Unless they're already committed ideologically one way or another, Americans tend to think highly of political moderates. They like the words independent, bipartisan, compromise, and nonpartisan. They cringe when they hear about extremists, die-hards, polarization and hardcore ideologues.

Linda Parks fits the popular definition of moderate. She's a Democrat-turned Republican who has served Ventura County as a supervisor. Now she's a Republican-turned-independent as she runs for Congress.

Her independence was the focus of a recent Star column that asked, "In polarized politics, is there room on the equator?"

She has what on the surface appears to be a compelling message at a time when the approval rating for Congress among California voters stands at 17 percent.

Her message: Congress is broken and the war between parties has rendered it dysfunctional. "The extreme partisanship in Congress diminishes their very ability to legislate," she writes on her campaign website.

Beneath the surface it may not be a clear cut case of an independent person trying to bring common sense to Washington, an image Parks would like to portray. Surely a catalyst behind her nonpartisan registration is that neither party wanted her. I'm probably too cynical to think that if the GOP establishment was going to get 100% percent behind her that she would reject their financial and organizational assistance so she could remain independent. It's easy to go your own way when nobody else wants to go with you.  

Circumstances may have chosen independence for her, just as electoral politics may have decided her switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party so many years ago when she was a Democrat eyeing a seat in a Republican district. She wisely switched parties and became a successful location politician. But her heart didn't seem to change with her party registration.

All that's required to be a "moderate," according to the prevailing wisdom that almost everyone accepts, is that you cross party lines from time-to-time. That you "play things down the middle."

Under that definition, Parks is indeed a moderate. She was a liberal Republican who often sided with Democrats and was at odds with Ventura County's conservative Republican establishment.  But, while she's proven to be flexible as far as party registration has occurred, is she moderate in her political beliefs?

She has a strong environmental record that will appeal to Democrats and most independents in the district.

Until earlier this month, when she had to change her voter registration so that she could run as an independent, Parks was a registered Republican. She may now be able to appeal to disaffected Republicans based on such issues as her support for a woman's ability "as a last resort" to choose to have an abortion "without government interference."

That's an apt summary of her ideology. She's a pro-choice environmentalist, and she won't say if she prefers Pelosi or Boehner. That's nice, but that's hardly middle of the road on the liberal/conservative spectrum.

Here's the problem with labeling someone as a middle-of-the road moderate because they are ideologically inclined one way but registered another way.

Anyone who's read anything I've written would call me a committed conservative. Probably a hard-core conservative Republican, or a right winger. They'd say I'm anything but moderate.

But all I would have to do to become a "moderate," using the prevailing definition, would be to change my party registration to Democrat.

Then, even though I've retained every single right-wing belief I have, I'd suddenly be working across the aisle since I'd be a Democrat that finds Republican legislation palatable. In other words, in order to get praised by the public as a moderate, I just have to hide from them my true beliefs!

And so it is with Linda Parks. From what I can see, she never dropped her liberal beliefs when she left the Democratic Party to run in a Republican district. When pointing out that she also has beliefs on the right side of the aisle, we're told that well, she's pro-choice. If that's her biggest GOP credential, then she must not have had to do much soul-searching for her to drop her Republican registration.

Ironically, I'm a real moderate. While Parks is crafty enough to avoid saying whether Pelosi or Boehner is better, I'll tell you straight up that they both drive me nuts. I'll tell you that George W. Bush and Barack Obama have spent and are spending the country into oblivion.

As far as my political preference is concerned, the aforementioned big spending Obama isn't going to get my vote, even though I think he's a genius and an effective leader. He's just going in the wrong direction. And though I'm called a conservative, I'm not sold on Santorum since I don't think he has enough executive experience to make me comfortable with him running a huge bureaucracy. Nor do I think he can beat the Obama machine. Romney has proven to be an effective executive, but I think Romneycare was a disaster. I love Paul's fiscal policies but his foreign policy would be national suicide. Gingrich has the right policies and the chops to run an organization, but I have problems with his morality.

Isn't that how a real moderate thinks?

The twenty-plus point blowout surprised almost all observers of the race between Audra Strickland and Linda Parks, and speculation has begun on the cause of the rout.

What did the polls say before the race started?

The first question to ask is: was Strickland doomed from the start, or did something happen during the campaign that cost her victory?

Back in January, before Strickland officially entered the race, a poll was paid for by Strickland allies that seemed to indicate the termed out assemblywoman would be competitive. However, the Ventura County Star labeled it a push poll, indicating that it would artificially make Strickland appear to be more competitive with Parks.

The Ventura County Deputy Sheriffs' Association, a Parks ally, polled in February and showed that voters had a "toxic" level of negative views about Strickland just before she launched her campaign.  Marc O'Hara, who owns the company that conducted the poll said Linda Parks had the much easier path to victory and estimated that if the election were held in February, Parks would get 52 percent of the vote.

His poll showed that 58.5 percent of registered voters had a positive opinion of Parks compared to Strickland's 45.6 percent.

The final vote tally was 61 percent for Parks and 38 percent for Strickland. After seeing the results of the poll, Dr. Herb Gooch said:

"If I were running Audra Strickland's campaign, I'd be worried," he said. "She's got a lot of work to do. ... In order to win, she's got to not only project herself on the positives, but she's got to build up Parks' negatives, which should tell you it's not going to be a very pleasant campaign."

Gooch considered the O'Hara poll a "rough estimate" of the attitudes of the voters of the 2^nd District. Were voters turned off that Strickland flirted with running for three different offices? Did they disapprove that she would have to move into the district to be eligible to run? Did they not like her performance in the Assembly? The poll can't provide those answers.

If the poll--and we should be wary of both polls as they were paid for by people with interests in the race--indicated a close race in February where Parks would have started off with 52 percent of the vote, and she ultimately won with 61 percent of the vote, we must assume that something happened during the campaign to widen the gap.

What happened during the race?

Two of the main characteristics about the campaign were that it was expensive and contentious. There were numerous attack mailers, debate standoffs, allegations of carpetbagging, and allegations of campaign finance violations. Both sides engaged in each of those, but--assuming Strickland and Parks started off about even, as the above section would attest--voters sided with Parks convincingly. Why?

It seems voters associated Strickland more with each of those points of contention above. Her supporters did spend much more money on negative mailers. The Star opined:

In response, voters expressed disgust at the sheer volume of the mailers, the harsh negativity and the apparent high cost. Many complained that hundreds of thousands of dollars were being squandered in a bid to replace one Republican with another -- in a nonpartisan office -- instead of spending those resources in key partisan races.

Mrs. Parks even turned the withering negativity to her own advantage. She issued mailers identifying contributors to the opposition, and suggested that the onslaught was evidence that special interests aimed to defeat her. It is overly simplistic to say that voters re-elected Mrs. Parks to repudiate negative politicking. But if that was only a part of it, we approve.

When the Star endorsed Parks, one of the main reasons they gave was that Strickland didn't come off well by backing out of a debate and by agreeing to a subsequent debate where the objectivity of the moderator was called into question.

Another theory is not that voters rejected negativism, but that the mailers' messages didn't strike a chord.

"So much of the negatives were also generalized. If you are going to attack people, you better make it local," Dr. Gooch said.

Voters agreed with all eleven recommendations of the editorial board of the Ventura County Star. It either has an uncanny finger on the pulse of Ventura County (and the state), or its coverage is so trusted that voters take it to heart when they vote.

The Star endorsed Geoff Dean, Linda Parks, Peter Foy, Steven Hintz, Mark Lunn, and Paul Blatz. All five candidates were the top vote-getters in their respective races (although Hintz will face a runoff in November).

All five of the Star's recommendations on the props came to fruition as well.

It should be noted that the Star isn't trying to predict victory--it's merely selecting who the best candidate would be for each office. Voters overwhelmingly agreed with the newspaper, particularly with the surprisingly large wins for Dean and Parks who were involved in tough races. It's difficult to assign cause-and-effect as to whether the Star's coverage influenced the outcome or ran parallel to voter attitudes. [continue reading]

The Ventura County Star has the most local election coverage, and its endorsements carry weight with voters. As the resident Republican blogger, I tallied up the endorsements to see where the Star stands on this side of the aisle, and I don't seem much to complain about.

In their county-level endorsements, the Star endorsed two moderate Republicans and three conservative Republicans. As far as the Republican power structure is concerned, which revolves around State Senator Tony Strickland and his wife Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, in five county races the Star endorsed only two of the establishment's preferred candidates.

I think it's fair to say that the Star doesn't mind endorsing Republicans, even conservatives, but they are wary of the party establishment. It's a good thing that newspaper is watching the establishment--I wish the national media would do the same to President Obama.

In all races but one, the Star's recommendations were pretty general, in the "all the candidates are great, but we prefer this guy" vein. The Supervisor race is different--the Star's language was strongly worded--for both sides--in its endorsement of Linda Parks.

We don't agree with all of her decisions, and she deserves criticism for being intransigent at times, but she also merits approval for working to control county spending, saving taxpayer dollars while maintaining public services, and building up a reserve fund large enough to meet important future needs.

Also, she has bolstered public safety, she has worked to address local needs in such areas as mental health, foster care and senior citizens, and she has created and nurtured local advisory councils to improve grass-roots representation in her district.

Her challenger, termed-out state Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, has failed to present a convincing case why voters should pick her over the incumbent.

The Star went on to say that Strickland was guilty of "political gamesmanship or worse."

Indeed, during this campaign Mrs. Strickland has not shown a level of accountability that we believe 2nd District voters expect of their elected representatives and candidates for public office.

She broke her commitment to voters to take part in a scheduled campaign debate with Mrs. Parks, offering a flimsy excuse for backing out at the last minute. Then, as efforts were being made to reschedule it, Mrs. Strickland wanted a debate moderator who had endorsed her candidacy -- an obviously unfair request, which ought to embarrass any self-respecting candidate.

Mrs. Parks, to her credit, participated in the debate even though the moderator who was ultimately selected had once been a re-election opponent of hers.

Together, those actions by Mrs. Strickland suggest that she was engaged in political gamesmanship or worse. It certainly wasn't in the best interest of 2nd District voters.

It continued:

In addition, Mrs.Strickland has benefited from an expensive, negative mail campaign conducted by the county Republican Central Committee using money from outside sources. While the committee has a right to do that, its heavy-handed smear campaign threatens to bring divisive, unproductive Sacramento-style politics to the officially nonpartisan Board of Supervisors. Why would any voter or any county resident want that?

Parks didn't escape criticism either. The Star noted the "antagonism" and "animosity" between Parks and the Thousand Oaks City Council. However, the Star concluded that these issues "are a far cry from the destructive, partisan inferno the Central Committee tried to ignite during this campaign."

See what I mean? Pretty direct language. Is it fair? I'd say an aggressive, hardball, no-prisoners approach was definitely taken and cannot be denied. That may be effective, but I've spoken to some regular conservative voters who were turned off by the negativity. It seems to have turned off the Star as well--although I don't know that the newspaper would have endorsed Audra Strickland in either case, so perhaps it might pay off politically.