In many ways, California-22 is atypical in its geographic configuration, ideological and partisan distribution, and ordering of issue salience. Democrat Lois Capps (and her campaign) successfully interpreted the relative importance of these elements and, coupled with some serendipity, she received the highest vote total in the four consecutive elections.

California-22 consists of all of San Luis Obispo County and nearly all of Santa Barbara County. The population distribution resembles a "bowtie" in that the high-density areas are at opposite ends of the district and the middle area is sparsely inhabited. There is one large military base, Vandenberg, with a focus on space flight. This area is known in California for its spectacular unspoiled coastline, wines, state parks, and relaxed lifestyle.

The Twenty-second District has been represented by a Republican continuously since World War II. However, the district has historically favored moderate Republicans. Robert Lagomarsino held the seat from 1974 to 1992, when Michael Huffington spent a surprisingly large amount of personal money for this district to win the Republican primary. Huffington vacated the seat after one term to challenge Diane Feinstein in an infamously negative and expensive race for the Senate. In 1994 Andrea Seastrand, the widow of long-time state assemblyman Eric Seastrand, won the Republican nomination in the year of a sweep by self-style Republican Revolutionaries. She differed little from her peers, favoring tax cuts, the lifting of restrictions on gun ownership, a complete ban on abortion, and reduction in the scope of federal government. The 1994 Democratic challenger was an uncharacteristic, unpolished politician: Walter Capps, a liberal religious studies professor at University of California-Santa Barbara. Capps' positions fell somewhat to the left of the district median voter whereas Seastrand's fell considerably to the right.

Seastrand's conservative floor votes on education funding, immigration, labor, abortion, and the environment pushed her far from the moderate leanings of the district and set the stage for a rematch with Capps in the 1996 election. Because of the closeness of the 1994 race and the dramatic contrast between the policy positions of the two candidates, the 1996 election attracted a large number of outside interest groups.

Moreover, both sides went negative and Seastrand in particular ran a series of negative ads. Voter reaction to this campaign tactic and a renewed attention to the northern part of the district by Capps helped him win by a respectable margin of 10,312 votes. On October 28, 1997, Walter Capps suffered a fatal heart attack, and the stage was set for the elections of 1998.

The January 13 special election to replace Walter Capps provided Republicans with a valuable opportunity to regain their seat. The apparent choice of the party was moderate Brooks Firestone, heir to a tire and winery fortune. State and national Republican leaders considered Firestone a perfect candidate for the district given his pro-choice, pro-business, and pro-environment stances. Conservatives in the district found Firestone far too liberal and characterized him as a "Christine Todd Whitman Republican." From this group emerged Tom Bordonaro, a San Luis Obispo County state assemblyman and fervent conservative. Differences between the two candidates starkly divided district Republicans and reinforced the district's regional dichotomy.

Tom Bordonaro comes from a wealthy family in Paso Robles, located at the northern end of San Luis Obispo, the conservative heart of the congressional district. Bordonaro attended Cal Poly University, and at age 18 a serious car accident left him paralyzed with limited use of his arms. The subsequent six months in hospitals gave him a strong distaste for bureaucracy and the medical establishment in general. Until surrendering his seat to compete for the Twenty-second District House seat, Bordonaro was a state assemblyman and remained a managing general partner of the family ranch.

Lois Capps had little formal experience in politics but was heavily involved in Walter Capps' life as a member of Congress. While Walter was unable to campaign during the summer of 1996, Lois Capps appeared periodically on his behalf. The challenge for the campaign was to broaden her qualifications to the greatest extent possible over a short period.

Under California law for special elections, all candidates compete in an open contest, with the top two vote getters competing in a runoff if no candidate reaches a majority in the first contest. The dynamic of the first special election was essentially an ideological battle internal to the Republican party, as neither of these candidates wanted to attack the 59-year-old widow.

Bordonaro finished ahead of Firestone in the open special election, thus earning the right to run against Lois Capps, who had received 45 percent, five percent short of winning the first contest outright. After an expensive and negative campaign, full of intervention from outside groups, Capps won the March runoff, 53.5 percent to 44.7 percent (with the remaining votes going to a Libertarian candidate). Bordonaro stated, "Now the real race starts. Now we are running against incumbent Lois Capps, not the widow Lois Capps."

The parties' primary elections, in June, were uneventful, as a Capp-Bordonaro rematch was foreordained. The fall campaign essentially did not start until Labor Day. The Capps campaign leadership was non-hierarchical and spread to include five key players. Campaign Manager Cathy Duvall, a resident of Santa Barbara, was the primary tactician but developed strategy in concert with media consultant Bill Carrick (Los Angeles), direct-mail consultant Mark Guma (New York), pollster Fred Yang (Washington), and the candidate. Also included in a number of discussions was Capps' chief of staff, Jeremy Rabinovitz. This group decided all featured issues, themes, and messages, with consensus built over iterative phone conversations and occasional conference calls. In contrast to this team strategy approach, Duvall ran the district campaign in a hierarchical, managerial fashion, in which she made most implementation decisions, noting that the campaign was "no different than any other managerial enterprise."

The Capps campaign's central strategy for positioning Bordonaro in voters' minds was to cement his far-right credentials. Ad copy featuring the phrase "too extreme for the central coast" played into the moderate leanings of the district. Bordonaro's newfound relationship with Gingrich (who had originally supported Firestone) was highlighted. When Gingrich publicly endorsed Bordonaro and agreed to a campaign stop in the late summer, Duvall had the newspaper article photocopied and distributed: "Gingrich suddenly in Bordonaro's camp," thus linking Bordonaro and Gingrich together in the minds of Democratic voters.

Capps started the general election with roughly $170,000 left from fund-raising in the special elections. Duvall never had to make a decision to delay or change some campaign expenditure due to cash flow concerns. Over the course of the general election the campaign raised a total of about $618,000 to net $787,698 ($544,705 from individuals, $239,500 from PACs, plus $3,493 from unitemized contributions).

A spending breakdown done immediately after the election shows estimated total expenditures of $772,500. Media purchases (36 percent) constituted a large part of the budget, with field/GOTV receiving 23 percent. The cash flow and fund-raising efforts were sufficient to allow Capps and Duvall to make $13,000 in contributions to other races in which there was a cash-strapped Democratic incumbent and to provide $10,000 in staff bonuses.

Overhanging the beginning of the fall campaign season was uncertainty about the electoral ramifications of Starr's report and Clinton's subsequent admission. The campaign was in the field for the September 8-9 poll when the Starr report was turned over to the House. When the data were analyzed the implications clearly frightened the campaign. The assumption for most of the summer was that some ground from the last two elections would be lost and that it would be a competitive race, but Capps had too many natural advantages to lose. This comfort level for Duvall was shattered when she got the news that the poll showed Capps and Bordonaro tied at 46 percent. A particularly disconcerting aspect of this result was that Bordonaro had done virtually no substantive campaigning to date in this fourth contest. Duvall says that this poll caused the campaign team to ring alarm bells in the district and in Washington. The fall contest was starting to look quite different from the previous three, in large part due to the Clinton scandal.

The 46/46 poll cemented the campaign strategy not to pursue registered Republicans with direct mail and phone banking. And the campaign became more active in seeking outside financial help from Emily's List, DCCC, DNC, PACs, and from members of Congress. The strong Bordonaro poll showing, in the wake of Clinton's admission also renewed the emphasis on turnout among Democrats, a common concern across many Democratic congressional campaigns.

While this period of the campaign was the most uncertain (Duvall would later say that receiving the 46/46 poll was the only time she seriously considered losing), Capps started the race with several clear advantages. She began with a large fund-raising advantage, she was an incumbent who voted very circumspectly with regards to the upcoming fall race, her campaign team remained fixed (Bordonaro switched managers), and she had an opponent that quite literally went negative on himself. Polling data and focus groups run by the Capps campaign showed that according to registered Democrats, undecideds, and independents, Bordonaro was frequently associated with the word "mean." Furthermore, there was evidence that the more this target group saw Bordonaro, the more they were reminded of his perceived meanness. It was a gift to the Capps campaign that his ads could have a positive effect for the Capps campaign among their targeted groups. In addition, the more negative the Bordonaro ads became (an inevitability), the greater this effect.

An October 25 field poll showed Capps leading Bordonaro 52 to 38. Bordonaro seemed to be trying to move to the middle as a late campaign strategy. His polls and field reports were indicating a perception that he was too far from the median district voter. These attempts were strategically sound but were too late in a four-election year. He picked issues such as social security and the environment, where his record had yet to show a substantial commitment. Moreover, Bordonaro's ads became increasingly negative in the final days, often stressing the "liberal" stance of his opponent.

The results were stronger than predicted. Capps won the district with 54.6 percent to Bordonaro's 43.5 percent. Given the bimodal nature of the district and the proportion of voters that partisan candidates get automatically (slightly over 40 percent), Bordonaro failed to reach out beyond his base. Nor did he energize Republicans in the district.

Still, when comparing the election returns from March to November, voting behavior changed very little. Despite a Washington scandal and a general election relatively free of outside groups, the voting pattern in the Twenty-Second District remained stable. This is evidence that the bimodal nature of the district is relatively insensitive to campaigning that seeks to substantively change ideological voting preferences. Instead, turnout played the pivotal role, with a minor influence from moderate voters who would not naturally fall to Capps.

To a great extent the Capps campaign was blessed by having an opponent who truly came from an extreme position, had voted consistently with that position in the state assembly, and presented himself as an acerbic voice from that position. Despite his late attempts to move towards the center, voters generally had formed strong opinions over four separate campaigns. Duvall asserted that the reason Capps was so fortunate in the choice of an opponent was that her campaign had helped frame that choice in the first special election by focusing on hurting Firestone and letting Bordonaro do his work from the other end of the ideological spectrum. Whether this was true or just fortunate, it meant that there were few difficult strategic decisions to make during the general election.