GOP hopefuls are road-tested in race for 4th Congressional District

Tom McClintock came calling recently on Republican supporters 450 miles from the Thousand Oaks home where he is registered to vote.

But the veteran state senator – who lives primarily in Elk Grove, serves a district in Ventura County and is running for Congress in Northern California – found himself among old friends at the Alta Sierra Country Club in Grass Valley.

McClintock is one of two leading protagonists in a high-intensity Republican primary to fill the 4th Congressional District seat opening up because of Rep. John Doolittle's plans to retire amid an FBI corruption investigation.

Both McClintock and another outsider, former Sacramento-area Rep. Doug Ose, are working hard to introduce themselves in a vast district extending from suburbs of El Dorado and Placer counties to the Oregon border.

Two lesser-known hopefuls – Citrus Heights legal analyst Suzanne Jones and Grass Valley consultant Theodore Terbolizard – also seek the GOP nomination June 3.

In campaign stops, Ose and McClintock spar over who can be trusted to cut taxes. They play to fears over the economy and to the district's seeming distrust of government.

Ose rails about "government coming after our private property and our private lives." He complains about "a nation adrift" economically, calls for sound business practices and blames the current mess on career politicians epitomized by McClintock.

McClintock warns of a drift to "European-style" socialism. He criticizes current and former Republicans in Congress, including Ose, for triggering a credit crisis by shamefully abandoning "fundamental principles" in a splurge of deficit spending.

"This primary is truly a battle over the heart and soul of our party, and the contrasts could not be greater," McClintock said at the Grass Valley GOP dinner where both appeared.

Ose offered contrasts in assailing McClintock by touting his personal business acumen. "I've worked work hand and hand with people, building buildings, building communities and creating jobs," Ose said. "I'm proud to say I'm a businessman, not a career politician."

In Grass Valley, McClintock was greeted as neither a stranger nor a political carpetbagger. After all, he has campaigned in the Nevada County area during two failed runs for state controller and unsuccessful bids for lieutenant governor and governor.

"We like him very much, and what we like we vote," said supporter Betty Hood, who moved to the piney Gold Country region in the 1980s with husband John. "Whenever he (McClintock) has run, we have voted for him."

McClintock is a revered party lion to many California Republicans, renowned for stirring the base with passionate oratories quoting conservative principles from Lincoln to Churchill to Reagan.

But his huge advantage in name identification is being challenged by a $1.5 million Ose campaign portraying him as a carpetbagging, pay raise-grabbing, expense perk-supping career politician.

McClintock's mailers and radio ads answer back with charges that Ose is a free-spending, illegal immigrant-coddling liberal who sold out conservative principles in Congress.

As Ose charged up supporters before a Placer County candidates debate in Rocklin, his backers hailed him as the local favorite – or, at least, a well respected neighbor to the 4th District.

"Ose is one of us," said Placer County Supervisor Rocky Rockholm as Ose moved about the room shaking hands, cracking jokes and claiming victory is on the way. "He's been around long enough. He knows the issues. He's been a land developer here. He knows what our needs are."

In an interview at a campaign stop in Lincoln, Ose – a multimillionaire – told of starting out by buying two lots after college for duplexes in Citrus Heights. He then rattled off his development and business ties to the 4th District: a subdivision and storage warehouse in Roseville, a share of a local telecommunications firm, investments in a Placer County title company and an El Dorado Hills health spa.

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• Call Peter Hecht, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5539.