Special Election: The Battle by the Beach

Patrick “Kit” Bobko was willing to jump out of airplanes to earn his airborne wings as an Air Force Academy cadet, so the dying dinosaur that is the Los Angeles Times is not going to intimidate him.  Nor is the fact that California’s 36^th Congressional District has a marked Democratic registration advantage.  On Tuesday May 17^th, Kit will be facing a cast of over 15 competitors in an early test of California’s wacky new open primary law.  Refreshingly young, smart, and conservative, Kit Bobko might just foreshadow the new resurrection of California’s DOA Republican Party.

Congressional Candidate Kit Bobko

The 36^th District covers the southern coast of Los Angeles County, anchored on the south by the hills of Rancho Palos Verdes where amazing rich people enjoy spectacular views of the Pacific from Malibu to Catalina Island.  It then heads north, ending in the bohemian nightmare that is Venice.  In between are Torrance and the beach cities of Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach, where Kit has twice been elected to the city council and has battled all manner of liberal nitwittery.  These are generally prosperous towns, getting wealthier the closer one goes toward the unrivaled beaches.  These people are natural Republicans but don’t seem to know it – educated, affluent, and entrepreneurial, they are the enemies of a liberal machine that still somehow get their votes.   Last year they famously reelected a liberal state senator over her GOP rival despite her clear disqualification from office – she tragically died during the campaign.

Up to the 90s, the voters would check the box for GOP candidates in state and federal elections, but for the last several terms they sent Democrat Jane Harman to Washington.  Harman easily won reelection in 2010, but Congress being no fun when the Democrats weren’t in a majority anymore, she quit earlier this year.  Harman didn’t need the aggravation – she was likely the richest member of Congress thanks to her recently deceased husband Sidney, who founded the Harmon-Kardon audio empire and recently bought Newsweek for $1, which was much more than it was worth.  Harman called herself a “blue dog” Democrat, which meant she pretended to be a fiscal conservative and hid the usual contempt for American security that her comrades typically display when she was home, and then went back east and voted so left that it would make a Bolshevik blush.

Kit may just have an edge because he does not have the capacity to be two-faced, a likely result of the training he received as an Air Force Academy graduate.

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