Who’s Choosing Who?

Well, political junkies should be having a great deal of fun watching California’s 31st Congressional Primary. While the two serious Republican candidates have been running relatively quiet campaigns with political signs and a couple of mailers from Paul Chabot, the three main Democrats in the race have placed their targets on each other.

Eloise Reyes Gomez has been in the mailbox to women in the district a half dozen times. Perennial candidate, and Democratic Party endorsed Pete Aguilar has apparently concentrated on Democrat voters and already put two hit mailers out on former Congressman Joe Baca. Reyes Gomez has mailed two hit pieces on Pete Aguilar in the past few days and another accusing ALL the other candidates of being lobbyists. Joe Baca has recently mailed four positive mail pieces to Republicans and women.

This leads to only a few possible conclusions. Reyes Gomez would much rather face a Republican or underfunded, but high-name-recognition Joe Baca in a replay of the Gloria Negrete-Mcleod –Joe Baca runoff from 2012 (which Baca lost.) And, Pete Aguilar is concerned that Joe Baca’s high name recognition and twenty years of representing people in the Colton, Rialto, San Bernardino area, could place Aguilar in third place just as happened in 2012 where Republicans Gary Miller and Bob Dutton ended up one and two.

And if Aguilar isn’t careful, that is just what will happen. In 2012, Aguilar focused primary campaign mail entirely on Democrats, didn’t have a ground campaign and got knocked out of the general election by an upstart, hard-working, immensely qualified United States Attorney named Justin Kim who finished a respectful fourth.

New intelligence shows that Baca is now being supported by a political action committee with phone calls touting “Veteran” Joe Baca.

Recently released polls purportedly funded by the Democrat National Congressional Committee reports some interesting data. The polls, conducted approximately three weeks apart show that Paul Chabot is leading with Pete Aguilar trailing in second. The most interesting aspect of the polls are that when you compare the two, Pete Aguilar and Eloise Reyes Gomez have both lost support while Joe Baca has picked up 11 points in that time frame. With three weeks to go, that is not good news for Aguilar or Reyes Gomez. If that trend holds, we could very easily see Paul Chabot and Joe Baca face off in November.

The most worried politician in the race should be Pete Aguilar. If he again fails to make the top-two runoff, his political future is likely over. One has to wonder how a candidate raises nearly a million dollars, has the Democratic Party endorsement and tons of momentum, and is only polling at 15%. It is a shocking situation that can’t be blamed on his opponents.