Will the ‘culture of corruption’ theme fly?

Mark Murray Deputy political director

WASHINGTON - Francine Busby is generating quite a buzz in political circles these days. Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, a likely Democratic presidential candidate, has headlined a fund-raiser for her; she’s been endorsed by Emily’s List, which raises money for pro-choice Democratic women candidates; and she was tapped to deliver last week’s Democratic radio address on the controversial deal that would allow an Arab state-run company to operate U.S. ports.

All the attention is because Busby — a 55-year-old mother of two grown children who is a school board trustee and a former adjunct professor of women’s studies — is running in the April 11 special election to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former California Republican congressman sentenced last week to eight years in prison for taking millions of dollars in bribes from defense contractors. And Democrats see the race as a test case for a political tactic they hope to deploy nationwide in this year's mid-term elections: attacking their GOP adversaries for engaging in a "culture of corruption."

“If we do win, it will send a message for change across the country,” Busby said in an interview.

Indeed, Democrats believe Cunningham’s jail sentence and the criminal and ethics investigations hanging over the heads of Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas; Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio; and GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff are a winning issue for the party as it tries to take back the House and Senate in November.

“Like you, I’m fed up with business as usual in Washington,” Busby says in a TV ad. “Send me to Congress, and I won’t tweak our broken system. I’ll shut it down.”

Capitalizing on an anti-corruption message
But it won't be easy for Busby to capitalize on this.

So far, Busby has raised more than $1 million, and she will likely finish first in the April special election, due to a crowded field that includes 14 Republicans, a lesser-known Democrat and two third-party candidates. Yet experts give her only a slim chance of winning the June 6 runoff, mainly because Republicans have traditionally dominated this conservative San Diego-area district. In 2004, President Bush beat John Kerry here, 55-44 percent, while Cunningham defeated Busby — who is making her second run for the seat — by a 58-to-36 percent margin.

“Does corruption make it closer? I think it does,” said Nathan Gonzales, who analyzes elections for the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “But Democrats still think this district is tough.”

Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at the University of California-San Diego, says it's still a win-win for Democrats. “If they win it, it’s a huge symbolic victory,” he says. “If they lose it, they can say they couldn’t have won it anyway.”

In that sense, the race draws parallels to last year’s special election in Ohio, when Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq war vet, rode the Republican ethics scandals in that state to nearly pull off an upset in a very conservative district. But Gonzales says a key difference between the two contests is that Hackett’s narrow defeat was a complete surprise. “I don’t think this race is going to sneak up on anybody in the way the Ohio race did.”

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