On Election Day 2018 despite news to the contrary, a Blue Tsunami hit and struck.
A massive blow was dealt to an already hapless California Republican establishment.
While it is unsurprising that all of California’s major statewide offices remain solidly blue, Democrats made massive gains on legislative seats in both Washington DC and Sacramento.
Billionaire businessman Steve Poizner, running as an Independent, failed in his attempt to regain his old seat as State Insurance Commissioner. Further, the once dependably red strongholds of Orange County and the Central Valley are now losing ground to California’s progressive juggernaut.
Even key ballot measures, the repeal a crippling gas tax and another to assist in the construction and upgrade of desperately needed water storage, were defeated simply due to their popularity among conservatives.
The House of Representatives Flips.
Twenty years ago Republicans held 25 of California’s 52 Congressional seats. Going into the 2018 midterms, those Republican numbers had dwindled to 14 seats, and many of those seats are now lost.
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- Former-Assemblywoman Diane Harkey lost her bid to replace Darrell Issa, who is retiring from Congress. His 49th District was at one-time a blazing red district, has now flipped.
- Air Force/political scion Steve Knight and longtime Congressional conservative stalwart Dana Rohrabacher have both fallen to defeat in their races for the 25th District and 48th District. Both men were targeted by big-money Democrat donors since the onset of the midterms. But it was one-time RINO, former-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who donated $9.5 million to their opponents campaigns in the final week of the campaign.
- Jeff Denham is in a political battle fight to maintain his 10th District seat. Despite having maintaining a small lead since the election, Denham is now trailing by 3,200 votes after 63,000 mail-in ballots ‘miraculously’ arrived just ahead of the Friday update.
- Mimi Walters is also in a fight to keep 45th District red. Walters leads has shrunk to under 1% with nearly 90,000 votes left to be counted.
- Former Assemblywoman Young Kim is positioned to replace her former mentor Ed Royce for the 39th The South Korean immigrant and staunch border security proponent holds a 1.5% lead, but in this campaign such margins have been quickly erased.
- Congressman David Valadao was sitting on a near 10 point lead that has shrunk to 2 points over the last 48 hours in his race to keep the 21st Congressional District.
Democrats State Legislative Super (Duper) Majority
Despite State Senator Ling Ling Chang winning a heated June primary recall election, costing the Democrat’s their ironclad super majority in Sacramento, California Republicans had an equally bad Election Day in their State Legislative races:
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- Andy Vidak running for a third term. Despite the 14th State Senate District heavily leans Democrat in voter registration numbers, Vidak’s loss was considered the biggest shock of Election Night.
- Madera County Supervisor Robert Poythress has conceded the 12th State Senate race to Assemblywoman Anna Caballero. The swing district had been in Republican hands since the 1990s through three previous GOP office holders. The loss has only further tightened the Democrat supermajority in the Legislature’s upper house.
- Assemblywoman Catherine Baker is holding a 1,000-vote lead in her bid for reelection to the 16th Assembly District.
- Assemblyman Dante Acosta of a once staunch GOP red 38th Assembly District has seen his lead reduced to 213 votes at .16%.
- Conservative Assemblyman Matthew Harper is trailing in his bid for a third term in the 74th Assembly District, representing at one time, some of the most Republican communities within Orange County: Huntington Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Irvine, Laguna Woods and Laguna Beach. This district turning ‘blue’ would be equivalent to Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco Congressional District turning ‘red’.
- The 76th Assembly District represented by termed out Assemblyman Col. Rocky Chavez, will be flipping Democrat because due to the State’s open-primary system the competitors in the general election were both Democrats.
- In a bright spot for California Republicans, former Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli is leading incumbent Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes in a tight 60th Assembly contest for the once Republican-dominant Inland Empire.
Defining “Insanity”
Despite promising opportunities in 2018 that included: an uprising against the Sanctuary State policies, Democrat chaos in its leadership, State Democrat leaders got further “In-N-Out” of PR SNAFUs, a teetering state economy nearly a trillion dollars in debt, and the potential rising of new conservative leadership being led by Asian women.
Yet the California Republican Party leadership establishment accomplished…nothing.
But losing. Again!
“So, What? It’s Just California!”
As the old political adage says:
But there is something much more chilling for the rest of the country needs to consider.
What the “California Effect” is going to have on the rest of the country when the Democrats take control of the House of Representatives in January 2019:
Even worse for other states to contemplate, is the mass exodus has been underway out of California for nearly a decade.
The Top-10 destinations for California refugees are:
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- Georgia
- New York
- Utah
- Colorado
- Florida
- Oregon
- Nevada
- Washington
- Arizona
- Texas
Recognize some of the names of the states from recent election headline news stories?
Georgia and Florida are embroiled in electoral recounts. Nevada and Arizona just saw their representation in the US Senate flip from Republican to Democrat. Utah gave Mia Love the boot while electing RINO carpetbagger Mitt Romney to the Senate, something that would have been unheard of just a few years ago. Lastly, many Texas races were close, including Ted Cruz’s Senate victory.
NPR has an explanation as to what is happening:
California is already sending in excess of 100,000 people per year to other states. That’s adding to the Democrats’ current advantage in the Electoral College.
Population loss is troubling news for California. The state, which experienced net in-migration of 3.3 million people during the 1990s, now is losing people to other states.
Californians have contributed to make Salt Lake City and Boise more Democratic in recent years, but they are easily outvoted by Republicans in other parts of Utah and Idaho. Similarly, other states such as Arizona and Texas remain reliably Republican, but contain more liberal enclaves thanks to new arrivals from the West Coast.
California’s demographic challenges are bad news economically but point to one thing politically: The state now offers even more fertile territory for Democrats. The state was competitive in national elections as recently as the late 1980s, but now is routinely ignored by presidential candidates because it is so solidly Democratic.
“It’s not going to change Texas politics immediately, but all of the inbound migration to Texas is making Texas more liberal than it otherwise would be,” says Ian McDonald, a political scientist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and author of a dissertation on the effects of migration on the American electorate.
Mr. Smith knew this too, but was able to explain it much more eloquently:
California’s 55 electoral votes are now written off during every four-years during the presidential elections, putting Republicans at a huge disadvantage.
What might it be like in a few years should Republicans attempt to retake the House of Representatives and must overcome a deficit of all 53 House seats?
That day already comes.
