November’s electoral map was largely a sea of red, but there is a bright spot, or actually three, for Golden State Democrats.
Three Democratic congressional challengers defeated Republican incumbents in the Central Valley, Antelope Valley and Orange County, narrowing the Republican majority in the House.
Victories for Adam Gray, George Whiteside, and Derek Tran, as well as several Democratic House victories in other areas, mean Republicans control both chambers of Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris has won seven It was a ray of hope for the party in a year in which it lost every swing to Donald Trump. The state and California voters backed away from progressive voting policies and criminal justice reforms supported by many Democrats.
“If you were to tell me that, I would ask: How many seats did the California Democratic Party lose?” said Democratic campaign consultant and vice president of Political Data. “The petri dish was very poorly suited to Democratic interests, but somehow the Democrats still managed to benefit from it,” said Paul Mitchell.
In the aerospace-rich Antelope Valley, Whitesides used his background as a former NASA chief of staff and Virgin Galactic CEO to oust Republican Rep. Mike Garcia.
In Orange County, Mr. Tran narrowly defeated Republican U.S. Rep. Michelle Steele, becoming the first Vietnamese-American candidate in the Congressional district that includes Little Saigon.
And in the Central Valley, Gray, a moderate Democrat and longtime Modesto lawmaker, defeated Republican Rep. John Duarte by a slim margin of 187 votes. The photo finish race held on Tuesday was the last race in the country to be finalized.
“These candidates told great stories about their districts and were reflective of the districts they represent,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands), the No. 3 House Democrat.
He said the candidates primarily talked about table issues and tried to show that the Republican incumbent’s congressional voting record was “out of touch with the district.”
The winning Democratic House candidates, from left, Adam Gray, Derek Tran, and George Whiteside.
(Kori + Jared Photography, Derek Tran Campaign, Zoe Cranfill / Los Angeles Times)
Coastal Orange County also provided another important victory for Democrats, although it wasn’t a reversal. Democrat Dave Ming defeated Republican Scott Baugh in the 47th Congressional District, keeping the seat blue after U.S. Rep. Katie Porter chose not to run for re-election.
All four victories were vindication for California Democrats, who flipped seven House seats in the 2018 “blue wave” but lost four again two years later in 2022.
“We knew from the beginning how important these seats were, and so did the Republicans,” said Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which worked on the West Coast elections.
He cited strong candidates with deep ties to the district, weaknesses with Republican incumbents, and strong candidates that allowed Democrats to “strain Republican resources” and force them to fight defensively in more districts. He explained that he was able to win thanks to a lot of fundraising.
But in the view of Newport Beach’s Republican mayor, despite Democratic victories, the party and its candidates are not spending enough time talking about crime and public safety. “Even if that’s not the main focus, it’s going to hurt the Democratic Party pretty badly again in two years,” Will O’Neill said Friday during a panel discussion at the University of California, Irvine.
Candidates in battleground districts called themselves moderates who did not follow the party line. All four broke with party leaders in Sacramento to support Prop. 36, the criminal justice reform bill that passed with overwhelming support.
Democrats and their outside allies got their candidate onto the airwaves early in Southern California’s expensive advertising market, including in Mr. Tran’s case Vietnamese-language media.
“We tried to send a message that we were going to continue to focus on the issues that matter to people: economic growth, local job growth, and cost savings, and that resonated with people,” White said. Said said.
He said his $10 million in fundraising helped “uncover the track record of my opponent, which hasn’t been as successful in past campaigns.”
Republicans also won two other competitive House races in California by comfortable margins.
In the Central Valley, U.S. Rep. David Valadao defeated Democrat Rudy Salas by a larger margin than two years ago, seeking re-election.
Valadao was buoyed by a 19-point shift to the right in Kern County, where voters supported Trump by nearly 6 points this year after supporting Joe Biden by nearly 13 points in 2020.
In Riverside County, voters re-elected longtime Republican Rep. Ken Calvert over Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor who raised about $12.5 million and sparked a wave of voter enthusiasm.
Rollins is one point closer than he was in his first run with Calvert in 2022. The 41st Congressional District narrowly favored Trump in 2020, but has shifted nearly five points to the right this year.
A total of nine of California’s 58 counties switched from supporting Biden to supporting Trump in 2020.
Republicans also gained three seats in the state Legislature, flipping seats in Orange County, Riverside and the Inland Empire, signaling that Democrats in previously safe districts could face greater competition in the future. Suggests.
“Right now we’re seeing a major shift in the realignment of people who are willing to vote Republican, probably for the first time in their lives,” O’Neill said.
He said he wouldn’t be surprised if Republicans retake “a number of seats” including Tran in 2026, adding that Min could have a tough road to re-election if Republicans choose the right candidates. Ta.
Aguilar said California’s shift to the right proves that Democrats need to do more and discuss economic issues more, but that a permanent shift to the right is not a foregone conclusion.
“They may have voted for Trump in November, but I don’t think they voted Republican,” Aguilar said. “I think when they see what unified control in Washington and Donald Trump’s policies are, they’re going to be daunted.”
Gray said voters, especially in the Central Valley’s 13th Congressional District, said they wanted “something different.”
“When I campaigned in Sacramento on my record of independence, when I was not afraid to confront political parties, whether it was my own or the opposition’s, if necessary, I think that’s what people voted for. ,” Gray said. , former state legislator.
Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race may have swayed Democratic candidates in some of the state’s most competitive House races, but she is not all that popular in Harris’ home state either. There wasn’t.
Election data for the state is not yet finalized, but turnout in 2024 will be lower among Democrats, with Harris’s vote share lower than that of Barack Obama in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and 2024. This was 58.5%, lower than Biden in 2017.
“We had an aging problem, and after the debate, we had a credibility problem,” said Orrin Evans, a consultant for Minh and Tran’s campaigns. “The old man problem was solved, but the reliability problem remained.”
After the election, both parties launched a massive effort to track down all voters whose mail-in ballots had technical issues, such as missing signatures or signatures that didn’t match the voter information files.
Hundreds of volunteers and election workers went door-to-door, sometimes returning to the same doorstep four or five times, to notify voters and explain how to fix problems, a process called “ballot curing.”
The Republican Party has engaged 70 staffers to repair ballots, and the party said it has found and corrected more than 10 times as many ballots as in 2022. On the Democratic side, the campaign mobilized hundreds of volunteers and paid recruiters, including some who drove from San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Pablo Rodríguez, who ran the Independent Expenditure Committee supporting Gray, said his organization worked to reach Latino voters and nonpartisan voters in the 13th District, including follow-up during the ballot administration process. He said his focus is on getting people to vote.
“It’s nothing complicated,” Rodriguez said. “The difficult thing is, given that a lot of the news is already telling us, ‘The election is over, it’s over,’ finding people and making sure they have the will to have their vote counted.” It’s a labor-intensive part of checking whether there are any.
Mitchell said state data shows 1,310 registered Republicans resolved technical issues and had their flagged ballots counted, compared to 2,186 Democrats who also counted 187 ballots. He said the number of voters far exceeded the difference.
Times staff writer Haley Branson Potts contributed to this report.
