Playing the Corruption Card

April 11, 2006 — -- Democrats will find out today whether their "culture of corruption" message has legs when voters near San Diego choose from among 18 candidates to replace Duke Cunningham, the former Republican congressman who was sentenced last month to more than eight years in prison for taking bribes from defense contractors.

Democrat Francine Busby, a local school board member who ran unsuccessfully against Cunningham in 2004, is widely expected to finish first in today's balloting. With several strong Republicans in the race, the outcome on the GOP side is far from clear. The strongest GOP contenders are former Rep. Brian Bilbray, businessman Eric Roach, former State Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, and State Sen. Bill Morrow.

Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y., the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, predicted last week that Busby could win as much as 44 percent of the vote -- eight points better than her 2004 vote total.

Just finishing first, however, will not be enough for victory. A candidate must receive more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff on June 6. Republican strategists are confident that the party's 44 percent to 30 percent registration advantage will prove decisive in June if Busby doesn't score a surprise win in the first round of voting.

"If she doesn't win Tuesday [today], she's not going to win," the committee's communications director Carl Forti said late last week.

In an effort to "level the playing field" and sully Busby's "clean House" message, the independent expenditure arm of the committee has purchased $300,000 worth of television ads to attack what Reynolds calls Busby's "rather righteous presentation of her campaign and what she was going to do or not do."

The anti-Busby ad implies that the elected trustee of the Cardiff school board violated the terms of her anti-corruption platform by accepting a $500 campaign contribution from former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., one of the "Keating Five" senators who was admonished by the Senate Ethics Committee in the 1990s for his efforts to aid a troubled savings and loan institution.