Charlie Brown Launches Second Sortie Against Doolittle for California Congressional Seat

Charlie, with his understated demeanor, kept campaigning. He won the June 2006 Democratic primary by a comfortable margin. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's website listed the 4th district race as uncompetitive, and continued to do so as the Abramoff scandal broke, Delay posed for his police mug shot, and Charlie's poll numbers climbed into the forties. When he arrived at a television studio to debate Doolittle, local TV news coverage described the crowd outside as giving Charlie "a rock star's welcome." Charlie, the quiet rock star.

In September 2006, when polls showed the race to be a statistical dead heat, the DCCC put the district on its "watch list," and eventually it pumped some money into Charlie's campaign. Up to that point, Charlie and his wife Jan had done it on their own, and they had rattled the Republicans so badly that President George W. Bush flew in to make several campaign appearances to keep Doolittle afloat. A sitting president--“the war president”--brought in to battle political unknowns.

On Election Day, Doolittle eked out a 9,000-vote victory. I don't know if the Democratic pros sat around the next morning playing woulda coulda shoulda. A decent amount of party support early on might have swung those few thousand votes. But, win or lose, Charlie drew heavy fire from Republican forces from outside the 4th district, which might otherwise have been deployed elsewhere to defeat other Democrats.

It wasn't much of a win for Doolittle, it was more like snatching a slow and agonizing political death from the jaws of a quick and merciful one. Even though he got to keep his house in the Washington suburbs for two more years, he had to suffer the FBI as unwanted but warranted visitors as the Abramoff scandal continued to unravel. And whereas Doolittle easily defeated his primary challenger in 2006, he faces at least two challengers in 2008, with a third weighing his options. There's blood in the water, and the sharks are circling.

Meanwhile, Charlie Brown is stronger than ever. He has two years of campaigning experience, where before he had none. He has a campaign organization, whereas he and Jan started from scratch to nearly unseat Doolittle. And this time, they're not alone. This time they have early support from the DCCC and Democracy for America.

Charlie smiles now, and with good reason. He heavily damaged the target on his first mission, one that others said was hopeless. A second sortie will finish off the target. On 7 September, at Auburn Airport, I saw Charlie and Jan take off on their new mission. As they flew northward to campaign stops in Grass Valley and Quincy, they looked out over the Sierras, and also over the political landscape that they had changed.

Thomas Gangale is an aerospace engineer and a former Air Force officer. He is currently the executive director at OPS-Alaska, a think tank based in Petaluma, where he manages projects in political science and international relations. He is the author of From the Primaries to the Polls: How to Repair America's Broken Presidential Nomination Process, available for pre-order at Amazon.