Sneak preview: The 11th District campaign

A press release that showed up in my e-mail today gives a pretty good indicator of how the 11th District Congressional campaign will be run.

Dean Andal, the former Assemblyman, who is challenging Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Pleasanton, will try to make this a campaign about economics, specifically taxes. His campaign has already chastised McNerney for favoring the "largest tax increase in history" — which is misleading at best.

That's really a reference, which will likely appear in stump speeches from now until November, to McNerney's desire to let large chunks of the Bush tax cuts (which went mostly to the wealthiest Americans) expire. McNerney's actually come out in favor of a reduction to and possible eventual abolition of the estate tax, as well as keeping his earmark requests to projects that seem mostly worthwhile to the district (list here).

"The Club for Growth PAC" — a group that favors making the Bush tax cuts permanent, school vouchers and all manner of deregulation — has given its gold star to the fiscally conservative and anti-tax Andal, while portraying McNerney as a "Nancy Pelosi look-alike" up to his ears in pork.

Expect the rest of Andal's 11th District campaign to follow this blueprint.