Multiple-County Primary Races Are All Finished

By
Greg Diamond
– April 3, 2020Posted in: Fresh Juice, Gil Cisneros, Josh Newman, Ling Ling Chang, March 2020 primary election, Young Kim

.

.

.

Let’s go beyond the Orange Curtain, where we will find … looks like foliage! (And the last of our election results.)

Orange County has the following multi-county legislative races:

Every biennial election:

CA-38 (shared with LA, west of northwest; Sanchez)
CA-39 (shared with LA, north, and San Bernardino; Cisneros)
CA-47 (shared with LA west of southwest; Lowenthal)
CA-49 (shared with San Diego; Levin)
AD-55 (shared with LA, north, and San Bernardino; Chen)

Presidential Years

SD-29 (shared with LA, North, and San Berdoo (Chang/Newman)

Gubernatorial Years

SD-28 (shared with LA, west of northwest; Archuleta)
SD-36 (shared with San Diego)
BOE 3 (shared with San Diego and Inland Empire; Mike Schaefer)

These races are generally the last to finish, absent a recount, because our Registrar of Voters office is so much better than our neighbors’.  (It’s just a fact)

But now they are finished, so we can close the books on them and look towards November, or whenever the next election is held.

CA-38 (shared with LA, west of northwest; Sanchez)

Linda Sanchez only has La Palma (and perhaps another few stray neighboring precincts) and was a cinch to make the runoff.  She will face fellow Democrat Michael Tolar, who may be a DINO for all I know.  She beat him with 77.7% overall; 77.8% in LA and 72.7% in OC.  If you can get a straight-up bet on Sanchez, take it!

CA-39 (shared with LA, north, & San Berdoo; Cisneros)

Gil Cisneros trails Young Kim overall by a 46.9% to 48.3% margin.  Lefty NPP Steve Cox got 4.8%.  Cox’s votes are likely to go to Gil or sit it out, so I’d call that a slight edge for Gil.  Regardless, Democrats do better in the runoff than they do in the primary, especially in a Presidential year, due to greater turnout, so unless Republicans have literally no better place to put their money, the odds favor Gil.  Don’t get overconfident; Republicans will pour a lot into this race even if they think it’s a rathole, so Gil will need both donations and volunteers to win.

The county breakdown is: Gil leads in LA, 53.7% to 41.8%; Kim leads in OC, 50.4 to 44.7%; and Kim leads in SB, 49.7% to 46.4%.  (Cox did worst in his own home county; Kim and Gil each won the other’s home county.)  Trump should do well in this district — but not well enough to bring Kim with him.

CA-47 (shared with LA west of southwest; Lowenthal)

Al Lowenthal will once again face John Briscoe in November.  Lowenthal led him by 45.4% to 16.8% overall.  The remaining 38% was split 19.7% among Democrats and 18.2% for Republicans, so there’s no argument that that will bail out the red team.  Lowenthal’s lead over Briscoe was only 39.1% to 21.7% in OC, but a whopping 49,5% to 13.7% in LA.

CA-49 (shared with San Diego; Levin)

Mike Levin leads Brian Maryott by 56.6% to 43.4%.  In OC, Maryott leads with 53.5%; in SD, though, Levin leads with exactly 60.0%.  And San Diego had right around 75% of the votes cast.  So Levin is not in much danger this year.

SD-29 (shared with LA, North, and San Bernardino)(Chang in recall / Newman in 2016)

Ling-Ling Chang won the primary with 47.4% overall to 33.5% for Josh Newman and 19.1% for Joseph Cho, who is eliminated.  Ling-Ling beat Josh 42.5% to 31.3% in LA, where Cho took 26.2% in his home county.  In OC, she won by a 47.9% to 34.6% margin, with Cho at 17.5%.  In SB, which is under 9% of the overall vote, her lead was 52.% to 27.9%, with 20.1% for Cho.

So you can look at this as Chang getting almost a majority — or as Democrats with a combined 5 point lead.  The way I look at it is: Newman conserved his resources in the primary while Chang and even Cho had more signs up.  If we presume for now that Cho’s supporters would have split 1/3 for the other Asian candidate and 2/3 for the other Democrat, Chang would have an estimated 8 point lead, 54% to 46%, in the primary.  With the blue tilt of higher turnout elections and a more aggressive campaignfrom Josh, this runoff would seem to be close to even, leaning slightly red for now.

AD-55 (shared with LA, north, and San Berdoo; Chen)

Last (and, let’s face it, least) among the three northern contests pits Democrat Andrew Rodriguez against incumbent Philip Chen.  Chen got 56.2% of the vote to Rodriguez’s 43.8%.  Rodriguez led with 52.4% in LA; Chen led with 60.6% in OC — which has more than half the votes in this district — and 55.6% in SB.  It isn’t impossible for Rodriguez to make up that sort of ground, but it’s a steep hill to climb.

This is no longer your Weekend Open Thread   Do not talk about anything else but that, and not anything else you’d like, without regard to any unreasonable bounds of decency and decorum.


Tags: , , , ,

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)