The 10th Assembly District which is centered in the San Joaquin and Sacramento County Areas – largely around South East Sacramento County, the Stockton area, and east into the foothills is a seat that had long been held by Republicans until last November when Democrat Alyson Huber narrowly defeated GOPer Jack Sieglock. As the saying goes, success has many fathers but failure is an orphan. In this case, no one wanted to take “credit” on the GOP side for Sieglock’s defeat and the shifting of this long-time Republican seat into the blue column. Some said that the candidate was to blame – did he campaign hard enough? Others said that funding priorities by the party and the Assembly GOP leadership were awry, and this caused the loss. I’ve heard others say that in the year of Obama, this seat was going to shift no matter what.
Huber, of course, will run for re-election as the incumbent. But who will carry the GOP banner? I don’t know that the entire Republican primary field has solidified, but two of the three candidates from the 2008 primary are back for a redo. One of them is the failed nominee – Sieglock – whose election was so close that they actually put a name plate on the wall next to an Assembly office for him in the State Capitol. The other is Paul Hegyi, Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Van Tran of Orange County, who ran in second place in 2008. So far as I know, the third candidate from last year – Rancho Cordova Mayor David Sander – is not running this go around (I am sure my good friend and a blogger on this site, Tab Berg, will correctly me quickly if I am wrong, as he ran Sanders’ campaign).
There have been some back and forth press releases between the two concerning campaign finances – and looking it over it would appear that as of the end of the filing period – June 30 – Hegyi (pictured right) had been much more aggressive at bringing in donations. Since then, Sieglock’s campaign has boasted a large take from a fundraising event – but we don’t get to see those official numbers for many months to come.
This particular blog post was spurred on because I saw a press release from the Hegyi campaign boasting the endorsement of State Senator Dave Cox. I thought this was notable to write about because, frankly, Cox doesn’t endorse in too many primaries, and it is also important to see where the major endorsers of Sanders in ’08 end up this go around – Cox had endorsed Sanders in the last race.
I also noted some significant third house financial support for Hegyi, which becomes significant as you can bet that with the threat of a Democrat legislative supermajority being very real, those interests in Sacramento that do not want to see a lot of new taxes are going to take a very heightened interest in this seat.
Anyways, in the back and forth of politics, the Cox endorsement from where is see it is a major pickup for the campaign of Paul Hegyi.
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DELUZ GARNERS UHLER ENDORSEMENT
Speaking of legislative staffers running for office, in the neighboring district to the north, in Sacramento County, I note that National Tax Limitation Committee Chairman Lew Uhler has endorsed Craig DeLuz, Capitol Director for Assembly Kevin Jeffries for the GOP nomination in the Fifth District, where tax-hiking Republican Roger Niello is retiring due to term limits. We don’t have enough time in this space to talk about our profound disappointment with Niello…. Uhler is very particular about endorsing in primaries – so you can be sure that from Uhler’s perspective, DeLuz is rock solid on fiscal issues.