The District 40 State Senate seat up for grabs is turning out to be more intriguing as the clock runs down to June where the victor of the primary on the Democratic side will cruise to victory if Shirley Horton continues to sit on the sidelines.
As of 1/29/10, Salas had $240,128.25 on hand for her State Senate campaign committee. As of 2/1/10, former Assembly member Juan Vargas had $130,025.87.
The race is getting hot and it is becoming more difficult to determine who has the advantage as the race enters the homestretch. Originally I thought Salas would have the big advantage as she is the current assembly member for the 79th AD while Vargas has been out of office for a while now but Vargas has still been able to rake in the money. If both were duking it out for the 76th AD or the 39th SD seat then I would have given Salas a clear cut advantage as money rules in small dense districts with many different types of niche voters. But in the 40th SD that isn’t the case, as long as a candidate can have over 100k cash on hand, they are viable for any seat in South Bay. Retail politics and name ID means more than cash if both candidates are bringing in sufficient amounts of cash so Salas doesn’t appear to have any real advantage even with 110k more in the bank than Vargas.
I figured that maybe I should predict the winner of the race by how good each of their holiday cards were. Both candidates sent nice looking holiday cards but Vargas went the extra mile by including a nicely written letter by one of his staff daughters. I liked Vargas’ holiday card/letter much better than Salas. So for the stake of trying to predict a winner in the State Senate contest, I will use the holiday cards to make an unscientific prediction: If Vargas continues going the extra distance in retail politics, he will squeak out a win by a very small margin but my heart lays with Mary Salas and hopefully she can utilize the fact that she is a current elected official to pull off the promotion.
Here are the cards/letter from the Salas & Vargas campaigns.
You’re completely off your rocker! Vargas was handed his head in the Imperial Valley when he (again) challenged Bob Filner for the congressional seat. Next, do you not remember Vargas? Vargas looks out for, well, um, Vargas. Vargas is only looking to find another high-paying job from special interests.
Remember last time he sat as the oversight for consumers on insurance while he was in Sacto? They said repeatedly, gee Assm. Vargas sure is carrying A LOT OF WEIGHT for the insurance industry. Then the question was asked whether or not he was going to work for the insurance industry and he said, absolutely not.
Within hours of leaving office, Juan was officially bought & paid for by insurance with his fat cat swell job. When asked why he went back on what he said, Juan offered up that this is a great opportunity where he felt he could do something for the community.
I HAVEN’T SEEN JUAN IN THREE YEARS. NOW I SEE HIM EVERYWHERE.
Where was he with the insurance gig helping the community? And if you talk about raising money and then fail to mention that Juan gave himself $100,000 you are skewing info and failing to let readers decided whether or not Juan is trying to BUY A SENATE SEAT.
Then you have the hundreds of thousands of dollars that insurance has already said they will spend on independent expenditures to get Juan elected. Why?
BECAUSE JUAN DOES WHAT THE INDUSTRY THAT ELECTS HIM WANTS. And insurance has been kicked around too much since Juan left Sacto.
POST MY EARLIER REPLY. Seriously, why wouldn’t you?
Whoo… No need to get pushy. Sorry I didn’t get the chance to moderate your comments until just now.
I like him. And his Christmas card.