Red Wave May Yet Be A Sneaker In California Congressional Elections

CALIFORNIA — If the widely predicted red wave is coming to California, then it's a sneaker wave.

Preliminary returns showed California Democratic congressional candidates jumping off to an early lead in competitive races in the Central Valley and Orange and Riverside counties. However, it's too early in the vote count to draw conclusions, and Republicans still have a shot at flipping some seats. Yet, so do the Democrats. With control of the House of Representatives still uncertain as of Wednesday morning, California could prove to be the Democratic Party's bulwark against the so-called red wave.

Shortly after midnight Wednesday, Representatives Katie Porter and Mike Levin razor-thin leads over their Republican challengers in Orange County with about half the votes counted.

With just over half of the votes in, Levin had 51.9 percent of the vote to Republican challenger Brian Maryott's 48.1 percent of the vote.

Porter had 50.28 percent of the vote compared to Republican Scott Baugh's 49.72 percent of the vote with 55 percent of votes tallied. Just 938 votes separated them early Wednesday morning.

Early on, Rep. Michelle Steel was trailing Democratic challenger Jay Chen in Orange County. However, with about half of the votes counted, she took the lead Wednesday morning. Steel garnered 55.3 percent of the vote compared to Chen's 44.7 percent. That's a difference of 13,993 votes, giving her some cushion but making the race still too close to call with more mail-in ballots to be counted in the coming days.

Longtime Rep. Ken Calvert was trailing Democratic challenger Will Rollins in Riverside County. With just a quarter of the votes tallied shortly before midnight Tuesday, Rollins was leading with 56.5 percent of the vote to Calvert's 43.5 percent. With so few ballots counted, the race was too close to call Tuesday. Though redistricting made the inland district more competitive, a Rollins victory over the 30-year incumbent would be a major upset. Even with Calvert trailing in the early returns Wednesday morning, the New York Times forecast the race as likely to go Calvert's way based on the neighborhoods where returns hadn't yet been counted.

In Los Angeles County, Rep. Mike Garcia was leading Democratic challenger Christy Smith 52.3 percent to 47.7 percent with a third of the votes counted. It's a difference of 3,078 votes, meaning that mail-in ballots yet to arrive could still alter the outcome of the race. The race was too early to call Tuesday night.

Republican Rep. David Valadao got off to an early lead against Democratic challenger Rudy Salas in the Central Valley. He garnered 51.7 percent of the vote compared to Salas' 48.3 percent with just under a third of all votes counted shortly before midnight Tuesday.

Also in the Central Valley, is District 13, the seat left open due to redistricting. As of early Wednesday morning, the race remained one of the tightest in the state. Democrat Adam Gray held a razor-thin lead with 50.9 percent of the vote compared to Republican John Duarte's 49.1 percent of the vote. With 39 percent of the vote tallied, just 1,212 votes separated the two.

Going into election day the Golden State had the most competitive House races of any state. Republican party officials, anticipating a red wave, expressed confidence the party could flip as many as five districts in the state, giving the GOP control of the House. Even rising Democratic stars such as Porter faced genuine threats to their reelection, according to the polls heading into election day.

Despite grim polling for the Democrats, party officials were hopeful they could actually pick up a couple of seats in the Golden State, unseating one incumbent elected to office by the thinnest margin nationwide (333 votes) and another who drew the ire of his party in voting to impeach former President Donald Trump.

Heading into election day, Democrats turned to their big guns — former President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom — to get out the vote in California.

In an urgent plea as his party faced the potential loss of House and Senate control, Biden asked voters Thursday to go to the polls to support Democratic candidates, warning that a Republican Congress would reshape America by cutting back on health care and threatening abortion rights and retirement security.

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Speaking in San Diego County, California, at an evening rally in support of endangered Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, the president said the outcome of the election would “determine the direction of the country for at least a decade or more.”

“This is a choice ... between two fundamentally different versions of America,” Biden said.

Biden's appearance marked his second trip to California in less than three weeks in hopes of bolstering Democratic House members imperiled by fallout from $7-a-gallon gas, worrisome crime rates and spiking prices on everything from onions to ground beef. Without former President Donald Trump on the top of the ballot to repel California’s moderate Republicans, Democratic legislators in newly purple districts appear to be in jeopardy.

The president’s return to heavily Democratic California in the run-up to Election Day reflected the looming threat for his party in a turbulent midterm election year when Republicans appeared poised to take control of the House, a grim prospect for Biden heading into the second half of his term.

His stopover centered on safeguarding Levin's district, which has a slight Democratic tilt and cuts through San Diego and Orange counties and was carried by Biden by double digits in the 2020 presidential election.

He said Levin “delivers. He lowers costs for families, caring for our veterans protecting the environment.”

Biden was in a neighboring coastal district last month on behalf of another endangered Southern California Democrat, Porter, a star of the party’s progressive wing. The Levin and Porter contests were among about a dozen congressional races in California considered competitive — a handful were seen a toss-ups and were viewed by both parties as critical to control of the House.

“If Democrats are scratching and clawing to hang on to districts Biden carried by double digits, they have likely already lost the House,” said David Wasserman, an analyst with the Cook Political Report said in the waiting days of the campaign.

Levin defended his seat with a 6-point win in 2020, and the district remained largely intact after the once-a-decade adjustment of boundary lines after the census. This year, his race was considered a toss-up as Levin and other Democrats face historical midterm headwinds that typically punish the party in the White House, while soaring prices at the supermarket and gas pump have conspired to make once-safe incumbents vulnerable.

With less than a week before the election, the Cook Political Report shifted a number of California districts into the “Toss-Up” category — more than any other state. Three of those districts are currently held by Democrats while two are held by Republicans. Four other districts — two held by Republicans and two by Democrats — were also considered up for grabs.

The Cook Political Report rated as toss-ups:

• District 13: Formerly held by Democrat Josh Harder, this Central Valley district is open and Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray is running against Republican John Duarte. The race is considered among the tightest in the nation.
• District 47: This Coastal Orange County community elected a Democrat for the first time in ages when it elected Porter in 2018. Prognosticators predict it will remain purple for years to come despite the fact that Porter is a darling of the Democratic Party. The race between Porter and former Assemblymember Scott Baugh, a Republican, could go either way.
• District 49: This purple district, straddling coastal Orange and San Diego Counties also switched from Republican to Democratic in 2018 when it elected Levin. But as is the case in neighboring District 47, redistricting carved into Democrats' slight advantage among registered voters. Levin faces the Republican former mayor of San Juan Capistrano Brian Maryott.
• District 27: This section of northern Los Angeles County has elected both Republicans and Democrats in the last six years, but Republican Congressman Mike Garcia faces a bigger challenge this year due to redistricting. He’s again squaring off against Democrat Christy Smith, whom he defeated by just 333 votes in 2020. The polling gurus at FiveThirtyEight give Garcia a slight edge in this race.
• District 22: This Central Valley district is another impacted by redistricting, this time to the left of the political spectrum. That adds to the woes of incumbent David Valadao, one of only two Republican members of the House who voted to impeach Trump and is still trying to get re-elected. He faces Democratic challenger Assemblymember Rudy Salas. The pollsters at FiveThirtyEight rate this race the tightest in the state but give a slight edge to Valadao.

Democrats were forced to play defense, even in a famously liberal state that then-President Donald Trump lost by over 5 million votes in 2020. Biden’s sagging approval rating created a drag on Democratic candidates generally, although voter surveys indicate he's stronger in California than the nation as a whole.

“Even in areas where President Biden won by a strong margin, we’re seeing an unfortunate shift,” Porter wrote in a fundraising pitch a week before election day. “Republicans are polling well across the country and we’re seeing especially concerning trends in blue states like California.”

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Levin told the crowd, “I need your help," and called on supporters to make phone calls and knock on doors of wavering voters.

Democracy, Levin warned, is “on the ballot.”

Levin’s Republican opponent, businessman Brian Maryott, said Biden’s visit amounted to “a failed president coming to our district to stand alongside a failed congressman.”

“Voters won’t forget $7 gas prices, the explosion in crime, inflation hitting 40-year highs, the crisis at our border,” Maryott said in a statement.

Biden's visit did carry some risk — a protest was planned nearby. And it's an open question how much good Biden can do to motivate voters in the late days of a midterm election, when turnout falls off sharply from presidential election years.

California is dominated by Democrats who hold every statewide office and commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide, and a GOP candidate hasn’t won a statewide race since 2006.

But this year confounded political norms.

There was no competitive race at the top of the ticket to drive Democratic voter turnout — Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, both Democrats, faced only token opposition. And with Democrats firmly in control of California government, the party couldn't escape blame for grievances that range from an unchecked homeless crisis, $80 fill-ups at the gas station and some of the nation’s highest taxes.

In Levin’s district, voters were sharply divided about the contest, mirroring the nation's deep partisan chasm.

Steve Barrett, a 68-year-old retired aerospace sales engineer from Dana Point, said he considers himself a moderate Republican who supports Maryott.

He said he doesn’t always vote solely Republican but feels Levin is a “big spender and taxer” and that the Democrats overall are spending too much, which inevitably will lead to tax increases.

Donna Drysdale, a 73-year-old retired court reporter and photographer from San Juan Capistrano, described herself as a middle-of-the-road Democrat and said she was solidly behind Levin.

Drysdale said she feels many Republicans aren’t being reasonable and the country needs intelligent candidates with problem-solving skills to address climate change, threats to democracy and other critical issues.

“I’m scared to death that if the Republicans take over, things are going to continue to go downhill in this country, as far as the division between the two parties,” she said.

A recent voter survey shows pessimism about the economy and the direction of the country, a potential benefit for Republicans in the election’s closing days, though it shows Californians are less pessimistic about the direction of the state.

The October survey by the Public Policy Institute of California found that 71% of likely voters say the U.S. is on the wrong track, and 54% of likely voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction. When asked about the nation’s economy, 76% of likely voters said it was either “poor” or “not so good.”

The dicey situation for Democrats was expected to help Republican incumbents in Democratic-leaning districts, including GOP Reps. Garcia north of Los Angeles, Steel in a district anchored in Orange County and Valadao in the Central Valley, one of just two House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump and managed to make it to the general election.

Porter, a prolific fundraiser often mentioned as a likely future Senate candidate, spent $24 million on her race, a stunning sum. While her district is about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, it has a conservative streak that benefits her GOP challenger, former legislator Scott Baugh, making the race especially tight.

Democrats now hold a 220-212 edge over Republicans in the U.S. House, with three vacancies. To have a majority requires 218 seats.

Ferreting out wavering voters and getting them to the polls “wins elections, and if we don’t turn out enough voters, we risk losing this seat,” Miguel Lopez, a campaign staffer for Rep. Julia Brownley, another endangered Democrat in a district northwest of Los Angeles, wrote in an email.

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD and AMY TAXIN Associated Press