Endorsements 2006

STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 12 | Wiley Nickel

It’s impossible to look at this race without feeling leftover resentment at the machinations that created Senate District 12 five years ago. As a result of cynical Sacramento gerrymandering, our district grew to encompass the Central Valley cities of Modesto and Merced, and it’s center of gravity shifted 100 miles away from us. And so both candidates for the district seat are Central Valley residents without a lot of local concerns.

Denham, the Republican incumbent, has done a surprisingly good job in Sacramento, given how green he was when he got there four years ago. Thankfully, he has focused on problem-solving rather than ideological liberal-bashing. Notably, he managed to win the chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, no small feat.

Nevertheless, we are captivated by his upstart challenger. Wiley Nickel lists his profession as “rancher/attorney,” and is the sixth-generation scion of one of the nation’s biggest ranches. (His great-great-great-grandfather was the founder of Los Banos.)

Nickel, who is all of 30, had just started his first real job as Merced County Deputy District Attorney when he quit to run for the state Senate. With an infusion of almost a quarter-million dollars of his own money, and with the endorsement of every Democrat and labor group in the state, Nickel is putting up a serious challenge to Denham (who has more than $2 million in his war chest, collected when he thought he would be facing Simón Salinas—that’s another story).

The centerpiece of Nickel’s campaign is a “Taxpayer Protection Contract,” in which he vows not to take gifts from lobbyists, nor ride in the senators’ special elevator in the state house, and promises instead to promote local control through neighborhood committees, to value compromise, and to “walk the entire district door-to-door to keep in touch.” (We must have been out when he dropped by.)

It’s an idealistic approach—perhaps naïve, but refreshing. We say let’s give the kid a chance.