, McCloskey said he really “likes McNerney” and has faith in the political greenhorn, but fears a Republican styled “swiftboating” in negative campaigning from the Pombo camp is on the horizon.
“They will be desperate to retain and control the House,” McCloskey said. “They hold these million-dollar parties and get all this money from lobbyists who throw it back into these (Republican) campaigns.”
He said now that he’s free from campaigning, he is working actively to get control of the House of Representatives back to the Democrats. He noted the many recent scandals that have rocked the Republican Party, most notably Congressman Tom Delay’s quagmire in the Mariana Islands slavery debacle, in which Pombo is embroiled. Delay made Pombo Chairman of the powerful House Resources Committee after President Bush was elected in 2000.
Wes Rolley of Morgan Hill, an anti-Pombo Republican conservationist who keeps a keen eye on the race, believes apathy coupled with a laissez faire attitude on the part of the voters are factors that lost McCloskey the primary.
“McCloskey’s continued fight for honesty in government may succeed, but only if the rest of us get off our duffs and realize that we, the people, no longer have much say in what is going on,” Rolley said. “We get the government that we are willing to work for.”
With the unusual endorsements for McNerney, that mindset could be crumbling.
“These guys (Delay and Pombo) have an agenda that’s patently deceptive,” McCloskey said. “I found an awful lot of people in Tracy (Pombo’s home base) who are realizing that as he has gotten older, Pombo has found ways to make money out of his job. He believes all government is bad and free enterprise is good, but he wants to sell off all the open space in Northern California. He’d rezone The Pinnacles National Monument if he could.”
The 11th District covers includes all of San Joaquin County and parts of Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties, including Morgan Hill and half of Gilroy.
