Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Environmentalists wanted to pound a stake through the heart of California’s Rep. Richard Pombo in the June 6 primary election. Pardon the metaphor, but Pombo acts like Dracula on the green issues in Congress: He wants to suck the life from the Endangered Species Act etc.

Groups such as Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club spent more than $1 million on TV ads and foot soldiers, backing the greenish Republican Pete McCloskey in the primary. It could have been an epic battle, since McCloskey helped write the Species Act when he served in Congress 33 years ago. Yet once the primary votes added up, McCloskey got only 32 percent to Pombo’s 62 percent.

What does it mean, looking ahead? Will enviros nationwide also get shrugged off in November’s general elections?

As usual, the experts disagree on significance: Some say it means that Pombo and other ungreen candidates will roll onward to November victories. Some say the opposite, that because 32 percent of the voting Repubs rejected the seven-term incumbent, it means green issues will rock in November. … If you want the yes-no-yes-no analysis, try the San Francisco Chronicle and the Modesto Bee and the Stockton Record.

Mainly it makes me wonder, if we didn’t have experts, would we disagree so much?

The dreaded Pombo will face off against a not-so-dreaded wind-power Democrat named Jerry McNerney in November. In a district where registered Repubs outnumber registered Dems, 44 percent to 37 percent. So probably the incumbent will win.

That’s what I don’t wonder about: the power of incumbency. Anyone who holds the advantage of a political office is awfully hard to retire these days, with such widespread apathy and negligent corporate journalism and a kaleidoscope of other distractions. … That’s true especially in the U.S. House of Representatives, where the home districts have been gerrymandered to be even more unassailable than Dracula’s castle.

In many House primaries like Pombo’s, incumbents triumphed, regardless of issues and scandals. As the AP reports:

The outcomes (of the primaries in) California’s 53 House districts — drawn to create safe seats for 33 Democrats and 20 Republicans — produced the predictable results.

“Incumbents did very well, including those who had a modicum of opposition,” said GOP analyst Allan Hoffenblum, whose nonpartisan California Target Book tracks races in the states. “The message from California and these nicely gerrymandered districts is that the voters didn’t send any message related to the national races in November.”

The political parties keep redrawing the House district boundaries with increasingly sophisticated software that identifies and excludes hostile voters. U.S. News & World Report calls it a “fake democracy”:

… Two years ago, nearly 98 percent of House incumbents seeking re-election won … (and now) the Cook Political Report rates just 35 of this fall’s 435 House races as competitive. Other analysts put the number at 25, or fewer than 6 percent of races. That’s down from more than 100 competitive races in 1992 …

So you heard it here first: Those of you looking for big changes in Congress in November, despite all the predictions of change, don’t get your hopes up. If it happens at all, it’ll happen where incumbents are vacating their House seats (Idaho and Colorado have vacancies, for example), or it’ll be in the Senate, where there is no gerrymandering protecting incumbents because those are statewide races.

And for a revealing profile of Rep. Pombo — “the man, the myth” — check High Country News.