– MARCH 16, 2014POSTED IN: “THE OC”

Republicans and conservatives put up a whole lot of nothing against Attorney General Kamala Harris this year other than Orly Taitz — and those red eyes will only help her among OC’s libertarians. Is she really going to be the runner-up in June — and sole challenger to Harris in November? It’s not clear what other challenger could stop her!

The only candidates for Attorney General this year that I’ve been able to find statewide are these.

Two of these candidates you’ve heard of, if you ever watch political news:

• Kamala Harris (D), the incumbent and prohibitive favorite
• Orly Taitz (NPP), South Orange County Attorney/Doctor/Businesswoman/Birther/MMJ Advocate

It’s not that Taitz has a large following — but she does have a dedicated following, and even a smallish following against a split vote among her opponents plus people voting semi-randomly can be enough to pile up 20% of the vote.  If Harris gets 60%, that would guarantee her a spot in November.  (Some Dems like Vern may vote for her to make sure that she wins the second spot.)

Four candidates you probably haven’t heard of before:

• Ronald Gold (NPP),  Retired Deputy Attorney-General
• John Haggerty (R), Attorney
• Jonathan Jaech (Libertarian), Attorney
• Phil Wyman (R), Former Member, State Senate (and perpetual candidate)

Gold has a nice ballot designation — but it refers to a position he held from 1972-1979.   (He’d likely be vulnerable to a ballot designation challenge — if anyone wanted to bother.)  Haggerty appears to be a intellectual property attorney from Santa Clara who does not appear to have a campaign website or any political background.  Jaech has a website, but like me he struggled to collect the filing fee by the last date of March 7 — without the benefit of my excuse that I had just entered the race and had been fundraising for fewer than 40 hours.

You might have heard of Wyman — if you’re old enough to remember when he served in the legislature or if you’re Bakersfieldian enough to remember when he lost to the guy who lost to Michael Rubio for State Senate in 2010, but especially at age 69, and out of the legislature for a decade — after being the only Republican incumbent west of the Mississippi to lose a race in the 1994 GOP avalanche — he’s not the draw he once might have been, and hasn’t been for 20 years.

You may be able to see where this is going: no one is going to defeat Harris in November regardless, but it looks pretty likely that none of the four men in the race will defeat Orly for second place — putting her on the ticket for every statewide Republican candidate to enjoy.

I suppose that either Haggerty or Wyman may get a California Republican Party endorsement and make it onto a lot of mailers, or something — though if Orly is smart she’ll be buying up those that Harris hasn’t — but the failure of the state Republican party to bring anyone of stature into the race to keep Orly off the November ballot is frankly amazing.

Dozens of Republican attorneys in OC alone could have entered this race and immediately become the front-runner to become runner-up.  No one did.  Oh well — they’ll find out soon enough why this was a bad idea.