Although some wealth has spilled over from nearby Silicon Valley, the district is largely working class, filled with immigrant newcomers and union pensioners struggling to make it in one of the state's most expensive regions.
Their chief concern is "bread-and-butter issues," not ideology, said Dave Metz, a Democratic pollster who has taken many soundings of the area and consistently finds wide approval of Stark's performance.
That likely reflects the incumbent's history of strong constituent service and his many years spent writing much of the nation's healthcare legislation back when Democrats ran Congress. Among his achievements, Stark helped pushed through an expansion of Medicare and a law, commonly known as COBRA, that lets workers continue their healthcare coverage for a time after leaving their jobs. He consistently fell short, however, of his long-standing goal of universal healthcare coverage, which seems as distant today as ever.
Though clearly unhappy about being in the minority, Stark says he has never seriously thought of quitting Congress. He plans to stick around at least through the next redrawing of district boundaries in 2011, "As long as I don't get Alzheimer's, or something else falls off."
Stark says there is a "good chance" Republicans could lose control of the House in November, the way Democrats "got careless" after 40 years in power and allowed the GOP's 1994 takeover. Regardless, he is confident the political pendulum is due for a swing back toward the center. "Can't get much more to the political right," Stark says.
Even if Democrats fall short in the House, he hopes the party will at least win control of the Senate, gaining some leverage to force the GOP to cooperate with ranking Democrats like Stark, who remains an influential voice on healthcare policy.
"All I'd like to do is participate," Stark says, his voice rising plaintively. "I'm on the tax conference," he says of the committee that is supposed to hammer out differences between the House and Senate versions of legislation. "They won't even tell us where the meetings are."
