Squid listens to the sounds of silence emanating from the local GOP over Casey Lucius

Team Player…Squid has been around long enough to be cynical about a lot of things: Imitation shrimp-meat just isn’t as flavorful as the real thing; Donald Trump may just be engaged in an elaborate piece of performance art; and even the much-celebrated COP21 agreement out of Paris is unenforceable, leaving room for nations to wriggle out of real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

But Squid generally believes that within our bitterly partisan political system, candidates can reliably count on their respective parties to have their backs. No matter how fringey they are, there’s a party machine to help them do the nitty-gritty work of campaigning: walking door-to-door to talk to voters, making phone calls to ask for donations, stuffing envelopes.

So Squid would’ve expected the Monterey County Central Republican Committee to kick into high gear to support the campaign of Pacific Grove City Councilwoman Casey Lucius for U.S. Congress. After 23 years, unbeatable incumbent Sam Farr is retiring (he’s never lost an election in his entire career), leaving an open seat. Lucius is facing off with Democratic Jimmy Panetta, who’s so far the only Dem to announce he’s running, laying the groundwork for what amounts to an anointment to the seat formerly held by his father, Leon Panetta.

Squid would think Republicans would flock to Lucius. She’s ambitious (aiming for Congress from one term on City Council—but then again, that’s more experience in elected office than Panetta), smart (formerly a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School) and well-versed in national security (her proposed policy against ISIS is a popular GOP position: ground troops, economic sanctions, plus a cyber-attack against the tech-savvy recruiters).

So Squid was a little surprised to learn that the local GOP hasn’t fully embraced Lucius’ campaign as their own. So was Lucius. “I wish I had more help,” she tells Squid’s colleague. “I wish the Republican Party was more capable and structured.

“This is where the Democratic Party is so successful: It seems like they have this machine in place, that they know how to get the vote and raise money. They have donor lists. At every level—national, state and county—the Republican Party just seems like it doesn’t have the same organization or momentum.

“Going into this, I thought, ‘There will be all this help behind the scenes.’ That hasn’t been there.”

Local GOP party shot-caller Paul Bruno says the party has limited resources, and is likely to allocate more on local races. (Sounds to Squid like code for, Lucius will likely get clobbered by Panetta.)

Or maybe it’s because Lucius believes climate change is real, despite the party line. Or that she’s a believer in affordable housing. Or that she’s a vegan. Squid gets it: Those things are a little scary to hard-line Republicans. But Squid thought partisan allegiance was as American as apple pie. Or maybe this is what happens when a Republican candidate starts asking questions about the ingredients in a slice of apple pie.