Did the National Republican Congressional Committee thumb their noses at Ventura County?

Added by Debra Tash on November 16, 2014.
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EditorialBy Debra Tash
 
Should the Republican party have done better in the midterm with Ventura County’s congressional races?  The battle for Buck McKeon’s seat in the 25th District was something akin to Republican musical chairs.  With our open primary system there were two GOP candidates running.  The 25th encompasses most of Simi Valley through Santa Clarita into Palmdale.  The way it’s currently drawn it’s Republican heaven.
 
But does that mean the other two seats were not winnable?  The current office holders, both Democrats, weren’t particularly lovable.   At the time of a fatal hit and run accident, Raymond Morua was one of Capps’ staffers in the 24th Congressional District.  Now you can’t pin the sins of a staffer on their congressperson, but he had a history of drunkenness and had been coming from a party for his boss the night of the accident.  Red State Article  This scandal didn’t touch Capps.  And Julia Brownley was a one term congressperson with a track record that shows she supported every policy coming out of the Obama administration, something a large percentage of the nation rejected on November 4th.  Here’s Brownley’s record: Project Vote Smart. The Democrats valued Brownley’s seat enough to send heavy hitter Bill Clinton to save it.
 
Jon Fleishman puts the blame for Republicans failure to gain seats that could have been won squarely on the Republican Congressional Committee in his Breitbart article: The National Republican Congressional Committee’s Epic Failure in California   On the races in the 24th and 26th he writes:
CA-24 — Lois Capps is the Democrat incumbent in the Central Coast seat, and to say she is a less than an ideal candidate for her party would be an understatement. Republicans nominated Chris Mitchum (son of famous actor Robert Mitchum), but again the NRCC would not target this race. They can look at the numbers and weep, as Mitchum racked up an impressive 48.4% of the vote, around 6,500 votes shy of winning.

CA-26 — Freshman Democrat Julia Brownley won her Ventura County-based seat two years ago riding on Obama’s coattails. If there was a year to take her out, this may have been it. Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, a war veteran and former prosecutor, waged a hard-fought battle, only to come up tantalizingly short. Brownley won by less than a thousand votes. On everyone’s minds now is the six-figures that former State Senator Tony Strickland raised to take on Brownley – money he took with him to run unsuccessfully in the neighboring, more Republican seat, where Buck McKeon announced his retirement.

Brownley’s lead is now over 3000 votes, prompting Gorell to formally concede.

Perhaps it goes even deeper than that, maybe straight to the state GOP, which failed to win one statewide elected office yet again.  Maybe, if you are conservative or moderately conservative, it’s time to eye the local leadership as well as who’s holding the purse strings in California’s Republican party.  Maybe the party’s hope and change starts in its own backyard.  Maybe it’s time for the rank and file to clean house. Just maybe.

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Debra Tash is Editor-in-Chief of Citizensjournal.us, past president for Citizens Alliance for Property Rights, business executive and award-winning author, residing in Somis.

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