With all due respect to Duane Dichiara, one of the FlashReport’s San Diego Correspondents,, whom I respect immensely, I am very pleased that one of the candidates for Congress has hired you. Former Congressman Brian Bilbray had the foresight to hire you, and since he is a regular reader of the
FlashReport, he knows of your role with us. I would be disappointed, disclaimers included, if you did not help out your client, on occasion, with a positive post (perhaps you can talk about his lawsuit arguing how wrong it is that illegal aliens pay less tuition in California colleges than his children).
That said, I will be making great efforts to personally cover this special election as I have endorsed no candidate in the race, nor has any candidate hired me (though two have purchased ads on this site…so far). So if you have any thoughts or input on this race, by all means send them to Jantz and Dichiara (and to our DC Correspodent, Jason Roe) if you want, but please send them my way. Anything sent to me will NOT be shared with anyone else, unless, of course, it is shared to all of the readers.
For example – I am not going to judge his Duane’s client, former Congressman Brian Bilbray – that is up to the voters. But since Duane labeled him a ‘conservative’ and my recollection was that Bilbray was a very proud moderate member of Congress, I went to the American Conservative Union’s ratings of Congress. Bilbray’s lifetime ACU rating is 71 (100 being the most conservative). This would be compared to Darrell Issa at 93, Duncan Hunter at 92, and Duke Cunningham himself a 95 (though on the Fleischman Ethical Scale, Duke scores a 0 out of 100).
By the way, I also looked up the ACU rating of Congressman Mike Castle, the Republican who heads up the Republican Main Steet Partnership, the acknowledged organization for moderates in Congress, and Castle’s lifetime ACU rating is 59. Considerably more to the left than Bilbray.
Bilbray is the only candidate running in the 50th who has a record as a Congressman, and I am sure that he and his opponents will be communicating that record. Compared to, say, Nancy Pelosi, Bilbray is a no moderate (is anyone?). But in a GOP primary, where the distinctions are between Republicans only, Bilbray will have to explain some votes if he is going to try and posture himself as a conservative in the field.
A good place for all of the candidates in this primary to start off, in terms of an initial blush on where they stand in the spectrum of Republicanism, is where they stand on opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling, whether they support cuts in federal spending (to include cuts in social programs), do they support the complete elimination of the estate (death) tax, oppose broader approvals for stem-cell research… There are other other key issues that are dividing the GOP right now. There is a great article by Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard (read it here) that really explains the divide in the GOP, and why it is important that voters in the 50th understand where the candidates stand on issues that differentiate conservatives from moderates, not Republicans from Democrats.