So sad. From an email from the campaign of Democratic candidate Charlie Brown:
Thanks to the extraordinary work of our local elections officials, I am pleased to report that the high standards of fairness, accuracy, and transparency have been met. And with the counts and recounts across district four complete, and more than 370,000 votes tallied, the outcome of this election is no longer in question. Unfortunately, we've come up less than one half of one percent---just under 1,800 votes---short of victory.
So a short time ago, I called Senator Tom McClintock to congratulate him on a hard fought victory, and to wish him well in Congress.
This is a tough loss. It's a race we've been following since 2006, a race which featured a remarkable candidate who came achingly close to pulling off a stunning upset in an R+11 district not once, but twice.
Brown lost by just three points in 2006, against an incumbent Republican, John Doolittle, who was seemingly drowning in scandal. Brown filed again to run this year; with Doolittle's ethical problems not going away, he retired rather than face Brown.
Many people assumed that without Doolittle to kick around anymore, Brown's goose was cooked in a district like this one; even Brown's supporters knew it would be a difficult race. Yet he led in polling for much of the cycle, and came within 1800 votes of taking out Conservative Icon Tom McClintock.
It's awfully tough to lose races like these. Brown was a really excellent candidate who ran two historically strong campaigns in one of the reddest districts in the state of California. And the netroots put so much effort and passion into this race - donating money, phonebanking, volunteering.
But think about this: when Charlie Brown filed to run for Congress in 2005, a bid considered hopeless at the time, this was a nation run by Tom DeLay, George W. Bush, and Bill Frist.
Thanks to the efforts of Charlie Brown, and millions of patriotic Democrats like him, the nation is being run by adults again.