Dan Lungren and Ami Bera are locked in a tighter than tight race. (Photos: Republican Conference and Randy Bayne via Flickr)

Democrat Ami Bera is currently up by 184 votes over incumbent Republican Dan Lungren in the District 7 House Race. And while the outcome of that particular contest is not going to determine control of Congress or anything; and while you are, also, not exactly in the habit of ascribing actual human emotions to people running for office…

If you put yourself in the place of the two candidates beyond the remembrance of their depictions in campaign ads that interrupted “Here Comes Honey Boo,” you may eventually get to a place where you realize how, for the contestants, such a close race must really suck.

Here’s Scott Shafer’s interview with Steve Westly about what it was like emotionally to get snagged on this type of nailbiting vote count, and what the candidates who do face from a logistical standpoint.

“You’ve been running with every bit of energy you have for two years nonstop and you finally get to election day and your whole psyche is based on are you going to win or not, and then you realize you’re in a close race, and you watch into the wee hours of the morning. And in my case, they literally, county by county, dismissed the vote counters at midnight or one and they still had votes to count and it was still a tie. So you’re stuck… It dragged on for I believe 21 days, and it is a little nervewracking…”

Scott Shafer interviews Steve Westly:

(Brendan Smialowski/AFT/Getty Images)

The recent redrawing of California’s congressional districts would seem to favor Democratic candidates in this deep-blue state.

But there are still 11 competitive House seats across California, and there’s a dogfight under way for every one of them, in large part because Democrats need 25 House seats to take control of Congress from Republicans. So national political groups on both sides are dumping buckets of campaign cash into races here in hopes of maximizing gains — or limiting their losses.

One of the more hotly contested races is in the Sacramento area’s 7th Congressional District. In fact, it’s considered one of the most competitive in the country

Volunteer Judy Vonn is working the phones for Democratic candidate and physician Ami Bera, who is challenging GOP incumbent Dan Lungren for a second time.

“I think he has a good chance. The polls are showing him neck-in-neck now,” Vonn says. “He ran in the last election and lost, but there’s been some redistricting and he has a much better chance this time.”

The closer the race, the more expensive it gets; in fact, it’s looking to be the most expensive race in the state.

“The Super PACs are going to play on both sides in this election,” says Ami Bera. “I think they’re going to end up neutralizing each other, and I think this election is going to come down to a battle of ideas.”

Bera’s view may seem optimistic to some. He lost to Dan Lungren in 2010 after a massive last-minute ad buy from GOP operative Karl Rove’s Super PAC, American Crossroads.

Bera’s campaign manager Josh Wolf warns of the media onslaught by outside money, but says the campaign is ready. “We have the luxury of foresight this time.”

Wolf says the campaign has worked hard to get Bera and his message out early — before the television blitz. But, as it turns out, many outside groups are spending for Bera this time.

A Democratic Super PAC joined with the Service Employees International Union in shelling out nearly $500,000 for an attack ad. In the ad, the voiceover says, “Dan Lungren got $3 million in campaign cash from Wall Street and special interests, and made a half-million a year as a corporate lobbyist.”

Then, Bera got hit by the National Republican Congressional Committee, which said, “A doctor should know better, but Ami Bera is a politician now.”

Outside groups have so far spent more than $4 million on the race — that’s on top of what the candidates are spending on their own.

The Democratic and Republican Congressional Committees are together spending at least $11 million on television ads in Sacramento’s media market alone.

Outside spending can have a big impact on a House race, because Congressional races are relatively inexpensive compared with a statewide or national campaign.

There’s “a lot of bang for your buck,” according to Viveca Novak of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign spending. “It’s also often the case that when you go on the attack you’re liable to exaggerate or sometimes say something outright false,” she adds.

Case in point: a cartoonish ad portraying Jose Hernandez, the Democratic challenger in the 10^th Congressional District that encompasses Modesto. In the ad, it might sound like Hernandez is a voting member of Congress — but he’s not.

The voiceover says, “Jose supported the stimulus with bonuses for AIG and thinks the new healthcare law is good medicine … This November say ‘no’ to Jose.”

American Action Network — a conservative nonprofit group in Washington, DC — sponsored the ad. Hernandez, a former astronaut, is challenging Republican incumbent Jeff Denham in what is shaping up to be another money-filled race.

Meanwhile, there’s a tight contest just next door in the redrawn 9^th Congressional District that includes Stockton. Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney is trying to hold off a challenge from 25-year-old GOP newcomer Ricky Gill, who is benefiting from a good deal of outside cash.

“It has emerged as one of the more competitive races — not only in the state, but in the country — which is not something the Democrats had planned for,” Scarpinato says, adding that Democrats and their allies may have to spend money they hadn’t planned on to bolster McNerney.

Up the road, in the 3^rd District, stretching from Rio Vista in the south to Willows and Orland in the north, there’s a fourth closely-watched contest, and this one is also keeping Democrats on their toes. But so far there’s not much outside spending against Democratic incumbent John Garamendi or Republican Kim Vann.

But Novak says that could soon change. “There are some groups that are holding onto their money,” she says. “In the coming weeks if you’re not being inundated already by these ads — look out.”

And voter beware — because it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know who is behind all the advertising. Daniel Newman, president of Maplight.org, which analyses money in politics, says  while there are many people representing the ideas of large donors, no one is representing the voters’ ideas.

“The whole livelihood of our state and our country is on the line with each election, and so a few million dollars … is trivial compared to what that can buy.”

And what can it buy? Says Newman: a lot of influence over policies and laws that ultimately benefit big donors who may have little, if anything, to do with these California districts, or the needs of the people living there.

Rep. Dan Lungren and Dr. Ari Bera are campaigning to represent the newly drawn 7th Congressional district in northern California. (Photos: Republican Conference and Randy Bayne via Flickr)

When Republican Rep. Dan Lungren faced a crowd of Tea Party supporters and Democratic detractors at a recent town hall meeting in the town of Carmichael, outside Sacramento, the arguments showed how explosive the Medicare debate can get in the hottest races in the country.

At La Sierra Community Center, the long line of seemingly irritated constituents made clear just what is on the minds of voters here: the Republican proposal to give future beneficiaries, those currently 55 and younger, a fixed amount of money to buy Medicare coverage from the government or private insurance companies.

Standing at a podium in the auditorium, Margie Metzler, a 67-year-old woman with the group Seniors Against Lungren, told Lungren that she had been laid off at age 61 and went four years without health insurance until she qualified for Medicare. “I don’t want to kick the people under 55 under the bus,” Metzler said of Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.

A few moments later, another woman took to the microphone with this reprimand: “All you protesters can think about is where your next government entitlement is going to come from. Rome is burning and you’re all acting like children.”

And those were the polite exchanges.

Eastern Sacramento is where the two Californias come together — where the liberal, urban coast meets the conservative exurbs and rural farmland. Lungren has had a safe seat in Congress in large part due to the district’s Republican majority.

But following the 2010 census, an independent state commission redrew the district’s boundaries, resulting in an even split. Each party has 39 percent of registered voters. And with Lungren facing a challenge from Dr. Ami Bera, a local physician running against him for the second time, this patch of California has emerged as a test case as to how potent the fight over Medicare — and health care in general – will be in the 2012 election cycle.

“Lungren and Bera are very effective stand-ins for the two sides of the national debate,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

For his part, Lungren spent much of the town hall explaining the Republican position, saying that Medicare would be modeled after the health program for federal employees, relying on private insurance companies to negotiate lower costs with medical providers. “No one will be denied Medicare,” Lungren told the standing-room-only crowd.

Democrats, from President Barack Obama to incumbent members of Congress, cast themselves as a buffer against a Republican-sponsored, post-Medicare apocalypse. In recent weeks, many Democrats have seemingly shed their trepidations about supporting Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, the Affordable Care Act.

But Bera has been championing that message for the last two years.

In local television advertisements and “senior-to-senior” phone banks, Bera has been eager to tout the law’s benefits and remind voters here, where unemployment hovers near 11 percent, what they would lose if the law was repealed. Parents could no longer keep their children on their health insurance policies until age 26, he tells them; insurance companies could once again charge women higher premiums than men; and preventive care would cost more.

“We’ve started to move forward and build off what’s good,” said Bera. “For me, the next step is to address the cost of care.”

Bera was a newcomer to politics in 2010 when he ran a surprisingly strong campaign against Lungren, losing by 7 percentage points in a year in which Republicans made record gains in the House. But in this year’s rematch, Bera is placing greater emphasis on his medical background. He served as chief medical officer for a large California hospital chain and later in the Sacramento County public health department, tasked with providing medical care for some 225,000 uninsured people.

“As a doctor, I’ve sat with patients who have had to choose which prescriptions they could afford to fill,” said Bera during an interview at his Elk Grove, Calif., campaign headquarters. “I understand how important closing the doughnut hole is,” he said, referring to a provision in the federal health law that reduces out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for some Medicare beneficiaries.

Some health policy analysts have wondered why many Democrats have waited so long to start explaining the law to voters.

“If supporters of the Affordable Care Act would take this issue head on then I think they could change public opinion,” said Henry Aaron, a senior fellow of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. “There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what the act does and how it would affect the lives of most Americans.”

That strategy could prove successful in a statewide campaign in California — a recent Field Poll found that 54 percent of registered voters support the Affordable Care Act while 37 percent oppose it. But here in eastern Sacramento County, it is a riskier tactic, where roughly one in five voters in the newly drawn 7th congressional district identify as independent voters.

Schnur, a veteran of Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid, says it’s unlikely the fulminating over Medicare and the federal health law will appeal to many of California’s independents. “Congressional candidates use the issue to motivate their own party’s base,” he said. “They’re not using it as an issue to attract swing voters.”

As of mid-September, polls show a tight race, despite major spending on both sides by independent committees. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has listed the district at the top of its “Red to Blue” target list, and the American Action Network, a conservative political advocacy group, has sponsored pro-Lungren mailers telling seniors that Lungren “is fighting to protect Medicare for California seniors.”

That hasn’t stopped Bera supporter Bob Ireland, a 75-year-old retiree and Medicare beneficiary, from trying to persuade some of his contemporaries to vote for the Democrat. At a recent senior-to-senior phone bank at Bera’s campaign headquarters, Ireland spoke from personal experience as he tried to sell them on his candidate, telling them the benefits of the Affordable Care Act that he’s received as a senior on Medicare.

“I just had an annual physical,” Ireland said on a recent call, “and I didn’t pay a cent.”