Democrat Hahn Wins CA 36 Special Election

Rep. Janice Hahn
Rep. Janice Hahn
Republicans had hoped to see an upset in the special election for Rep. Jane Harman’s Los Angeles-area congressional seat yesterday similar to the reversal in the special election in New York in May, in which which Democrat Kathy Hochul won the longtime Republican seat once held by Jack Kemp.

But they were delusional — California’s 36th District includes anything-goes-and-then-some Venice Beach, for crying out loud. Plus, the Republican in the race was a teavangelical, who self-funded his race, which is an increasingly unpopular strategy among California voters. It didn’t help the Republican that an outside right-wing group produced an ad against the Democrat, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, that keyed off her work in gang intervention to recast her as a pole-dancing stripper.

Hahn, whose family has been movers and shakers in the Democratic Party in Los Angeles for decades, bested the bagger by nine points:

In a hard-fought special congressional election marked by sharp divisions in ideology and even sharper personal attacks, Democrat Janice Hahn defeated underdog Republican Craig Huey on Tuesday.

Unofficial election night returns showed Hahn won 54.6% to 45.4%…

Democrats hold an 18-point registration edge in California’s largely coastal 36th Congressional District, based in the South Bay… Most observers had expected Hahn, a member of a prominent local political family, to have little trouble winning after Democratic Secretary of State Debra Bowen was edged out of the runoff by Huey.

But Huey, 61, owner of a marketing firm and publisher of Christian voter guides, mounted a stronger-than-expected campaign, in large part by putting in more than $800,000 of his own money. He rallied “tea party” members and other conservatives and, with his cut-spending/grow-jobs message, tried to appeal to independents and others he felt were fed up with the federal government.

The last few years have been eventful for CA 36. When the Democrats won control of the House in 2006, Harman, who’d been the ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, was shunted out of the chairmanship by her in-state rival, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Earlier this year, Harman resigned to take the leadership role at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. — at about the same time that her husband, Sidney, founder of the Harman/Kardon sound equipment company, bought Newsweek and folded it into The Daily Beast. Then, on April 12, Sidney Harmon died, at age 92, after being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Janice Hahn is the daughter of Kenneth Hahn, the late Democratic member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, who served for 40 years representing the southern area of the county, which includes Watts and other predominantly black neighborhoods, during the Civil Rights era. Her brother, James, served one term as mayor of Los Angeles before losing to another Democrat, the current mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa.

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