Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) Is Retiring... Yawn?

CA-45 is entirely within Orange County... and not the more liberal part on the coast. The district goes from the Anaheim Hills, North Tustin and Irvine down to Mission Viejo and Lake Forest. The eastern part of the district beyond Silverado and Trabaco Canyon is uninhabitable. Last year Campbell won reelection against a credible Democrat, Sukee Kang, 59-41%. Campbell spent $1,421,706 and Kang spent $754,627. The DCCC completely ignored the race and spent zero, same as they did when Beth Krom ran in 2010 and when Steve Young ran in 2008 and 2006. They don't see this R+7 district as worth investing in. McCain bested Obama 51-47% and Romney won there 55-43%.

There doesn't appear to be a Democratic challenger yet, although someone will probably give it a try. So far, the action is all in Crazyville. Every Orange County GOP officeseeker who can walk upright and string a sentence together wants to run. The primary should be a joy to watch-- and it won't be the first time. In his new book, And Hell Followed With Her, about the Minutemen mayhem, Dave Neiwert recounted how ambitious extremist Jim Gilchrist ran for Congress against Campbell. (This was a year before Gilchrist told the Orange County Register that "I'm not going to promote insurrection, but if it happens, it will be on the conscience of the members of Congress who are doing this. I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that." Bush appointed Wall Street shill and super-reactionary Congressman Christopher Cox to the chair of the SEC (which turned out to be an absolute catastrophe for America and helped trigger the Great Recession) and it created a rare open seat in Orange County.

The special election rules created a wide-open field in the primary in which ten Republicans and four Democrats vied for their parties’ respective nominations. Gilchrist ran instead as the sole candidate of the American Independent Party, which is the California affiliate of the Constitution Party. That organization, as it happens, is essentially the Patriot movement’s own party: in the 1990s, it was one of the original promoters of the militia concept among mainstream conservatives, and its politics and candidates have been in that same mold ever since.

Gilchrist got a brief scare when former congressman Robert Dornan-- an archconservative in the John Birch Society mold, notorious in his time for inflammatory and frequently bigoted remarks (his nickname was “B-1 Bob”), who had lost his seat in the 1996 election to Loretta Sanchez-- made brief waves by indicating he wanted to run for Cox’s old seat under the AIP banner. But party leaders, who saw Gilchrist as a potential rising political star, rebuffed his efforts.

After the primary, only an establishment Republican named John Campbell and a Democratic attorney named Steve Young remained on the ballot-- along with Gilchrist, who campaigned hard against Campbell on the basis of his supposedly “soft” stance on immigration. And when Election Day came around on December 5, it was a testament to Orange County’s deep-red conservatism that Campbell still won handily with 44 percent of the vote, while Young came in second with 27 percent, and Gilchrist finished a close third with 25 percent.

Afterward, Gilchrist declared victory anyway: “The time of the modern Minuteman, the Patriot, the time of the American people is here, and America WILL return to the rule of law-- whether the special interests, and the party label enforcers, and the open borders lobby-- and the mainstream media-- like it or not!”

Yes, 25% of the voters in this OC hellhole were willing to vote for a murderous neo-Nazi fanatic whose goal is to destroy America. What a place! And next year is already looking like another wild jungle primary in Crazytown. This week another Republican crackpot, State Sen. Mimi Walters, joined the fray. She's already been endorsed by 7 reactionary California congressmen-- Darrell Issa, Ed Royce, Kevin McCarthy, David Valadao, Doug LaMalfa, Jeff Denham, and Paul Cook-- which is very inconvenient for Rep. Gary Miller, who finds himself in a blue district and wants to run for the open seat in CA-45 to avoud political oblivion.

Walters is largely considered a wholly owned subsidiary of religionist lunatic Howard Ahmanson, Jr., who is no longer living in an insane asylum. Think Progress was first to point out the connection to Walters and the far right's attempt to overthrown democracy and replace it with a "Christian" version of Sharia law, what the lunatic fringe behind Walters calls "total integration of Biblical Law." Ahmanson funneled money into her failed campaign for state Treasurer through his shady Fieldstead operation.

Fieldstead & Co. is an incorporated private company which Ahmanson uses to distribute money to his favorite causes without having to disclose the donations publicly.

Most notorious among these was the Chalcedon Foundation. Ahmanson served for decades on the board of this radical Christian Reconstructionist organization and heavily funded its efforts. The group’s late founder, Rousas John Rushdoony advocated for American laws to literally follow those in the Book of Leviticus, including death by stoning for gay and lesbian people and similar execution for adulterers, juvenile delinquents, non-believers, and most other Americans. While Ahmanson has made clear he personally does not advocate “the stoning or execution of homosexuals,” he conceded to the Orange County Register in 1985: “My purpose is total integration of biblical law into our lives.”

Ahmanson is a major funder and director of the Discovery Institute, a group which promotes creationism and tries to obstruct science education. He was one of the largest contributors to the unconstitutional Proposition 8 campaign to take away the right of same-sex couples to marry in California, spent heavily in support of school vouchers efforts in Colorado and California, backed CareNet (a group that provides “crisis pregnancy centers,” which mislead women about abortion), and, reportedly, funded a $1 million smear campaign against the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop and efforts to split the worldwide Anglican Communion over LGBT inclusion. And, he was the second-largest donor to a 2006 California ballot initiative effort which would have required the government to compensate any property owners if land-use or zoning laws hurt the value of their property; Walters served as honorary chair for the unsuccessful effort and called the position her “proudest accomplishment.”

In her time in the California Assembly and Senate, Walters has accumulated a voting record that is very much in line with Ahmanson’s far-right views. She has consistently voted against LGBT equality, endorsing Prop. 8, protecting harmful “ex-gay” therapy, and opposing anti-discrimination laws. She opposes women’s reproductive rights. She also is a strong supporter of “school choice” and vouchers.

Walters has called herself a “proven conservative” and has drawn criticism for her anti-immigrant campaign ads. She voted against California’s same-day voter registration law and amassed an embarrassing 3 percent lifetime score from the California League of Conservation Voters.

In the past, even anti-LGBT conservatives like Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI) have returned campaign contributions from Ahmanson in light of his radical views and record (Full disclosure: in 2004, the author was president of an LGBT-rights group that successfully pushed Wolf to return a $1,000 contribution from Ahmanson). But Walters has accepted his money since her 2006 campaign.