GOP Source: Gallegly to Switch Course, Seek Re-election
By David M. Drucker
Roll Call Staff
Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.) has reconsidered a last-minute decision to retire and will announce Tuesday that he intends to seek re-election this year after all, a move that comes at the urging of House leaders and members of California’s GOP delegation, a knowledgeable source said late Monday.
Gallegly’s sudden retirement announcement Friday spawned political chaos in his district, leaving some Republicans to threaten write-in campaigns to succeed him. Over the weekend local party leaders, assuming Gallegly was calling it quits, had begun lining up behind attorney Michael Tenenbaum, a first-time candidate who originally was planning to challenge the Congressman in the June 6 Republican primary.
A House Republican aide familiar with the conversations said that Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Reynolds (N.Y.) and others spent Monday recommending to Gallegly that he run for and serve one more term, as California law prevents him from removing his name from the primary ballot.
“Elton has had such a good career, there’s no need to end it this way,” the aide said. Messages left with Gallegly’s office were not returned Monday.
Gallegly, a 20-year incumbent, announced less than two hours before California’s filing deadline Friday that an undefined medical condition was preventing him from running for another term. But the Republican aide said the 62-year-old Congressman appears to have been given a clean bill of health by doctors and is therefore able to serve one more term, giving his potential successors adequate time to prepare to run in 2008.
Doing so would also clear Republicans from having to spend money in a very conservative district they should hold, without putting in the effort to handle the fallout of having one individual on the ballot who is not running, one political unknown who is, and one or more who might run as write-in candidates.
Tenenbaum, 37, scheduled to be in Washington, D.C., today and Wednesday to meet with Republican Members, said in a Monday afternoon telephone interview that he had received the backing of Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.). Republican Party leaders in Gallegly’s district, including Ventura County Republican Party Chairwoman Leslie Cornejo, also announced Monday they were endorsing Tenenbaum.
Those endorsements were made under the assumption that Gallegly was out, and it is highly possible they could be withdrawn once the Congressman’s re-election announcement is made public. Tenenbaum said he tried unsuccessfully to contact Gallegly over the weekend, but hopes to speak with him while he’s in Washington.
“I’m an unknown right now,” Tenenbaum had said Monday, suggesting confidently that Members would warm up to him once they got to know him. That appears unlikely now that he’s set to be relegated back to primary-challenger status.
Tenenbaum’s public questioning of Gallegly’s credentials as a fiscal conservative have already left a bad taste in the mouth of some Republicans in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, which fall in the solidly GOP 24th district. But the hostility also relates to those who have long seen Gallegly’s retirement whenever it comes as their chance to run for Congress.
Last week, Cornejo said, Gallegly gave six individuals advance notice of his intention to retire, which came several weeks after he had filed for re-election in February. But the figures approached by the Congressman declined to run, citing too short a notice to decide whether to run, leaving Tenenbaum as the only other Republican on the Congressional ballot.
Gallegly was apparently misinformed about California’s filing law, sources say. He thought when he announced his retirement on Friday less than two hours before the 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time deadline that a five-day extension would allow interested parties a chance to file for his seat; he also thought he would be able to withdraw his name from the ballot.
But Gallegly was wrong on both counts. California law allows a five-day extension in such instances for state office, but the law does not apply to federal House or Senate seats.
“There was a lot of confusion,” Cornejo said.
Gallegly’s decision touched off a mad dash to replace him by some on Friday, with state Assemblywoman Audra Strickland (R) arriving at the Ventura County Clerk and Recorder’s office just before the filing deadline, in an attempt to file papers for her husband, former Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R), to run in the Republican primary for Gallegly’s seat.
When that request was denied because Tony Strickland was already a filed candidate for state controller, Mrs. Strickland tried to file papers so she could run for Congress, with that request also denied because she is a candidate for re-election to her Assembly seat.
Tim Clark, Tony Strickland’s political consultant, said Monday that the former Assemblyman would not run as a write-in for Gallegly’s seat, as had been rumored over the weekend, because he is focused completely on his run for state controller. But Michael Stoker (R), a former Santa Barbara County supervisor who lost to Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) by 9 points in 2000, operating under the assumption that Gallegly was going to retire, said he was considering a write-in bid.
“If Elton decides that the best option left is a write-in, and that I’m the guy for doing it, then I’m committed to doing it,” Stoker had said in a telephone interview, prior to word leaking out that Gallegly had changed his mind and was once again a candidate for re-election.
Tenenbaum, who had enraged party leaders in the district with his decision to challenge an incumbent who is generally well thought of, said he decided to run because he felt the region deserved better representation than it has received of late.
Should Tenenbaum remain in the race as a primary challenger, as was the original scenario he envisioned when he got in, it’s expected he will criticize Gallegly for being weak on fiscal restraint and inadequate in working on solutions to the foreign policy crises facing the country. In an interview Monday, he disparaged the quality of legislation pushed by the Congressman and tweaked him for securing an earmark to plant flowers along a local freeway named for the late President Ronald Reagan.
“In the past couple of years I thought he had lost his way, as has much of Congress,” said Tenenbaum, who listed Royce and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) among the Members he does admire.
If Tenenbaum remains in the nomination race, Gallegly will likely have to spend some of his substantial war chest fending him off, rather than donating those funds to other Republicans in need and the NRCC. Gallegly had more than $1.1 million in cash on hand at the close of 2005.
The 24th district should remain in Republican hands regardless of the pending internecine warfare. President Bush won 56 percent of the vote there in 2004, with Gallegly outperforming him by 7 points.
Still, two Democrats have filed to run for their party’s nomination: Jill Martinez, a Presbyterian Minister in Oxnard, and Mary Pallant, an Oak Park resident and party activist.
