Four more years for Jerry Brown. And he didn't even have to work at it.
When we last had a Republican wave election in 2010, California was spared. The high Sierras held back the red tsunami as California elected a Democratic sweep for its statewide offices, defended every single congressional seat, and expanded Democratic majorities in the state legislature. This wave year, Democrats in California didn't get off so cleanly: We successfully held onto every statewide office, but also lost some seats in the State Assembly and State Senate, and possibly suffered some losses at the congressional level, though some races are still too close to call.
Candidate elections weren't the only notable issues on the ballot: California voters also produced interesting results in their statewide ballot measures choices. They voted down health insurance consumer protections, but also passed historic criminal justice reform that could set the model for future laws in other states. All in all, the 2014 results in California show that the Golden State was one of the few bastions of sanity and reason. This week, we'll discuss the statewide and congressional races, with ballot measures and state legislature races to follow next week.
To begin with, Republicans in California really had nowhere to go but up. Republican registration in California has been on a gradual decline; at this point, only about 28 percent of the state's registered voters are Republicans. And after not making any headway in 2010, Republicans suffered large and unexpected defeats in 2012, when Democrats not only took every single competitive seat in both the state legislature and in Congress, but also won seats that they simply were not expected to be able to have a chance in. With that background in mind, it could have been expected that there would be some givebacks in this cycle.
Most of the statewide partisan seats had Democratic candidates running who were popular and had won statewide elections before. Incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown coasted to re-election, for instance, by a margin of at least 17 points at the time of this writing. Other statewide Democratic incumbents also won re-election without very much of a fight. The two races in which Republicans expected to be able to make a play were the races for secretary of state and state controller. But Democrats prevailed even in these races by at least 5 points, even though they were facing candidates widely viewed as rising stars in the Republican Party and had never previously appeared on a statewide ballot. All reputable polling in California indicated Democratic victories in these races, and unlike in the rest of the country, the results actually matched the polling.
The most compelling statewide race was the Dem-on-Dem battle between incumbent State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and his billionaire-backed challenger, Marshall Tuck. As I wrote about this in my preview a couple of weeks ago:
If you care about the future of public education in California, you ought to be paying attention to the race for superintendent of public instruction. It features two Democrats, but the ideological contrast between them couldn't be clearer. The incumbent Superintendent, Tom Torlakson, is a strong supporter of public education, and has the endorsement of labor, the Democratic Party, and just about every single Democratic elected official across the state.
Billionaires, anti-teacher advocates, and education privatizers have their own candidate, however: Marshall Tuck, a former Wall Street banker who decided to turn his efforts to helping establish charter schools. Tuck supports the dangerous Vergara lawsuit that is attempting to strip teachers of their due process rights, and he is being supported by some of the most notorious names in the corporate privatization movement: Students First, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, just to name a few. This race has become a proxy war of independent expenditures: teachers are weighing in heavily to support Torlakson, while anti-union and anti-pension billionaires are putting in millions into the effort to replace a pro-teacher incumbent with a charter school executive. Daily Kos has not made an endorsement in this race, but if you value basic job protections for teachers and want to have a superintendent of public instruction who does not blame teachers first, you should tell everyone you know to vote for Tom Torlakson. If, however, you prefer to stand with Michelle Rhee and the billionaires of Walmart and Enron, then Marshall Tuck is your guy.
It was a close race, but Torlakson
prevailed by 4 points as of this writing, primarily because of his strength in the East Bay, which helped offset Tuck's support in Orange County, San Diego County, and other Republican areas of the state. This is a massive victory for teachers and advocates for keeping a strong public education system, and a blow to the billionaires and privatizers who were hoping to use a victory by Tuck as a springboard toward pushing anti-union privatizations schemes locally in California and throughout the state.
You'll notice that I keep hedging on the margin of victory in these races, and that is because they almost certainly will change. Visiting the secretary of state website and checking the election returns will indicate that 100 percent of precincts are reporting, and that might convey the impression that all ballots have been counted. But that is far from the case. There are probably about a million ballots left to be counted across the state. Many of these are vote-by-mail ballots that arrived at registrar's offices by Election Day, but have not been counted yet, including mail ballots dropped off at polling places on Election Day. The rest are provisional ballots, and for these ballots, employees at county registrar offices must validate each ballot individually and determine whether or not it deserves to be included. Because provisional ballots tend to be cast by younger and more minority voters, they tend to skew more Democratic than than votes as a whole. This will be very important in what follows.
Congressional races
So, did Democrats win or lose seats in California's congressional delegation? The answer is, we don't rightly know yet, and might not know before Thanksgiving. There are four key close races to watch:
- CA-31: This was the Democrats' main pickup opportunity, and we took advantage...but not by much, as Redlands Mayor Pete Aguilar currently has a 51-49 edge. As provisional and absentee ballots continue to be counted, he should at least maintain this lead. At the end of election night, according to the campaign of Aguilar's opponent, Paul Chabot, there are about 40,000 ballots left to count throughout the county of San Bernardino, which wholly encompasses the 31st District. Thirty-four percent of ballots in San Bernardino County had votes for the 31st District, meaning that if the remaining ballots across the county are evenly distributed, there are about 13,600 more ballots left to count across the district. Given the fact that Aguilar has a 1,635-vote lead currently, Chabot would have to win 56 percent of the remaining votes to win. That's highly unlikely, especially given the fact that the late absentees and provisionals tend to have a more Democratic performance than the votes counted at the end of election night. This will be a Democratic pickup.
- UPDATE: Subsequent to this writing, Chabot conceded the race to Aguilar, ensuring a pickup in this seat.
- CA-26: This was widely expected to be a razor-tight election, and the expectations were spot-on. Freshman incumbent Congresswoman Julia Brownley was facing her first re-election campaign against Assemblymember Jeff Gorell, who had done everything in his power to cultivate a moderate image during his time in public service. As of this writing, Brownley has a 1023-vote lead in this district, which encompasses large portions of Ventura County, immediately northwest of Los Angeles County. I don't have any information yet on how many ballots are left to count here, but it could take a while: Ventura County was one of the last counties to finish counting during the primary, so we could be in for a long month. That said, Brownley is in good position to hold this district when she's most vulnerable as a freshman facing a viable challenger in a Republican wave year. The first batch of ballots counted in Ventura County after election day went for Brownley 52-48, nearly doubling her lead from a 530-vote margin on election night to the current margin of 1,023, and there is no reason to suspect that the remaining ballots won't break the same way.
- CA-16: This, unfortunately, was not a seat that was on anybody's radar. Incumbent Jim Costa trails a Republican challenger that nobody has ever heard of by 736 votes as of this writing for this seat in the agricultural Central Valley portion of the state. The bulk of this seat is in the part of Fresno County that votes reliably Democratic, but also includes Republican portions of lesser-populated Madera and Merced. The returns on election night had Costa down by nearly 1,000 votes. Another batch of ballots got counted on Friday. Returns from Fresno initially put Costa in front, but Merced and Madera added the large bulk of the ballots they had remaining later that day, putting Costa back down by 741. The good news for Costa is that Fresno County has over 20,000 ballots left to process. Using the metrics that we used for CA-31 above, we can expect Costa to net a margin of about 1,100 votes from the remaining ballots in Fresno. That should put Costa back in the lead of those ballots perform as well as the previous ones in the County, but there are still a smattering of ballots left in the other two counties. The only thing left to do here is finish counting the ballots, but I expect Costa to hold this by a razor-thin margin.
- CA-07: This battle in the Sacramento suburbs between freshman Democratic incumbent Ami Bera and his Republican challenger, former Congressman Doug Ose, was expected to be one of the most expensive and closest contests in the nation, and once again, the prognosticators were right. This district seems a little bit more concerning, as Ose had a 3,011-vote lead as of election night. Rather than recreate the wheel, here's the evaluation from the Sacramento Bee about where things stood as of election night:
It could take days to determine a winner in the closely watched race for suburban Sacramento’s 7th Congressional District.
Republican Doug Ose has opened up a 3,011-vote lead over freshman Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, though county election officials estimate that more than 104,000 ballots remain uncounted countywide. Early Wednesday, Ose’s campaign pegged the number of uncounted ballots in the district at more than 60,000. The campaign said in a prepared statement that it anticipates having a final result on Saturday.
Later Wednesday, Bera noted that after Election Day two years ago he led by a slim margin but won the race by more than 9,000 votes after all of the mail and provision ballots were counted.
“We still have thousands of ballots left to count, but I feel very good about where we are today,” Bera said. “Two years ago, we were tied on election night and we ended up winning by over 9,000 votes. And just like two years ago, our grassroots campaign was the largest of any Congressional race in the country, which is why I'm confident we will again come out on top once all the votes are counted. The hard-working staff at the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters are professionals and we need to let them continue to do their jobs to make sure that every vote is counted.”
Can Bera win? I think so. But we shouldn't exactly take 2012 as a guide. With heavy voter turnout because of a presidential election, there will have ended up being far more Democratic-leaning provisionals last cycle than this one. The remaining ballots will likely favor Bera, and the first batch counted bears that out: the first set of ballots counted after election night reduced Ose's margin to 2,183, which is almost exactly on pace for what Bera needs to arrive at a draw. This one could very well come down to the last day of counting, and the next major update from Sacramento County will come on Monday.
- CA-52: Of all the results in California Congressional elections, this one in San Diego had me feeling a little disappointed on election night, but it still looks like it will be a Democratic hold. On election night, freshman Democratic incumbent Scott Peters was trailing to serial sexual harasser Carl Demaio by 752 votes. There were at that time, according to the San Diego Union Tribune, 46,000 ballots left to count in the district, and they should break toward Peters:
The situation is somewhat familiar for Peters. In 2012 Peters led Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray by 685 votes after initial Election Night tally. After late ballots were counted days later he won by 6,992 votes. Some analysts cautioned about comparing this midterm election with that presidential-year contest.
As with with the CA-07 race above, I don't expect that the remaining absentees and provisionals will break towards Peters in nearly the same way they did in 2012. I do believe, however, that Peters can pick up 51.5% of the remaining ballots and win this thing. The first batch of ballots counted post-election bear that out: Peters has already surged to an 861-vote lead. It is unlikely that he will relinquish this lead.
- UPDATE: Another batch of ballots counted late Friday gave Peters an additional margin of several thousand votes, and Peters has been declared the winner.
My prediction: Brownley and Peters will hang on to their leads. Costa will overtake his Republican challenger. Bera? Flip a coin. But even if he doesn't pull through this time, he will undoubtedly be able to win a rematch with Ose in a presidential year. The worst California Democrats will do this cycle is fight to a draw in the congressional delegation, and it's possible that we defend every contested seat for a +1 Democratic gain. Next week, I'll review ballot measures, the state legislature, and other local races of interest.