"Tight Massachusetts race alarms California Dems" Carla Marinucci,Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Political Writers
The possible loss of a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts has Democrats on edge 3,000 miles away in California, where party activists fear a GOP upset today could trigger a conservative wave and swamp health care reform and the 2010 midterm elections.
"Regardless of the outcome ... this should be a gigantic wake-up call to the Democratic Party - that we're not connecting with the needs, the aspirations and the desires of real people right now," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom...
But Democrats also considered the ripple effects on coming elections in the nation's most populous state.
"We better get our act together - and quickly," Newsom said. Voters "are so angry. They don't feel that we're paying attention to their needs, in terms of their jobs, and what's going on at the grassroots, in their neighborhoods."
With just 10 months until the 2010 midterm election, the mayor's remarks underscore how the Brown-Coakley race has set off alarms in Democratic-leaning California, which is holding two high-profile elections this cycle.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, a three-term Democrat, faces a re-election challenge - with three Republicans vying to defeat her: former Rep. Tom Campbell, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Irvine.
Boxer polled no more than 46 percent of the vote against any of the three in a Rasmussen Poll released Friday.
And with GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger termed out, former two-term Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown will face one of two wealthy GOP challengers: former eBay CEO Meg Whitman or state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.
Worse than a canary
For Boxer, a favorite Republican target, a GOP win in Massachusetts would be a particularly dark sign representing "not just the canary in the coal mine," said Wade Randlett, a leading Silicon Valley fundraiser for Obama. "It's the flock of dead ravens landing on the lawn."
But Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking to reporters Monday, expressed confidence in Boxer - and in Democrats' prospects in California. She insisted that - whatever the outcome - the results today will in no way represent a repudiation of the Obama administration, especially on the matter of health care reform.
"Certainly the dynamics will change depending on what happens in Massachusetts," she said. "But it doesn't mean we won't have a health care bill."
Still, "if Brown wins, then Tea Party supporters will smell blood in California," said Joe Wierzbicki, coordinator of the Tea Party Express, a conservative organization that counts roughly a quarter of its 353,000 supporters in California.
"This would be a sign that the momentum in general is in the direction of the Tea Party movement," he said...
But Newsom said the Republican resurgence in Massachusetts suggests "there's real intensity and fervor out there, as represented by the Tea Party" activists expressing anger at government spending and at job losses.
"This is real," he said. "At our own peril, we dismiss these tea parties as ... some sort of isolated extremism. ... It's not."
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