The Democrats’ quest to regain their supermajority in the state Senate could be decided next month in an ethnically diverse section of Orange County and a large swath of farmland and rural towns about 300 miles away in the Central Valley.

The races are the only two so far in which Gov. Jerry Brown has intervened with broadcast ads for the Democratic candidates.

The dominant party is now two seats short of the two-thirds supermajority it won in the Senate in 2012 but lost amid corruption scandals this year. Victory in the Orange County and Central Valley districts is essential for the Democrats if they are to recapture the power to raise taxes, place propositions on the state ballot, waive procedural rules for bill votes and override gubernatorial vetoes without GOP votes.

If Republicans can win both of those seats, it will be seen as their first step back toward political relevance in California,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. “But if Democrats get the supermajority back, it’s difficult to see California becoming a two-party state again any time in the near future.”
The Orange County candidate, former Democratic Assemblyman Jose Solorio of Santa Ana, has been battered on the subject by his GOP opponent, Janet Nguyen.

Nguyen, a Garden Grove resident who sits on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, stunned political handicappers in the June primary by garnering 51.5% of the vote, compared with Solorio’s 34%.

The contest has drawn $2.5 million in spending by campaign committees independent of the candidates — by far the most of any legislative race in the state. Real estate and dental trade organizations are opposing Solorio and public employee groups are campaigning in his favor.

In the Central Valley contest, Sen. Andy Vidak (R-Hanford) is being challenged by Fresno School Board member Luis Chavez, a Democrat. Vidak received 62% of the vote to Chavez’s 38% in the primary, even though Democrats have a 20-percentage-point lead in voter registration. A cherry farmer before he won a special election last year, Vidak, 49, cites his work as a coauthor of Proposition 1, the water bond measure on the Nov. 4 ballot, and his opposition to the high-speed rail project championed by Brown. Vidak says it’s a waste of money.

Chavez, 35, has television ads calling Vidak “Just another Sacramento politician” and criticizing him for voting against bills, now law, that will raise the minimum wage and give California workers at least three paid sick days per year. Vidak said both measures would hurt small businesses.

“Our message has been really focusing on pocketbook issues here in the valley,” Chavez said in an interview. “Jobs is a big issue. One of the things I’ve seen as I have gone from town to town is the negative effects of the drought and recession.”

For his part, Vidak has seized on a series of scandals involving criminal charges filed against three Democratic senators, along with a throwaway comment made in June by new Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles). Talking about high-speed rail, De León said of the Central Valley, “No one lives out there in the tumbleweeds.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-state-senate-20141020-story.html#page=1