Doug Ose, surrounded by supporters, announced he was seeking the Republican nomination for the 4th Congressional District seat. Photo by Don Chaddock.
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Sacramento Republican Doug Ose, who served in the House of Representatives from 1999 to 2005 for District 3, is looking to return to Washington, D.C. with help from 4th Congressional District voters. Held for 17 years by John T. Doolittle, who has been under investigation for his ties to jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the seat was almost lost two years ago to Democrat Charlie Brown, a retired Lt. Col. of US Air Force and Roseville resident.
Lew Uhler, president of the National Tax Limitation Committee, said Ose is the best choice to unite the district’s Republicans and defeat Brown in November. To secure the Republican nomination, Ose has to get by Roseville’s Eric Egland, a U.S. Air Force Reservist and anti-terrorism consultant, former state Sen. T. Rico Oller and Nevada County’s Theodore Terbolizard. Auburn Vice Mayor Mike Holmes, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination in 2006, bowed out of the race earlier this month. Ted Gaines, a former Placer County Supervisor and current state Assemblyman, also announced he would not seek the party’s nomination to replace Doolittle. According to the Egland campaign, they raised $61,000 in the fourth quarter of 2007, bringing his total to more than $140,000. Democrat Brown has been building his war chest, raising another $200,000 by Dec. 31, 2007, raising his total for the year to $700,000. He is sitting on $483,000 in cash going into the June Primary, where he will most likely have no competition landing the Democratic nomination.
Oller is a resident of Calaveras County while Ose calls the Sacramento
area his home – neither location is within the district they hope to
represent. Ose made headlines in the Sacramento Bee recently when the metropolitan
daily newspaper reported that the retired Congressman still had nearly
$500,000 in campaign funds left over from elections in the late 1990s,
money that will be available to him to finance his bid for the District
4 seat, putting him on par with Brown and far ahead of his Republican
rivals. Ose has raised the ire of some in the conservative base of the
Republican party. He’s a District 3 delegate for moderate presidential
hopeful John McCain, a fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed. At RedCounty.com, blogger Aaron Park wrote on Jan. 31: “Doug Ose and
John McCain are also leaders in the Mainstreet Partnership, an
organziation dedicated to destroying conservatives and ‘partnering’
with Democrats.” Oller said he welcomed the competition. “I welcome his entry into this race. It means that voters will have a
clear cut choice between myself, a proven conservative and businessman,
and Doug Ose, a proven moderate and Washington, D.C. insider,” Oller
said in a statement released by his campaign. With a showing of strong support at Ose’s announcement gathering
(including every member of the Placer County Board of Supervisors, city
council members from Lincoln, Auburn and Rocklin, district attorneys
and sheriffs from Sacramento and Placer counties), Ose is seeking to
calm his critics. According to Ose’s website, polling puts him at an 11-point lead over
Oller in the GOP primary, and in a dead heat with Brown in the November
election. – Don Chaddock
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