A Democratic challenger to Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman so obviously in the pocket of Vladimir Putin that other Republican congressmen joke about how he’s in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, is going public over hacking attempts that plagued his campaign before the recent primary. Stem-cell scientist Dr. Hans Keirstead lost the June 5 primary in California Congressional District 48 by a razor-thin 125 votes, finishing behind Rohrabacher and real estate investor Harley Rouda in California’s top-two primary system.
But, according to Rolling Stone, Keirstead had more to worry about in his race than just trying to finish ahead of the pack. Starting in August 2017, Keirstead was subject to a “spear-phishing attempt” similar to those used in infiltrating the accounts of Democratic consultant John Podesta and members of the DNC. It’s not clear that this effort allowed the hackers into Keirstead’s system, but a few months later his campaign suffered “a sophisticated and sustained” hacking effort. In one month, bots fired off ID/password combinations at Keirstead’s campaign server—more than 130,000 attempts in all. The hacking attempts continued for another six weeks after that, going after the campaign’s hosting service and Twitter account.
Keirstead’s campaign passed word of the attacks to the DCCC, which in turn called in the FBI. The FBI followed up, but the results of their investigation aren’t yet known.
Both Keirstead and Rouda were widely regarded as attractive candidates to take on Russophile Rohrabacher. Ex-Republican businessman Rouda had the support of the DCCC. More progressive candidate Keirstead was endorsed by the state Democratic Party. It’s not immediately clear that Rohrabacher benefits from facing one candidate over another. Rouda might actually be a better fit for the general election in this district. But it does seem interesting that a candidate going up against a congressman noted for his pro-Russian views was a victim of early attention from hackers.
Total Republican votes in the heavily-red district exceeded Democratic votes 92,309 to 80,065. However, Rohrabacher may not immediately take this as a guarantee of victory. In 2016 primaries, Rohrabacher took 57 percent of the vote—a value that was within a point of his eventual total in the general election. This year, in a greatly expanded field, Rohrabacher netted only 30 percent of the vote while the top two Democrats pulled 35 percent. To get over the victory line, Rohrabacher will have to convince a lot of disaffected Republicans to come home again.
Republicans had hoped to make the general election a Republican-on-Republican event, and in the last days before the election, Democrats worried that infighting between the Keirstead and Rouda camps might produce exactly those results. Democratic Party officials worried that Democrats would be “locked out” in the general election and lose their chance to take out Rohrabacher .
Scott Baugh—a friend of Rohrabacher’s—ran as another well-known Republican in the race, and likely vacuumed in a good number of GOP votes aimed at knocking Democrats off the ballot. But Baugh finished behind both Rouda and Keirstead.
Following the narrow victory, Keirstead immediately called Rouda to offer his support for the fall. There was no suggestion of a recount.