http://nctimes.com/articles/2006/06/...2_516_9_06.txt

Immigration pushes Duke aside in 50th

By: North County Times - Editorial

Our view: Bilbray rode anti-illegal immigrant wave that swamped Busby's ethics-reform message

Before the books close on California's special election of June 2006, consider this: In six months, Randy "Duke" Cunningham's greed and criminality was shoved aside by today's favored scapegoats: illegal immigrants.

By hook and not by crook, Republicans in the 50th Congressional District seem to have successfully shifted the electorate's attention away from the scandal that started this whole mess.


The crook was, of course, Cunningham, whose corruption landed him in federal prison and forced his constituents to elect his replacement on Tuesday. His free fall from grace enticed 18 candidates to enter the race to succeed him, and convinced Democrats that a Republican "safe seat" wasn't so safe after all.

The hook, however, was illegal immigration, a controversy that crested shortly after Cunningham's sentencing on March 3. An issue long dominating our Letters page came to dominate the nation's political debate, kick-started by mass walkouts from school by mostly Latino students beginning March 27. The timing couldn't have been better for Brian Bilbray, a generally moderate Republican who veers furthest to the right on the very issue that came to dominate the 50th District race.

Once Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger heeded a request from San Diego County officials to conduct a special election on April 11 and the runoff on June 6, Busby's best chance was to win election outright on April 11 by getting more than 50 percent-plus-one of the votes. She fell six percentage points short, and Bilbray rode the wave of anti-illegal-immigration fervor right back to the U.S. Capitol.

Two other developments dulled the reformer's blade wielded by Busby, both compliments of Democrats in Washington. In late May, Rep. William J. Jefferson ---- a Louisiana Democrat ---- was charged with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and, to the endless joy of cartoonists and late-night comedians across the spectrum, keeping $90,000 of that dirty money in his freezer. Any independent voters inclined to accept the Democrats as the antidote to a "culture of corruption" in our nation's capital had to reconsider.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee bankrolled a series of hard-hitting attack ads against Bilbray. While they weren't as bad as the Republicans' smear of Busby, the expensive Democratic ads undermined Busby's claims to be a reformer unsullied by big-money politics. Sure looked like the same species of duck.

In the end, the vast sums spent by both parties seem to have made little difference. With few absentee ballots still uncounted Friday, Busby had garnered about 45.15 percent of the votes, with Brian Bilbray nabbing 49.51 percent. If the votes won by Libertarian Paul King and Independent William Griffith are added to Bilbray's, candidates to the right of Busby won almost 55 percent of the vote.

Busby had her work cut out for her in a district where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 3 to 2. Bad timing and the surging illegal immigration debate proved more important in the 50th than even voters' disgust with the Duke-Ster. When Cunningham was crying in front of the federal courthouse in San Diego six months ago, it hardly seemed possible that his actions would matter so little in the race to replace him.