2013 Marks 40 Years Since Bannai Special Election

Above, Governor Reagan with the Bannai family during the special election campaign..

Forty years ago in 1973, the GOP took an assembly district that was considered "safe" to the Democratic Party in a special election.

The special election was called for as the incumbent state assemblyman, Larry Townsend, suddenly passed away of a massive heart attack.    The district was the 67th Assembly District.

The primary campaign began with a number of Democrats contesting for their party's nomination, to be held in May with the general election to be held in June. 

On the Republican side, there were three candidates, George Reis (who ran unsuccessfully against Townsend the year before), Mike Halliwell and Gardena City Councilman Paul T. Bannai.

The district included Hawthorne, Lawndale, Gardena, Torrance and parts of unincorporated county areas.

At the time, I was a student at El Camino College at the "ripe old age" of 19.  I had worked in the Nixon campaign in Hawthorne the previous year and after that election, things were kind of dull outside of studies.  I was also working at Old Towne Mall (now gone) in Torrance at the time.

At El Camino, a group of us from the Nixon campaign banded together to form the Young Republicans.   (We formally applied for a charter with the Los Angeles County Young Repubicans (LACYR) during this time.)  We discussed the upcoming special election campaign and we agreed that Bannai had the best chance to win with his name recognition and his ability to raise funds for the campaign.  So, we all got involved in the Bannai for Assembly campaign.

As we figured, Bannai won the GOP nomination.  On the Democrat side, Torrance City Treasurer Thomas Rupert (left) won his party's nomination.  However, what people didn't know at the time, he didn't actually live in the 67th Assembly District.

Rupert rented an apartment in the 67th district in order to run for the assembly seat while still maintaining his actual residence outside of it.

Fortunately, we had some excellent and experienced campaign management who saw this as an opportunity to put Rupert on the defensive.  The campaign arranged to have Rupert's in-district apartment photographed as well as his real residence, a single-unit house. 

The Gods must have been on our side when our photographer went to Rupert's home; he photographed it with a car parked in the driveway with a Rupert bumper sticker.

The Democrats have a history of having opportunistic candidates "carpetbagging" their way into other districts.  (Bannai had to face another carpetbagger in 1974 by the name of Maurice "Jack" Mayesh, who was backed by the Henry Waxman-Howard Berman machine.  One can see how pleased I was when Berman was defeated by Brad Sherman last year.)

The Bannai campaign sent out numerous mailers showing the in-district apartment and the out-of-district home with the question boldly asking, "Should our elected officials obey the law?" 

Governor Ronald Reagan and Lt. Governor Ed Reinecke made appearances in support of the Bannai campaign.

As it turned out, the voters didn't think too highly of the carpetbagging issue and Bannai won the special general election by a comfortable margin (54% to 41%).  Plus, it didn't hurt that Bannai was a popular city councilman in Gardena with a lot of name recognition.

Above, Diane Booth and Armand discussing the chartering of the Young Republican of El Camino College with  David Lorenzen, LACYR Chairman at the Ambassador Hotel in June 1973.  Photo courtesy of The Trunkline.

A week or so after the election, while at a political picnic, Bannai asked me to join his district office staff as a field representative.  This I did (on and off, college permitting) for the following two years.   It was while serving in this capacity that I "learned the ropes" of press relations, which has come in handy in the succeeding years.

Above, Field Representative Armand Vaquer (left) presents Assemblyman Bannai with a
stuffed frog novelty he picked up during a vacation in September 1974.  

In 1974, the redistricting of California legislative districts put Bannai into the newly-formed 53^rd Assembly District.  This new district did not favor the Republican Party as much as the old 67^th District in registration.  But Bannai was able to hold onto his office until 1980 when he ran against an aide to State Senator Ralph Dills, Richard Floyd (a rather crude and buffoonish character, but that’s still another story).

It was while I was listening to the radio and some songs came on from that period that jogged my memory.   It suddenly hit me that this year will be the 40th anniversary of that special election victory.

UPDATE:  I sent this blog post to the Gardena Valley News.  Perhaps they will do their own story on the 40th anniverary of the Bannai special election.  We (in Bannai's district office) used to have a lot of contact with the Gardena Valley News, particularly with Polly Warfield.  She was one great lady!