Tom McClintock, emerging victorious Tuesday from a bruising Republican primary, will face Democrat Charlie Brown in a November match-up to replace retiring Rep. John Doolittle in Congress.
With all precincts reporting, McClintock held a decisive lead over former Sacramento-area Rep. Doug Ose, 54 percent to 39 percent.
"It looks like we're headed toward a monumental victory," McClintock, a state senator representing a district 400 miles away, told cheering supporters in Placer County.
Despite an intensely bitter campaign, McClintock said he and Ose "are no longer rivals." He added: "Tonight we are partners … in a historic struggle to restore our nation."
His victory came despite a campaign in which Ose spent nearly $2.85 million of his own money in a largely negative media blitz portraying McClintock as a carpetbagging, do-nothing state lawmaker abusing legislative expense perks while casting votes against benefits for veterans.
McClintock responded with a campaign assailing Ose as a political liberal who abused his position in Congress by taking farm subsidies while serving on the House Agricultural Committee.
Ose declined to concede, but pledged to work "to make sure this seat doesn't fall into Democratic hands" if he didn't emerge victorious. Regardless of the result, he said he was glad he ran.
"I look at this as an investment in my country. Absolutely," Ose said.
The GOP front-runners were trailed in the vote by upstart candidate Suzanne Jones, a Citrus Heights legal analyst, with nearly 5 percent, and Theodore Terbolizard, a Nevada County Internet content producer, with 2 percent.
In the Democratic primary, Brown – an Air Force veteran who narrowly lost to Doolittle in 2006 – won an easy victory over legal philosopher John Wolfgram by an 88 percent to 12 percent margin with 78 percent of the vote counted.
"I think voters are seeing that I am the person who actually has served this country and who has raised children in this district," said Brown, a 17-year Roseville resident.
The Democratic candidate criticized Ose and McClintock for running negative campaigns in a "very partisan, very bitter" GOP primary that dealt with neither "what is good for the district nor for the country."
While Ose and McClintock were pummeling each other with political haymakers, Brown quietly continued courting voters in the heavily Republican district.
Brown, a retired lieutenant colonel who won the Air Force's Distinguished Flying Cross for service in the Vietnam War, is running a campaign heavily focusing on the needs of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been a fierce critic of the war in Iraq, where his son has served Air Force tours.
McClintock, who has spent 22 years in the Legislature representing a Southern California district, campaigned as a "true conservative" who reflects the values of the 4th Congressional District. He pledged to return to sound fiscal principles in Congress, accusing fellow Republicans of abandoning their principles in running up huge deficits.
The winner in November will replace a man who was once the sixth most powerful representative in Congress. Doolittle won election to nine consecutive terms and built a formidable regional political coalition.
But Doolittle announced his retirement earlier this year in the face of an FBI investigation into his dealings with disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Brown announced his second bid for the seat last September with a pledge to direct 5 percent of his campaign contributions to veterans groups and causes. The goodwill gesture was a dig at Doolittle, who drew criticism for paying his wife a 15 percent commission on money she brought in for the congressman's campaigns.
Without a wounded Doolittle in the race, Brown battles skepticism that he can win in a district where the GOP holds a 17 percentage point advantage over Democrats in voter registration.
He is running television ads promoting the campaign theme "patriotism over partisanship" and touting his military service and work on behalf of veterans.
As Ose launched attack ads depicting U.S. troops and pummeling McClintock for voting against veterans benefits in the state Legislature, Brown assailed both candidates as "undignified" campaigners more concerned about politics than the needs of returning soldiers.
Though an outsider in the district, McClintock said he could better connect with local voters than Brown by echoing "the Reagan message of limited government."
"When Charlie Brown came within three points of defeating John Doolittle, I was on the same ballot running for lieutenant governor," McClintock said. "And in the 4th District, I received 36,000 more votes than Charlie Brown."
Brown and McClintock were drawing similar vote totals on Tuesday.
Call Peter Hecht, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5539.
