Complete California breakdown
In the race for Controller (I’ve been mistakingly saying Comptroller like the NY times results page has it down) it appears that a rat has come in second by only 2000 votes.
Ashley Swearengin Rep. 724,511 24.4%
John A. Perez Dem. 642,537 21.7
David Evans Rep. 640,498 21.6
Betty T. Yee Dem. 636,691 21.5
So many surplus votes for Swearengin. Sigh. As Fieldmarshalj speculates an R/R runoff for a statewide race would probably see the rats jump to abolish this top/2 primary thing.
Still, this race appears to be Cali Republicans best chance to win a statewide office.
Congressional Races of interest
CD 3, 43% Romney in 2012, rat incumbent Garamendi reelected with 54% in 2012, Only 1 Republican ran, Dan Logue, Garamendi placed first by about 9 points. Louge appears to have raised the same amount of money as the rat so far.
CD 4 Safe Republican Seat, it appears that McClintock will face fellow Republican Art Moore, who is less than 2 K votes ahead of an indie. Moore is running as an “outsider”, standard campaign speel. His campaign is run by a former Ah-nold guy. Fail. Go Tom.
CD 7, 47% Romney, Freshman Rat Ami Bera (a dude, not a chick) beat incumbent Dan Lungren 51-49 in 2012. RINO(ish?) Ex-Rep Doug Ose will unfortunately be his foe. Bera got 47% and all Republicans combined got just over 50%.
CD 9, 40% Romney. Rat inc McNerney was reelected 54-46 last time. He got just over 50% in the primary, Republicans combined got the balance. Sadly our nominee has almost no money.
CD 10, 47% Romney, GOP Inc Jeff Denham got 57%. Doesn’t look vulnerable.
CD 16, Just 39% Romney, but last time rat Rep. Costa won by only 9 points over an Anglo-named Republican. This time he faces a Republican named Johnny Tacherra. He got under 44% of the primary vote, another rat got 4%. Republicans combined won the majority. Johnny needs Jack (as in money).
CD 17, Safe rat seat, Rat inc Honda faces a fellow rat, some Obama flunky. Go Honda?
CD 21, Romney vote was 43.5% down from 46% for McCain, still Freshman Republican David Valdao won 3 to 2 over a weak rat. This time the rats have a stronger candidate and smell blood. But Valadao cleaned up with 64% of the primary vote.
CD 24, 43% Romney, Rat Rep. Capps was won by 10 points over RINO Abel Maldanado last time. She got 44.5% of the primary vote, rats combined got a slight majority. Her GOP foe is Chris Mitchum, actor Robert Mitchum’s son. He raised about 100K and spent it all. Justin Fareed, a former aide to Kentucky Rep. Ed Whitfield would have been a much more electable choice.
CD 25, Open Republican seat, Romney won it with just under 50%. Former GOP State Sen (and failed nominee in 2012 in CD 26) Tony Strickland will face GOP State Sen Steve Knight, possible low chance target taken off the board for the rats. I think both are fine. I’m kinda disappointed Strickland didn’t seek a rematch in CD 26 instead of jumping in here.
CD 26, 44% Romney, Rat Freshman Julia Brownley beat Strickland 52-48, you could have won this rematch, Tony. Julia got 46%. GOP Combined got 52%. She faces State Rep. Jeff Gorell who seems like a good enough candidate. She has a big warchest though.
CD 31, Open R seat, Only 40.6% Romney. A Republican placed first but it looks like an Hispanic rat beat out another Republican for 2nd. Paul Chabot (R) will be a decided underdog if that holds up. Darn. Rats Combined won with 53%.
CD 33, Open rat seat of Waxman, 37% Romney, out of range. Republican Elan Carr placed first with 21.5%, GOP Combined got only 31%. Pete’s pal “moderate” rat Matt Miller places 4th.
CD 36, 47.5% Romney, Freshman rat Raul Ruiz beat RINO Rep. Mary Bono by 3 points. This time he faces GOP Assemblyman Brian Nestande. Ruiz won the primary with 50.2%, GOP combined got the rest. Ruiz has a crapload of money.
CA 41, Just 36% Romney, less than the Waxman seat but this is actually more competitive, Rat Freshman Mark Takano won by 13 points last time. GOP combined got 44.4% in this primary. A major longshot.
CD 45, Open Safe GOP seat. GOP State Sen. Mimi Walters faces a rat rather than a fellow Republican.
CD 46, Ole Loretta Sanchez is a windmill to to tilt at, major Longshot.
CD 52, 46% Romney. Freshman Rat Scott Peters “beat” incumbent Brian Bilbray by a tiny margin. Peters got just 42% of the primary vote, GOP combined got the rest. Popular Gay RINO Carl DeMaio is the nominee. I’d vote for him, being a rat is gayer than being gay if you ask me, but I know most of you either don’t care at all or hope he loses and I’m respect that.
My hope is to gain at least 2 to makeup for the likely loss of CD 31.
Good recap, thank you. A few thoughts:
In the heavily GOP CA-04, a RAT had filed to run, but dropped out right before the filing deadline for “health reasons”; conservative stalwart Tom McClintock speculated that it was a ploy to try to help the less conservative Republican newcomer Art Moore make the runoff and try to win with Democrat votes and some Republican votes (kind of a reverse campaignPete strategy;if it was planned, smart move for the Democrats, since no one with a D next to his name could beat McClintock one-on-one). As Impy said, the Arnold-lackey-backed Moore appears to have eked by the impecunious indie (who would have been clobbered in the runoff, since he refuses to raise money and besides would not be able to take many GOP votes) and will try to beat McClintock by winning the Dem and indie vote as well as that of RINOs and uninformed Republicans. Fortunately, McClintock got like 55% in the jungle primary, so it looks like most Republicans aren’t being fooled.
CA-07 was very disappointing; Igor Birman is a solid conservative who would have had a good chance of unseating Bera. Ose is pro-abortion a d voted that way in Congress when he served in the early 2000s, and the rest of his voting record iwasn’t much better. Still, a 50%-70% conservative is better than a 5%-7% conservative, so Zi hope that Ose wins and we can go get him in 2016.
In CA-16, as in much of the Central Valley (particularly FOP Congressman Valadao’s CA-21), the 2012 Obama vote overstates the Dem lean of the area (there was larger than usual Hispanic turnout, and it largely rejected Romney). There are a lot of Portuguese (mostly Azoreans) there as well as Hispanics, and Congressman Costa is of Portuguese descent, as is Republican challenger Johnny Tachera (who, like Valadao and former Central Valley GOP Congressman Pombo, is of Azorean descent; I suspect that “Tachera” is an alternate spelling for “Teixeira”). Republican candidates outpolled Democrats by 51%-47%, and this should be a very competitive general election.
We came thisclose to gaming the system for the second time in a row in CA-31. The Hispanic-majority CD has a strong Dem lean, but we managed to get two Republicans into the runoff in 2012 thanks to 4 or 5 Dems splitting the primary vote. This time, we would have done it again had there not been a third Republican on the ballot. As it is, it’s a likely Dem takeover.
In CA-52, Sicko DeMaio made the runoff. Yes, he’s better than the RAT. No, I don’t really care if he wins or loses. I have no problem supporting an openly gay Republican, but not one who is pro-abortion and who wants to impose same-sex marriage.
Thanks. It will be interesting if more anti-Obama voters show up in November than did in 2012. They are there, they just need to be motivated to vote.