Contest Is a Battle for GOP’s Soul

For the second time in a row, the Republican primary in the 37th Assembly District is shaping up as battle for the soul of the GOP.

On the right is the incumbent, Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, 31, who has used her first term to push such issues as repealing the gas tax, providing tax credits to offset private school tuition and getting rid of much of public education’s bureaucracy.

Her opponent, Bob Larkin, 70, represents a more moderate wing of Ventura County’s Republican Party, which has struggled in recent years to elect candidates.

Larkin, a businessman and grandfather of six, calls himself a fiscal conservative but thinks the government should stay out of social issues, “the way the party used to be,” he adds.

On June 6, Republican voters in Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Simi Valley, Camarillo and a portion of the San Fernando Valley will decide which of the two best represents their interests.

The outcome could hint at the mood of GOP voters nationwide, amid multiple scandals unfolding in Washington, D.C., said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political analyst.

Strickland has recently been the focus of several news stories detailing how she and her husband, Tony, a former assemblyman now running for state controller, have transferred political donations into each other’s consulting firms.

“With all of this climate of corruption, I’m sure it has been damaging to her,” Hoffenblum said of the cash transfers. “It gives a good issue for Larkin to try to take advantage of.”

But Hoffenblum and other analysts say Larkin will have an uphill battle trying to unseat an incumbent. He’s raised about $60,000, compared with Strickland’s $200,000.

Strickland has the backing of Assembly and Senate Republicans, and Larkin has picked up endorsements from moderate groups such as the Lincoln Club. But as a former chairman of the county Republican Party, Larkin is well known in local political circles, Hoffenblum said.

“It’s a serious race as far as I can tell,” he said.

Audra and Tony Strickland emerged as a political power couple in 2004 when she took over the 37th District seat held by her husband.

She beat out underfunded moderate Jeff Gorell by 4 percentage points in the primary and cruised to easy victory against Democrat Ferial Masry in the general election.

In the heavily Republican district, the primary is where the real competition takes place, Hoffenblum said. The winner on June 6 will face Masry in November.

In her first term, Strickland struggled to pass legislation in a chamber dominated by Democrats. Bills that she sponsored to repeal a portion of the state’s gasoline tax, provide tax credits to offset private school tuition and change California Interscholastic Federation rules for student athletes were either defeated or stalled.

She was successful in passing a law requiring the owners of exotic animals to notify authorities when the animals are missing and another that makes it easier for seniors to get immunizations.

Halfway into her term, Strickland became a mother for the first time, giving birth to a daughter, Ruby. Strickland said she keeps a crib and swing in her Sacramento office for the baby but leaves her in the care of a nanny when state business calls.

Her routine of flying home to Moorpark with Ruby each weekend is exhausting, Strickland said.

“It requires hard work,” she said. “But this is something that women across California are trying to do every day. We all just work our hardest to do the best we can.”

Larkin has shaped much of his campaign around attacking the Stricklands’ practice of funneling campaign money into each other’s firms. Over five years, the couple paid more than $138,000 in campaign contributions to businesses owned by them and a legislative staffer who lives in their home.

Larkin sent out a mailer showing a washing machine with dollars coming out of it, with the headline: “Strickland laundering machine.”

The Stricklands were cleared of any wrongdoing by the Ventura County district attorney’s office and federal election regulators.

“They may have technically dotted the I’s and crossed the Ts, but people know money laundering when they see it,” Larkin said. “I don’t know what else to call it.”

If elected, Larkin said, he will restore integrity to the office and use his experience in politics to get things done in Sacramento.

“There may not be anyone in the Legislature who can remember when California worked in the 1960s, but I can,” he said. “We had the best education system, the best highway system and the best infrastructure in the world.”

Larkin said he would advocate returning to a part-time Legislature, as it was before 1966. In those years, a politician went to Sacramento “as a volunteer to make California better for their kids and grandkids,” he said. Today, he said, lawmakers are so worried about getting reelected that they spend most of their time raising money and posturing.

Strickland said she would use a second term to oppose taxes, get tough on child predators, improve education and end benefits to illegal immigrants. Larkin said he would oppose any amnesty for illegal immigrants but supports a tightly controlled guest worker program.