Perennial candidates can still be pick of litter

Alicia Robinson

When voters go to the polls March 2 they may see some familiar names.

But while many of the candidates in this primary have appeared on

ballots before, not all of them have won the offices they’ve sought.

It’s not an unusual burden. Eugene Debs ran for president five

times, and Abraham Lincoln lost two Senate bids before he was elected

president.

A number of Orange County candidates could be considered

perennials, and while they have a variety of reasons for running,

they generally expect to win.

There is even some nobility in running unsuccessfully several

times and then ultimately winning an office, local GOP pollster Adam

Probolsky said.

The Republican Party has a history of politicians who didn’t win

their first time out of the gate, such as Lincoln and Ronald Reagan,

Probolsky said.

While some perennial candidates just don’t get the message that

people don’t want to elect them, others actually have viable

campaigns and have failed for various reasons, he said.

“There’s the people that want to be something and the people that

want to do something,” he said.

Many candidates are running against the odds, but not all of them

do it repeatedly, said UC Irvine political science professor Mark

Petracca.

Some would-be politicians are looking for an ego fix and others

just enjoy campaigning, he said.

For some candidates, a losing campaign can have the advantage of

increasing name recognition for a future election or keeping an

opposing political party on the run and spending money that might

have gone to other campaigns.

Others think they’re the best candidate for the job even without a

huge political apparatus and boundless campaign funds, or they want

to offer an alternative to the status quo.

NOT JUST SYMBOLISM

Voters that are more conservative might not be ready to terminate

both the war on drugs and public education, but Libertarian candidate

Keith Gann thinks voters are coming around to some of his party’s

other platforms such as limited government. An engineer who lives in

Costa Mesa, Gann is making his second run for the 46th District

congressional seat held by Republican Dana Rohrabacher. He also ran

unsuccessfully in 2000 for the 39th Assembly District seat.

“We’re going to have some wins pretty soon because people are

getting disgusted with what’s going on,” he said.

“I don’t think [running is] merely a symbolic gesture.”

In the 2000 Assembly race, Gann took 2.5% of the vote, and two

years later, he drew nearly 4% in his congressional bid. He expects

his percentage to grow this year because both of the major parties

have gotten away from their roots and voters are noticing, he said.

He’s never held elected office, but he said there are too many

career politicians in office now.

“The framers of the Constitution never envisioned that,” Gann

said. “They envisioned that regular people that are competent,

educated people would serve and then go back to their business.”

In November, Gann will face Libertarian Tom Lash and the winners

of a two-way Republican primary and three-way Democratic contest.

Also running this year is Al Snook, a Garden Grove Democrat who’s

run four times for mayor of Garden Grove. Snook is now seeking the

68th District Assembly seat after saying the 2002 race for that

office would be his last.

Snook, an insurance salesman, was in charge of rounding up

candidates for the party this year. He was asked by the party to run

for the 68th District seat because incumbent Ken Maddox is termed

out, leaving the seat up for grabs, Snook said.

“I’ve always been for the blue collar and the little guy,” he

said. “Winning didn’t mean as much to me as getting the message out.”

His message, he said, is to return to family values and make jobs

and education priorities.

If he can win the seat Democrats will control the heart of Orange

County, and from there they can take other seats to wrest the county

from Republican control, he said.

Snook will vie with one of two Republicans, both Garden Grove

councilmen, Mark Leyes and Van Tran, for the 68th District Assembly

seat in November.

ALWAYS WINNERS, LOSERS

Though Chuck DeVore has been elected to the county Republican

Party’s Central Committee five times, he hasn’t won the other offices

he sought, which include the 48th District congressional seat and

seats on Irvine City Council and the Orange County Board of

Education. He’s now seeking the 70th Assembly District seat.

“There’s got to be winners and losers in every political contest,”

DeVore said.

“At least I’ve won more than I’ve lost.”

In the congressional race, DeVore ran mainly to prevent a Democrat

from taking over the seat, he said. Once Chris Cox entered the race,

DeVore dropped out and supported him.

The present race and the Irvine City Council race, for which he

was “drafted” by a former Irvine mayor, are the two he has approached

with serious effort, DeVore said.

He realized that if he failed to win the Irvine council race,

people might remember that, he said. He threw his hat into the 70th

District race because, he said, his background in the military and

government made him right for the seat compared with Cristi Cristich,

whom he considers his leading opponent.

“I felt that over a year of campaigning those strengths would

become very apparent and I would become the strongest candidate of

the two,” he said.

DeVore is one of six Republicans battling for the seat in the

March primary.

IN THE END, FEW REALLY RUN

For someone who’s running a credible campaign with adequate

funding and supporters, losses in previous elections may not make

much difference, Probolsky said.

“You can’t just write that person off because they happen to have

lost on a regular basis,” he said.

“The average voter isn’t going to have a clear understanding of

what their history is.”

Perennial candidates can inflate people’s idea of how competitive

an election was, Petracca said, and they sometimes influence the

outcome of elections by drawing just enough votes away from one

candidate for another to win.

On the other hand, candidates are hard to find, so it’s usually a

good thing when they run at all, Petracca said.

“You don’t want to see elections in which people are winning

reelection or winning office initially because they’re the only

person on the ballot,” he said.

Probolsky said not many people care enough to bother running for

office.

“There’s very few people that actually want to subject themselves

to this world of politics and government,” Probolsky said.

“When someone fails, you can’t just toss them out. We don’t have

enough of them.”

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers business, politics and the environment.

She may be reached at (949) 764-4330 or by e-mail at

alicia.robinson@latimes.com.