The 67th Assembly District campaign has been pretty sleepy with OC Supervisor Jim Silva as the presumed winner. Diane Harman (wife of sitting Assemblyman Tom Harman) is also in the race as is Cypress city councilman Mike McGill.
The OC Blog reports that McGill was the strongest fund raiser this period. This is a big surprise since Silva is a sitting county supervisor with the ability to raise BIG money, but apparently hasn’t.
Silva does have more than double the cash on hand of either one of his opponents.
Silva has excellent name ID having served on the city council in Huntington Beach (the largest city in the District) and now on the Board of Supervisors for more than 10 years. Diane Harman has never stood for office and I have never seen her at anything GOP in Orange County, she is trading largely on her husbands name. McGill has been on the Cypress council since 1998. He gained some notoriety for voting with the majority to, well I will let Steve Greenhut of the OC Register explain:
(from back in June 2002) On Tuesday night, in a well-lighted and nicely carpeted (albeit a bit cold) meeting room in the city of Cypress, the well-groomed council members, at the urging of well-dressed, white-collared staff members, calmly and quietly voted to condemn an 18-acre property owned by Cottonwood Christian Center. They will give it to Costco, or to a developer that builds a tax-generating facility that officials prefer.
The issue was litigated and finally resolved but a nasty campaign could still make McGill out to be the poster child for redevelopment abuse. And not that he necessarily deserves it but he could be painted as anti-church too.
Silva’s is a self described conservative but has a couple really bad union/pension votes (that he now will tell you he regrets) .
With Gilliard Blanning Wysocki & Associates running Silva’s race you’d be wise to bet on Jim. But Silva better get his fund raising in gear.
The 67th AD is solidly GOP so the winner of the June Primary will decide who wins in November.