Ellen Tauscher: Grand Dame

Just when I thought campaign season was over until 2010, Congresswoman Ellen Taucher, the Grand Dame of Contra Costa’s political world is moving on up to the Obama administration. There will be a lot written about the political moves and machinations of the people vying for her seat. We will table that discussion for now. What interests me is the legacy Tauscher represents to Contra Costa County political history, particularly for Republicans.

In 1996, in the heart of the Republican Revolution and the height of Republican power in Contra Costa she came out of nowhere and defeated the icon of Contra Costa conservative Republicanism, Bill Baker.

For years, as a California State Assemblyman and a couple as a United States Congressman, Baker crushed many a weak and under funded Democratic opponent. He was the vanguard of conservative Republicanism here in Contra Costa. He had legions of volunteers led by the late great Ernie Scherer, he spawned successful politicians like his successor in Assembly District 15 Lynne Leach who, firmly believed in the epic march of conservatism into the halls of power.

I was amazed at the froth of his supporters. In 1992 I walked precincts with a young Bakerite who could recite Barry Goldwater’s speech to the 1964 Republican National Convention and tell me that the Janis Joplin song playing on the FM radio in my car (Me and Bobby McGee) was evil music.

I was there in 1994 when Baker refused to work with Governor Wilson’s reelection team and join forces on the eve of the 1994 Republican Revolution. Baker hated Wilson’s compromise on the 1991 state budget that had $1.75 spending cuts to every dollar of taxes he had to raise to balance the budget deficit left to him by conservative Republican Governor George Deukmejian.

By 1996 Baker as the highest elected Republican in the Bay Area was attempting to exert more and more control over Contra Costa Republicans and had alienated most of the factions of the Republican coalition that were not his brand of conservatives.

In opposition Contra Costa Democrats were at a complete loss over what to do. They were reeling after being blindsided during the 1994 election. There was even  a small group called “Eye on the 10th” to watch Baker but it never amounted to much. No one knew that Baker’s success, over reach, and worldview had set the stage for the arrival of Ellen Tauscher.

Taucher had money and brains. But most importantly she had the fire that most political moderates feel when they put a fork in a cooked conservative Republican. Tauscher’s brilliantly executed campaign emphasized family issues and her support for business, the environment, and the military, while charging that Baker was too conservative for the district, particularly given his opposition to abortion and gun control. She gained the endorsement of many moderate Republicans whom Baker had alienated or had thrown under the bus politically.

In the Campaign of 1996 things started to unravel. Baker, a super supporter of gun rights, would not meet with a man (who favored gun control) whose wife was killed in the 101 California Street shooting in San Francisco. The media went on and on about it. Then early in the 1996 campaign Baker got down from the podium to get face to face with a heckler at a speech he was giving right in front of the TV cameras.

The bloom was off the rose. Baker complained openly that Tauscher was buying the seat. (always a strange complaint from a sport that is all about who is goring whose ox).  It became obvious Baker was finished. He lost narrowly to Tauscher by a margin of 1.45% of the vote. The race was ranked as the fourth most expensive of that year’s 435 House races. But if you looked at Baker’s vote totals for all of his CD-10 races, his vote totals declined every election: 145,702 in 1992, 138,916 in 1994, and 133,633 in 1996.

After the election Baker retired from elected politics. Tauscher never looked back. In the elections that followed in 1998 Tauscher crushed Charles Ball (nice fellow but a political neophyte at the time recruited by Baker) , and then in 2000 Claude Hucthison (who later went into the G. W. Bush Administration) . After that any serious political opposition evaporated.

In 2002 and 2004, (after redistricting) Republicans gave up and did not field a candidate against Tauscher. When they finally did they were not serious candidates—Darcy Lynne in 2006 and Nick Gerber in 2008—Tauscher never really campaigned and crushed them by more than 30 points each.

Soon the Grand Dame will be living full time in D.C. But her place in Contra Costa political history is assured as the woman who slayed Bill Baker and set the stage for relegation of Republicans to the back water of the Bay Area partisan electorial process.