Orange County, CA Board of Supervisors: Orange County has been dramatically moving to the left in recent years, and the March 3 nonpartisan primary will determine whether Team Blue will get the chance this fall to turn what’s now a 4-1 GOP edge on the Board of Supervisors into the first Democratic majority in living memory.
Democrats need to unseat both GOP incumbents Andrew Do and Don Wagner this year (the other three districts won’t be on the ballot until 2022), but Wagner’s race will be decided on Tuesday. That’s because Wagner has just one opponent, Democrat Ashleigh Aitken, so one of them will secure the majority of the vote on Tuesday that they need to avert a Nov. 3 general election. Do, however, faces three Democratic foes, so his contest very well could go into overtime.
We’ll start with a look at Wagner’s race in District 3, which swung from 54-44 Romney to 51-44 Clinton. Wagner won his seat last year in a special election by beating former Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez 42-37, and Sanchez had planned to seek a rematch until November. However, the former congresswoman ended up dropping out around the same time that Aitken, who is an Orange County Fairgrounds board member, got in.
Do’s District 1, which moved from 59-39 Obama to 64-30 Clinton, looks like much more friendly turf for the blue team. Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, Westminster Councilman Sergio Contreras, and Garden Grove Councilwoman Kim Bernice Nguyen are all challenging Do as Democrats, but the incumbent may still have a shot to win outright as the only Republican. His allies at the Orange County sheriff’s deputies union are doing whatever they can to make sure this happens, and Voice of OC reports that the group has spent $400,000 on ads supporting Do as well as a similar amount on pro-Wagner messaging.
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