If anyone thought the issues of contraception and women's reproductive rights disappeared from the 2012 political campaigns after Rick Santorum was vanquished from the Republican presidential race, TV ads during the Olympics for Rep. Lois Capps indicate that those issues are very much alive entering the fall congressional campaign.

In one of two ads being shown during Olympics coverage aired on KSBY, the NBC affliiate station in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, Capps focuses exclusively on women's health issues. It is a departure from typical campaign ads of the recent past, which seldom on either side of the issue have dealt with abortion, other than perhaps a pro forma statement that a given pro-choice candidate will "aways support a women's right to choose."

Capps' ad is exclusively devoted to women's health issues, beginning with a narrator saying, "They are our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and friends. That's why Lois Capps opposes the partisan politics that threaten these women." It goes on to state that the Democratic congresswoman "is always there" to support abortion rights, to oppose attempts to block access to birth control and to preserve federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Campaign spokesman Jeff Millman told me that voters in the Central Coast's 24th District are very much aware of the "pretty audacious attacks on contraception" that have been made in the Republican-led House of Representatives and were the subject of much discussion during the GOP presidential primary.

"These issues that have been settled for a long time have been reopened by Republicans," he said. "With the partisans in Washington, these issues are very real."

The Capps campaign believes so strongly that these issues are of importance to voters that it decided to dedicate much of a substantial Olympics-coverage television ad buy to highlight them. It's a noteworthy decision, and it will be interesting to see if other Democratic congressional candidates follow suit as the fall campaigns unfold.

A memo from the Democratic polling firm Tuchin Research, released to me this week by the campaign of 26th Congressional District Democratic candidate Julia Brownley, confirms what most knowledgeable observers have said about the Ventura County District since it was created last summer: It's a toss-up district with a very slight Democratic tilt.

The live telephone poll of 400 likely November voters, conducted July 15-19, shows Brownley leading 48 percent to 44 percent over Republican Tony Strickland. It's an encouraging number for Brownley, but hardly one to make Strickland start to panic. The lead is within the poll's margin of error of +/- 4.9 percent.

The mix of respondents was 41 percent Democrats, 37 percent Republicans and 22 percent independents. That's almost exactly the actual registration spread between Democrats and Republicans; on Election Day, the spread typically narrows because GOP voters tend to turn out better than Democrats.

The poll illustrates why the district has been seen as a battleground from the outset. The presidential vote is 50 percent for Barack Obama, 45 percent for Mitt Romney, and asked a generic question about whether they would vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress, respondents split 46 percent to 42 percent for a Democrat.

In their memo, pollsters Ben Tulchin and Ben Krompak, say the results confirm "the Democratic-leaning nature of the district" and assert that Brownley is "as well positioned as any congressional Democratic candidate in the country to capture a seat currently held by a Republican." (Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, now represents most of the area inside the new district.)

Tulchin told me yesterday the poll reveals a sharp "partisan polarization" of district voters, suggesting that the outcome will likely be determined by the 19 percent of district voters who are independents. He said the poll showed Brownley with a slight lead among independents.

Strickland campaign strategist Joe Justin, noting that the poll followed a campaign season in which Brownley and her supporters campaigned aggressively, said the results were surprising only in that they did not show the Democrat to be in a stronger position. "She and her Super PAC supporters mailed over 36 attack pieces against Linda Parks, and spent hundreds of thousands on cable. I'm surprised she's this weak," Justin wrote in an email answering my request for a response.

Catching up after two weeks of summer vacation, spent mostly on golf courses and riding the rapids on Idaho's Payette River -- and thinking hardly at all about politics and campaigns...

PAVLEY POLL: One of the most striking results of the June primary -- and one that revealed the extent of massive indifference by Democratic voters around the state -- was in the east county's 27th Senate District, where little-known first-time candidate Todd Zink, who spent almost no money, outpolled Democratic incumbent Sen. Fran Pavley.

What was up with that? The Republican spin, of course, was that the results revealed Pavley's weakness in a district that's much more competitive than any she's run in before. The Democratic spin was that it was simply an indication of two things: Republican turnout was vastly higher than Democratic turnout, and that the hard-core partisan voters who participated in the primary strictly followed party lines.

Pavley strategist Parke Skelton sends along a polling memo that suggests the November election will be a far different story. The poll, conducted by Goodwin Simon Strategic Research, surveyed 404 likely general election voters early this month. It showed Pavley with a 9-point lead, 42 percent to 33 percent, in the out-of-the-box first question on candidate preference. Significantly, the poll said that the voters surveyed who participated in the primary were evenly divided -- just as they were on Election Day. So all of Pavley's lead is attributable to voters who did not vote in June but, based on their past voting history, are considered likely to vote in the fall. One big number in that category: independents, very few of whom ever vote in primaries, favored Pavley by 24 percentage points.

Matt Rexroad, strategist for the campaign of Zink, an L.A.. County prosecutor and an officer in the Marine Corps Reserves, was unimpressed. He pointed to the election results -- which he called "better than a poll" -- and noted that Pavley was one of only two Democratic incumbents in June who did not finish first in the primary. The other was Assemblyman Roger Hernandez, who was dealing with the fallout from a drunk-driving arrest.

The polling memo says Pavley's lead expanded after respondents were read positive statements about each candidate taken from their websites, and expanded still more after respondents were read likely attacks against Pavley as a "tax-and-spend liberal" and an "environmental extremist." The poll's conclusion: "Pavley should win this seat in November."

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY, MONEY: I'll write more on this later after I've had a chance to personally pore through their second quarter financial reports, but the campaigns of 26th District Democratic congressional candidate Julia Brownley and the Republican National Congressional Committee have issued their own spins on the report.

The RNCC points to the bottom line: GOP candidate Tony Strickland has more than
$1 million cash on hand entering the general election campaign, while Brownley, after having to spend heavily in the primary, has a little more than $300,000 in the bank.

Brownley's campaign focuses on the fact that Brownley outraised Strickland in the second quarter, $640,000 to $609,000 -- and that she raised considerably more from contributors in Ventura County. By the count of the Brownley campaign, she had 538 individuals from Ventura County who contributed to her campaign, compared to just 80 for Strickland.

NOT YOUR USUAL CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE: I've read my share of campaign press releases over the years, but can't remember ever reading anything quite like the one recounting Oxnard Councilwoman Carmen Ramirez' event at which she officially announced she is running for mayor.

The event took place in downtown Oxnard, the release says, "as a light tropical rain fell over the city, leaving behind a vista of coral-streaked clouds that lent itself to the generous ambiance of the evening."

Don't know how big of a voting bloc they are, but I'd say Ramirez probably starts the campaign with a lead among the city's poets.

STEM-WINDER IN STORE FOR COUNTY DEMOCRATS: It's the time of year when political parties do their best to fire up loyalists for the coming campaign season, and Ventura County Democrats have lined up a firebrand for their Kennedy Legacy Dinner on Aug. 17 at the Ventura Beach Marriot. She is Rep. Maxine Waters, the tough-talking congresswoman from Los Angeles.

STRICKLAND BACKS A DEMOCRAT?: I had to do a quick doubletake when I saw the email from Democrat Edward Headington, the Assembly candidate running in Simi Valley's 38th District, announcing he had been endorsed by "Strickland."

It's true -- he has received the backing of Hart School Board member Paul Strickland, who was an unsuccessful GOP candidate in the June primary. He has not, however, received the endorsement of Sen. Tony Strickland -- although Tony Strickland is not likely to play any role in the race because Republican winner Scott Wilk is still steaming over Tony Strickland's decision to endorse Patricia McKeon in the primary. Until then, Wilk -- the man who gave Tony Strickland his first job in the office of then-Assemblyman Tom McClintock -- had what he considered to be a close, personal relationship with the Moorpark senator.

When the California Citizens Redistricting Commission was holding hearings and collecting public input last year, there were any number of local civic groups that came before commissioners to offer sincere but unhelpful opinions. Ditto for several city councils and local government entities. In most cases, these folks had some vague ideas about what they wanted, but no knowledge of actual job that the commission had to perform and not a clue about the rules they had to follow or even an awareness that the fundamental purpose of redistricting was to equalize the number of residents in each new district it created.

On the Central Coast, there was one striking exception: the community-organizing group CAUSE, which presented the commission with a detailed vision of what it believed new political districts should look like, accompanied by data and arguments rooted in law.

The person most responsible for shaping that vision was a community organizer named Chris Lanier, a New York-raised former actor who learned the art of grassroots organizing on the streets of Brooklyn. He was relatively new to California, having come here in 2008, when he worked on the state Senate campaign of Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson.

Under Lanier's leadership, CAUSE developed a coherent set of principles it believed that redistricting efforts should reflect. Chiefly, it argued that large concentrations of low-income workers, largely Latinos who work in the agricultural industry, in the Santa Clara Valley and on the Oxnard Plain should not have their interests diluted by being split into separate political districts. It drew proposed maps that met the population requirements, and presented economic and cultural data to back up its argument that these areas constituted a community of common interests.

CAUSE didn't get everything it wanted. But its arguments clearly had an impact on the commission, which in the end created both a state Senate and a congressional district that united those two communities. As a result, politicial candidates in those districts this fall and for the rest of this decade will have to reach out to groups of voters that have historically been largely ignored or taken for granted.

Chris Lanier died last week, at age 50, after a year of battling cancer. It's clear that he made a lasting impression. In an email to CAUSE supporters, executive director Marcos Vargas informed them about Lanier's passing. "Chris' passion for social justice brought him to CAUSE and made CAUSE a more powerful and special place," Vargas wrote. "Chris was an amazing man and a passionate warrior for social justice!"

Assemblyman Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, adjourned the Assembly in Lanier's memory one day last week. Lanier replaced Williams at CAUSE, and Williams has no hesitation about praising the skills of his successor. "He took the job I had to a whole new level," Williams told me.

There have been a number of tributes to Lanier written on Facebook and elsewhere over the last several days. Perhaps the most moving among them included this quote from Lanier, describing the work to which he committed his life.

Politicians will let you down and the petty personal bullshit will drive you crazy, and absolutely none of that matters compared to the importance of the work we do. Politics affects real people's lives and you have to look beyond individual cycles, candidates, and personal vendettas at the broader agenda you are trying to enact.