California's 26th Congressional District (Wikicommons)

With the General Election just weeks away, the race between the 26th Congressional District's Democratic incumbent and her Republican challenger is too close to call.

In the June Primary, Congresswoman Julia Brownley took 45.5 percent of the vote, beat the Republican front-runner, California Assemblyman Jeff Gorell, who received 44.5 percent. Those votes taken alone, would give Brownley a slim victory. 

When including the 7.7 percent taken by the Republican Rafael Dagnesses, though, the image of a tough race emerges for Brownley. 

The 26th Congressional District includes Ventura County and the north-western part of Los Angeles County. 

Current polling data gives Brownley a 2.9 percent lead, which is markedly different from the 10 points with which the Democrats carried the district in the last cycle.

As of last week, the non-partisan Cook Political report had the race marked down as a “Democratic toss-up,” having changed its status from “Leans Democratic” in early September.

Congresswoman Julia Brownley (Wikicommons)

With $950,000 already having been made available for media buying in Brownley’s district, this figure was recently upped to $1.1million.

Advertisements from the DCCC have been on television screens in the region from Sept. 2 - three weeks earlier than had been expected.

Brownley had originally moved from Santa Monica to Oak Park in 2012 to compete in the race for the newly created 26th District. It had previously been part of the 24th District, governed by 13-time Republican Representative, Elton Gallegly.

Nobody from the Brownley campaign or the local, state and national Democratic parties were available for comment at the time of publishing.

While Brownley’s campaign is characterized by top-down spending, Gorell’s campaign looks somewhat different. 

“We’ve got a good on-the-ground game in the 26th,” Kaitlyn MacGregor began. The California Republican Party Communications Director continued, explaining that the statewide party was helping

Assembly Member, Jeff Gorell (Wikicommons)

So far, the Gorell campaign has 

been less hi-tech than Browley’s. The Republican party allocated about $46,000 to Gorell for a mailing campaign in August.

That this election’s head-to-head is between Brownley and Gorell is a surprise to no one. Both candidates garnered large numbers of votes in the primaries, easing past Douglas Kmiec. Kmiec, who ran as an Independent this year, took 2.3 percent of the vote. 

His views, however, are noteworthy given his political past. Kmiec served as legal counsel under President Reagan. A Republican for his entire political career, he endorsed President Obama in 2008, before serving as the Obama administration’s ambassador to Malta. 

Kmiec is now a Constitutional Law professor at Pepperdine University. “Both major political parties have let us down,” he said, reserving not just a few choice words for both candidates on matters of policy and campaigning. Kmiec will be writing for the Huffington Post during this campaign. 

Head-To-Head: Comparing Brownley and Gorell

Background:

Julia Brownley: mother of two, comes from a Republican family in Virginia. She is 62. After a career in sales and marketing, she found her way into politics through her work on the Santa Monica-Malibu school board.

Jeff Gorell: father of three. Aside from a brief period in public affairs, has spent the two decades since graduation mixing politics and military service - he got his first start under Governor Pete Wilson. He is 43 and his military service forms a significant part of his campaigning. 

A navy reserve Commander, Gorell is the only California legislator to have been called into active service since the second World War.

Funding:

Ambassador Douglas Kmiec (Wikicommons)

Jeff Gorell has so far raised just under $675,000 and his donors are mostly undisclosed. Kaitlyn MacGregor implied that a large cash boost would be coming to the Gorell campaign from a combined effort from the Speaker’s office and PACs. 

Voting Records:

Brownley:

Her notable votes include voting for military operations in Iraq and funding to Syrian rebels. On a local level, she voted to safeguard the Clean Water Act and voted against the expansion of energy production on federal lands. 

Brownley also voted to increase highway spending and against the ‘Highlights’ bill, which would have appropriated $71million to the Department of Homeland Security for “custody, transportation, and removal operations” relating to undocumented child immigrants. 

Gorell:

In the past two years, Gorell has voted against paid sick leave for employees, gun violence restraining orders, groundwater regulation and the expansion of ocean oil spill response programs. 

The Issues:

One of the major issues on which this election will be fought seems to be a combination of immigration and economics. “We need a family-friendly, yet responsible, immigration reform that regularizes the status of those who have been working in our country and raising their children here - and immigration reform is needed both for farmworker and farm owner alike,” Douglas Kmiec said. 

Kaitlyn MacGregor seemed keen to highlight Gorell’s attempts to appeal to Latino voters who are not traditionally in the Republican based. “We’ve got a lot of staff down there and we’re working on a special Latino outreach program,” she said.

One of the advertisements on http://www.jeffgorell.org however, bills Gorell as “good for farmers” as opposed to farm workers. 

This may also mean that Gorell has no plans to put pressure on the large amount of water used by California’s farmers. Agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s water and constitutes three percent of the economy. 

Congresswoman Brownley is campaigning under a strongly environmental banner, and, according to her campaign website, “strongly supports” DREAMers. 

Douglas Kmiec criticized the lack of economic discussion by the candidates: “It makes no sense for Mr. Gorrell to repeat ‘trickle-down’ in an economy that is decidedly not expansionary and quite unkind to the basic needs of the middle income family. I have not seen or heard either candidate address these economic issues.”