The race for the State Assembly's 61st District has been getting some local coverage. As we've observed, the seat is pretty safely Democratic, so it'll be the June primary that decides the eventual winner.
The Daily Bulletin has noted that Pomona Mayor Norma Torres has raised the most money of any of the Democrats and has also garnered the endorsement of the incumbent Nell Soto, who is retiring due to poor health. Soto, missed a good chunk of the last year's worth of legislative sessions because of her health problems.
The Bulletin reported that Torres had raised $200,000 as of May 10th, which dwarfed the $20,000 reported by fellow Democratic candidate Maurice Ayala. Cal Poly Pomona professor Ken White had raised between $5,000 and $6,000, according to the article.
The Bulletin piece also noted that Torres had spent some of her money on polling, which is usually pretty expensive and is another sign that Torres has money to burn. Torres is the state Democratic Party's anointed one in this particular campaign, due solely to her work within the party. Her party associations helped get her a PR piece in the Los Angeles Times, for instance, and has enabled Torres to raise money from deep pocket donors - the type that usually end up wanting a favor from a bought assembly person somewhere down the road: Say, Norma, how about some help killing that bill in your Assembly committee, or Hey, Norma, can you vote for this [fill in the blank] bill?
As the Bulletin piece also noted, the 61st Assembly District is drawn in such a way that it's become a Democratic monopoly:
The Democrat who wins the June 3 primary is expected to easily defeat the Republican nominee in the November election.
The 61st District, like most districts in the state, has been gerrymandered by the Legislature to protect the incumbent party. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 46 percent to 33.6 percent.
The problem here is that as with any monopoly, competition has been quelled - competition for ideas from within the party as well as from the outside. So, with this gerrymandering repeated across the state and the country, can there be any end result other than gridlock?
It's no surprise that Soto endorsed Torres. Torres is, after all, Soto's protégé, just as Three Valleys Municipal Water District boardmember Xavier Alvarez was Torres' after a fashion. Alvarez, who used to call himself a Medal of Honor winner, also used to represent Pomona, before KABC TV News reassigned him to Claremont.Nell Soto, herself a former Pomona councilmember, preceded Torres within the party, then picked Norma as a successor. Torres in turn backfills the lower-tier political positions with folks like Xavier Alvarez in order to build a layer of politicians on the local level loyal to her. As a result, Torres' right to represent her district owes nothing to her performance as Mayor of Pomona and everything to her social and political network.
So, the fact that Torres instigated a silly feud with Pomona's police chief or that her city's budget is in the red a projected $3.6 million, have no bearing on her qualifications for office. The very inevitability of the ascension of a relatively mediocre mayor to state assembly embodies the corruption at the heart of the system.
And, lest you think we're trying to favor one party over another, keep in mind that the Republican party has had its own troubles and is equally culpable for the gridlock at the state and national level. Both parties need to step back and realize that competition makes them better. If they really cared about the public welfare, they'd scrap the current system of drawing districts and create one that results in as many balanced districts as possible.
Let's see them have to work to get elected. The very act of having to earn one's vote tends to make one more sensitive to one's constituency. Here in Claremont, we've seen in the recent past, a ruling group dependent on its social network and firmly ensconced in power move farther and farther out of step with the community, creating unnecessary crisis and community turmoil.
It's really been nothing more than a microcosm of what's happening at higher levels of government. Both parties have for too long been more interested in preserving their own power than in serving the public, and they have run from competition rather than embracing it. In doing so, they've encouraged the rise of mediocrities like Norma Torres, much to the detriment of voters everywhere.
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