Orly Taitz Clobbered in California Primary

Orly Taitz, the controversial lawyer best known for challenging President Obama’s citizenship, was apparently trounced last night in her bid for the Republican nomination for California Secretary of State.

With a little more than a third of the state’s precincts reporting, Taitz was trailing Damon Dunn by a lopsided margin of 605,783 to 205,672. Except for scenic Lake County in northern California, where she’s polling nearly 44 percent of the vote, the litigious lightning rod of the far right is being pummeled throughout the state. She’s not even garnering thirty percent in her home county. [UPDATE: With 100% of the precincts reporting, Dunn unofficially garnered 1,075,337 votes, or 74.3 percent, to 372,490, or 25.7 percent, for Taitz.]

The 49-year-old Israeli émigré, who owns several dental clinics near her home in Laguna Niguel, waged a spirited campaign for the right to challenge Democratic incumbent Debra Bowen in November.

Virtually shunned by the GOP establishment, which early on threw its support to Dunn, a former NFL player who picked up endorsements from most of the party’s establishment, Taitz claimed the support of many Tea Party activists and boasted an endorsement from the California Coalition for Immigration Reform in her bid to become the state’s top election official.

She was also a feisty, if not foolhardy, competitor who tried to have her opponent knocked off the primary ballot on the flimsy technicality that since Dunn had once registered as a Democrat while playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars back in the late 1990s, he was not eligible to enter the GOP primary.

Taitz argued that her rival was technically a Democrat until he registered as a Republican last year and was thus ineligible — according to California statute — on the grounds that he been being affiliated with another party within a year of filing to run.

If she had bothered to dig a little deeper, however, Taitz would have learned that Dunn’s voter registration in Duval County, Florida, had lapsed on June 16, 2005, and that he had registered to vote in California in March of last year — in plenty of time to qualify for this year’s primary.

Some observers believed — or maybe it was just wishful thinking — that the so-called “Birther Queen” could somehow stage a stunning upset in Tuesday’s primary because of her higher name recognition and the fact that her name was listed first on the ballot.

The Democrats were hoping for such an outcome.

“Taitz could win in a squeaker,“ wrote David Weigel of the Washington Post, adding the disclaimer that it was almost impossible to predict a low-profile race like the one between the widely-known Taitz and Dunn, a political novice.  That reasoning, which was echoed by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and other talking heads, turned out to be extremely poor punditry.

The fact is that the prominent conspiracy theorist, who ludicrously compared her own candidacy to that of Kentucky’s Rand Paul, never had a chance. Raising only $45,600 — most of it out of her own pocket — she was outspent by a seven-to-one margin and had virtually no support within the Republican organization.

Dunn, 34, virtually ignored his pesky opponent throughout the primary. “I’m not running a primary campaign against Orly Taitz,” he told Politico. “I’m just going to take the high road.”

Dunn, who grew up in an impoverished single-mother household — living with ten others in a crowded, three-bedroom mobile home — freely acknowledges that he’s a “recovering non-voter” and didn’t cast his first vote until showing up at the polls during a May 2009 special election. 

According to Orange County voter registration records, Dunn first became a qualified voter in California on March 17, 2009, when he registered as a Republican.

He reportedly waited until he was 33 to bother casting his first vote.  That’s probably not an ideal background for the person who wants to become the state’s top election official.

On the other hand, a Taitz victory last night would have created a potentially fascinating scenario in which most Republican candidates would have been forced to distance themselves from the infamous Birther during the fall campaign, thereby enabling the Libertarian Party’s Christina Tobin, the immensely well-qualified and articulate founder of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Free and Equal Elections Foundation — or perhaps one of the three other minor-party nominees — to emerge as Democrat Debra Bowen’s most serious challenger in November.

Tobin, whose candidacy has been endorsed by a wide array of activists, including Ralph Nader and Cindy Sheehan, was unopposed for the Libertarian Party’s nomination in yesterday’s primary.