California and seven other States held primaries last night. Our home state of California had its' open primary and the Democrats based on our assessment are in an interesting position going into the general elections.
Our Editor was on the road in our Orange County Community and produced this Visual Essay which we are pleased to feature:
The Team at the Daily 202 provided a snapshot of the primaries which we just received at our Virtual Newsroom:
Our Editor was on the road in our Orange County Community and produced this Visual Essay which we are pleased to feature:
The Team at the Daily 202 provided a snapshot of the primaries which we just received at our Virtual Newsroom:
-- It cost millions of bucks, but Democrats appear to have avoided their nightmare of getting locked out of competitive House races in California. The state’s quirky jungle primary system means the top two finishers face each other in November, and the national party apparatus mobilized to make sure a Democrat finished in the top two. California is notoriously slow at counting ballots, so several races have not been called yet and it may take days to know the final results, but with nearly every precinct counted in Orange County, Democrats are confident this morning they’ll have a nominee in all the winnable races in SoCal. “In California’s 39th, 48th and 49th congressional districts, Democrats at least ended the night in second place,” Dave Weigel reports. “In the 39th, lottery winner and Navy veteran Gil Cisneros led a Republican candidate in the battle for the No. 2 spot by more than 3,000 votes. In Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s 48th, two Democrats — Hans Keirstead and Harley Rouda — were battling for second place, both were roughly 1,000 votes ahead of Republican Scott Baugh. And in the 49th, Democrats Mike Levin, Sara Jacobs and Doug Applegate were more than 3,000 votes ahead of the nearest Republican.”
-- Democrats need to flip 23 seats to win the House in November, and California and New Jersey alone could theoretically get them about a third of the way there. Democrats are credibly targeting a half dozen of the 14 Republican-held House seats in the Golden State.
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. Roby’s rebuke of the president nearly two years ago now – for, let’s not forget, saying he can get away with groping women because he’s a celebrity and boasting about making passes at a married woman (while he himself was married to Melania) – drove Trump loyalists into the arms of a longtime Democrat who voted to make Nancy Pelosi the speaker of the House and only recently became a Republican. Roby has been a reliable conservative vote, and she’s bent over backwards to emphasize her fealty to Trump’s agenda, specifically on tax cuts and the border wall. In California, Cox was able to get the second spot because Trump came out strongly and repeatedly for him on Twitter. This is toxic in a general election out West, but it helped gin up GOP turnout. Cox, an accountant, previously lost three elections in Illinois and a random presidential bid. Ironically, Cox didn’t support Trump either in 2016. But now he’s an outspoken booster. “It wasn’t Donald Trump who made California the highest tax state in the country,” he said last night. -- Speaking of taxes, a Democratic state senator in Orange County got recalled over his vote for a new gas tax. Freshman Josh Newman went down because he supported a 12-cent-per-gallon tax. The race wasn’t even close. The recall passed by 20 points. This means that Democrats have lost their supermajority in the state legislature, at least until the end of the year. That’s not a huge deal because there’s not really much else on the agenda. But it’s a reminder that taxes can be a super potent issue. Republican strategists still hope to use the national tax bill passed in December as a winning issue in the midterms, warning that people’s taxes could go up if Democrats win the House. 
Judge Aaron Persky poses for a photo with a lawn sign opposing his recall in Los Altos Hills, Calif. (Jeff Chiu/AP)
-- For the first time in 87 years, a California judge was recalledfrom the bench thanks to the #MeToo movement. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky sentenced Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to just six months in jail after his conviction for sexually assaulting an unconscious student. The case became a cause celebre for sexual assault survivors.Persky, 56, had served on the court since 2003. He argued that it would set a bad precedent to remove a judge from office over a decision that was lawful. His supporters warned that ousting Persky would prompt judges elsewhere to impose lengthier sentences for sex crimes so they can keep their seats. For victims and their advocates, that sounds just fine. The recall campaign was chaired by Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber, and many students at Stanford – where the assault took place – got engaged in local politics for the first time.
Debra Haaland, who won the Democratic primary for Lujan Grisham’s seat, may become the first Native American woman to ever serve in Congress. If Lujan Grisham wins, and she is the front-runner despite a few damaging stories in the past few days, it would be the first time in U.S. history that a woman has succeeded another woman as governor. South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem won the GOP primary for governor, putting her on a glide path to becoming her state’s first female governor. And a 28-year-old state legislator in Iowa, Abby Finkenauer, won the Democratic nomination to take on vulnerable GOP Rep. Rod Blum in a battleground district. She would be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.
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