[This item is cross-posted on the O.C. Blog]
If I am State Senate President Don Perata, I am wincing this morning over news account that my Democrat nominee in my #1 ‘defend’ seat in the entire State has just cast a politically perilous vote. Orange County Supervisor Lou Correa is in the last month of what will be a hard-faught battle to win election to California’s 34th State Senate District. This seat was once reliably Republican (last held by former Senate Republican Leader Rob Hurtt) and then shifted to the Democrat column where it has been occupied by Joe Dunn these past eight years. Due to strong efforts by the Orange County Republican Party, Republican registration evened up with Democrats (despite the gerrymander) and has ultimately settled with Democrats having only a two point advantage. The Republican Party nominee for this seat is Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher. Electing Daucher to the Senate has long been the number one priority for State Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman, who weighed in on behalf of Daucher, playing a key role in urging neighboring Assemblyman Van Tran not to run in the 34th S.D. Republican primary.
This race has been characterized by many political pundits as the battle of the moderates, as both Daucher and Correa (pictured to the right) have reputations of being moderate members of their respective parties. That said, I was extremely surprised to see former Assemblyman-now-Supervisor Lou Correa take a sharp tack to the political left just weeks before this important election, with his decision yesterday to be the lone dissenting vote on the Board of Supervisors against an agreement between the Federal Government and the County of Orange to cross-train classification Deputies in the Orange County Jail System so that the immigration status of those in custody could be determined. Ultimately this will allow someone who is due to be released from custody, but who is not in the country legally, to instead be turned over to federal authorites.
This proposal, put before the Board of Supervisors by Sheriff Mike Carona, is hardly extreme or controversial. As a matter of fact, the neighboring counties around Orange County already do this. Sheriff Carona had originally gone to federal authorities with a more expansive proposal that would have included cross-training Sheriff’s Investigators so that they would have the ability, with suspects in non-related felony investigations, to check the federal immigration database, much as they current check a number of other data bases. However, that is not the plan that was ultimately agreed to — it was a more limited plan that came before Supervisors yesterday.
Still, Correa cast a vote against the plan, making you wonder why the Supervisor would be opposed to the deportation of criminal aliens who have found their way into Orange County’s jail system? Well, Correa won’t have to spend his time explaining his opposition to the readers of the FlashReport or the Orange County Blog, but rather he will end up, I am sure, defending this vote to blue-collar voters all throughout the 34th State Senate District. I cannot imagine that a Daucher’s political consultant, the savvy Jim Nygren, would pass up an opportunity to communicate the Supervisor’s opposition to this plan to perspective voters.
Lou Correa has spent a career establishing his credentials as a ‘reasonable’ Democrat — not part of the left-wing cabal that runs the legislature. With this vote, he will be hard pressed to continue to make that case. If he supports criminal aliens in custody being let straight back into the community when being released from jail, what’s next from there?
We’ll see how this plays out — but voting against the plan was a risky decision from a normally risk-averse politician.