By any reasonable measure, Loretta Sanchez’s May entrance into California’s U.S. Senate race shouldn’t have made for especially compelling news. Sanchez, a ten-term Democratic congresswoman from Orange County, has always been a somewhat comic figure, known more for scheduling ill-advised fundraisers at the Playboy Mansion and sending out eccentric Christmas cards featuring her cat than for any substantive accomplishments. Cementing that image, she even managed to bollix her campaign announcement, accidentally e-mailing out a rough draft to supporters days before she was set to make it official.
Given her marginal status, no one expects Sanchez to pose much of a threat to California attorney general Kamala Harris, the prohibitive favorite in the race to succeed retiring senator Barbara Boxer. But while Sanchez’s candidacy might not alter the dynamics of the general-election race in this deep-blue state, it does mark a turning point in California politics: the moment when long-simmering ethnic and racial tensions within the Democratic party spill out into the open.
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