Special elections for the House in one-party districts are often very low-turnout affairs, with victory going to whichever special interest group cranks up the most supporters on behalf of its preferred candidate. That was certainly the case in Long Beach, Calif. this week when voters selected a replacement for Democratic Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald who died in April of cancer.
The two major competing special interests, I mean candidates, were State Assemblywoman Laura Richardson, who like Ms. Millender-McDonald is from a long-powerful African-American machine, and State Senator Jenny Oropeza, with her own base in the district’s strong Hispanic population. Ms. Richardson wound up winning the first round by 38% to 31% over Ms. Oropeza, positioning herself for a certain victory over a hapless Republican in the August runoff.
What made the race interesting was a behind-the-scenes showdown of two of the state’s powerful special interest groups. On Ms. Oropeza’s side were California’s Indian tribes, flush with cash from their monopoly casino operations and eager for more "compacts" with the state to allow building of even more slot machine palaces. On Ms. Richardson’s side was the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the public-sector union behemoth.
In the end, the union’s organizing muscle in getting supporters to the polls trumped the $457,000 in cash that Indian tribes poured in as independent expenditures for Ms. Oropeza. But the tribes were philosophical. As a new kid on the political block, the Indian casino industry vowed to finance its own get-out-the-vote operations in the future. The real danger for Republicans will come in those races where public-sector unions and the Indian tribes unite behind one candidate in the general election.