The first thing that I should note here, is that in my recent move from Brea to More Brea, I have somehow lost the ability to use my mouse. I think I misplaced a dongle. Trust me, this graphic would look a hell of a lot better if I hadn’t. (I did price the Trump trial portrait artist’s services, but they have skyrocketed!) I’m also going to try to get my Adobe Photoshop running again, but I expect resistance from corporate powers! Anyway, this is what you get for now, until the dongle or my fine motor control return.
My first reaction to the election results is: I can’t believe it’s this close! We’re going to find, I’m sure, that Disney, public safety unions, and the Trades threw enormous amounts of money into protecting OCBC’s Rubalcava — even beyond that I believe to be those illegally huge banners, of which I’ll post a snap or two here soon — and for it to be this close in the early going is amazing. I’ve been following this mostly from afar — did I mention our going through the big downsize now that the kids are gone and the need for a big house has diminished? — but I sort of expected a blowout win for the money people, and this (at least for now) is not that!
What will happen in the days to come? I’d expect today (as I’m writing this, it’s 4:59 on Wednesday) will be the low-water mark for the recall proponents), and then we’ll see the totals creep to the left.
Oh, it’s 5:00!
The yes vote is already up another half-percent. Not too shabby!
I’m not entirely sure on what the vote margin was on the first day — 504 sounds right, but I expected one of our cough-cough competitors to have put up the raw totals and margins — but as I”ve found regularly when it comes to election recording, if I want to see it done right I had better do it myself.
So: while a win for the recall is still possible, it’s also still a longshot — but that it will have been a valiant and glorious effort is already not in doubt!
I always had mixed feelings about this recall, the original reasons for it seemed so weak. Finally I came down on the pro-recall side, mainly because I wanted there to be some concrete consequence for the Disneyland Forward vote. (And also Natalie’s resistance to affordable housing.)
I guess it’s good that it’s close at least. Unite-Here did better with this than they did with Measure A anyway. Another 700k though…
We could denominate the $700,000 in firefighters, I suppose — or we could denominate it as about 1/8 of a Brandon Lopez settlement.
You posted this comment just before my updating with my own comment, so I’ll repeat my main point from there: had this election been consolidated into the general election, it would not have cost anything like $700,000. The decision to spend that money (presuming that it wasn’t Ada’s mistake as to timing) was a price that the Council was willing to pay to obtain an electorate that was less likely to show up and kick out Rubalcava. That is actual “election rigging” — not a determinative choice, but pressing one’s thumb firmly on the scales of justice.
It was a weak recall. Glad to see Rubalcava is not losing her seat.
Almost on a whim, as I sidle back into the blogging saddle, I decided to go over to Chez Chumley to see what was up. He had published a piece about the election saying that the election was over because Rubalcava was up by 400 with only 300 votes left to be counted.
I said to myself “wow, am I missing something here?” I still don’t know for a fact that the same rules that apply to “normal” elections apply to am off-date recall — but I suspect that they do. And part of that law is that ballots will be counted if they arrive within 10-14 days after the election. (I’m not going to look up which.) Any ballot with yesterday’s (as I writ this Wednesday evening) postmark on it will be counted. If a lot of people put their ballots into the mail — with the Post Office being as lousy as it has become under Louis DeJoy — then that means potentially a whole lot of new ballots.
Chumley thinks that it’s risible that the ballots could come out hard against Rubalcava. That they won’t is probably the way to bet, but one would be foolish to give good odds. This is part of the “blue shift” that Chumley probably celebrates in other contexts — and part of what Republicans deride as corrupt. It’s not: it’s simply that Democratic voters tend to have their votes counted later than Republicans.
Blue-leaning voters tend to be younger, less influenced by party machinery, and have less leisure to go to a vote center or drop-off. This is a source of great frustration to Democratic leaders, who essentially yearn that our side had the military efficiency of the MAGA movement, but that’s the draw we have to deal with. And in this race, the Disney people had their people set to vote early (lest anyone forget) and the Rebel Forces had to wait for their people, with repeated urging, would get around to it.
I’m confident that Chumley did not do his own research here, because had he gone to the “Total Ballots Left to Process” page he’d have found this at the very top:
Chumley also called the a tremendous waste of public money. I tend to agree — but he doesn’t understand why. My problem with the recall was always that Rubalcava would simply be replaced by another Disney thrall — my hope that Carlos Leon would be joined by Mayor Aitken and Norma Campos to create a tie vote evaporated as soon as I saw Ashleigh speak at the Anaheim Dems Club. But it’s not bad that the recall gave us a chance to see how many rebellious spirits there are in Anaheim, willing to stand up to the Trades, the Police, and the Firefighters. (Answer: a lot!)
It was a waste of public money because the Democratic Majority Council Rigged It by scheduling the election for its own day, when turnout would be expected to be the lowest.
This election should have been combined with the general election, when turnout would have been the highest. For all I know, they may have messed with the schedule to make that late of an election impossible — but I suspect they could have gotten it into that slot if they had cared to. (If not, it was Ada’s mistake when it came to when to take out and file the petition — something that competent advising could have prevented.)
Seeing how close this election was, having it on Election Day would likely have made a difference in tilting it against Rubalcava. Disney’s money advantage would have been squandered in the flood of glossy paper coming out; the firefighters’ gigantic banners would not likely have been tolerated (including by either party.) Rubalcava would likely have been removed.
But, again: contra Chumley, implementing a democratic check on incumbents is not a waste. Thanks to Ada (apparently the object of his criticism, about which I say — huh) and her spite, people in District 3 will be able to ask “were you for or against the Rubalcava Recall?” to each other and will know right away where the other person stands — which is damned useful in politics.
The “waste” is when a Council hijacks that effort and drives it into a ditch. It is likely — but not certain — that that will be what has happened here. Don’t expect criticism of the Council on that basis from that friend of Matt Cunningham, though.
During the time you have fifty thoughts, Dan has one or two if he’s lucky.
Hey, guys, read the Election Code. 11242(a): “The Election shall be held not less than 88, nor more than 125, days after the issuance of the order [calling the election].” Subdivision (b) says that the election may be consolidated with a regularly-scheduled election that is scheduled within 180 days of the order. The Recall Petition was submitted January 17. The Registrar verified February 22. The City Council had 14 days to issue the order (S. 11240). It issued the order February 27. The SOONEST the election could have been held was May 28.
If the Registrar had taken the maximum amount of time to verify the petition, and the Council had taken a full 2 weeks to call the election, they would have had to call the election by March 15, 235 days before the November Election.
I am guessing there will be a lot of apologies by OBJ for claiming hijinks and hijacking, and instead acknowledging that, yes, it was a waste.
Also, the ballots have to be in the Registrar within 7 days. Everyone who looks at these things know that there is a trickle that comes in later than Thursday, less than 200 came in Thursday. Believing in the post-Election Day “Blue Shift” in California is living in a pre-COVID world. Since 2020, Democrats in California have consistently voted earlier by mail than Republicans. The result has been that there is a hugely Democratic first drop, followed by a big shift to Republicans when the in-person ballots are counted, followed by a very small Blue Shift in North and Central OC, and a slight Red shift in South County. Of course, the Blue Shift issue here does not apply because this is, at best, a Dem-on-Dem contest.
If you would read more carefully, sir, you would realize that I said that *either* the Council screwed the voters *or* Ada was badly informed about when to deliver the petitions. So, to have a chance at a better electorate, the petition gathering should not have begun as soon as it did and the timing of submission to the Registrar for verification should have happened at such a time when the Council could have (and should have) consolidated the election in order to save money. I’m not going to calculate the date for the same reason that I didn’t look up the Election Code section — too much else to do — but my rough estimate is that a submission in mid-May would have done the trick. Now the Council could have still avoided consolidating the election had it chosen to, but in that case the extra expenditure would be squarely on the Council’s head.
I’m sorry to hear that this must have been Ada’s (meaning Ada’s advisors) choice, but to be fair they were probably concentrating more on the glorious strike that followed the Writers’ and Actors’ strike into … history, although not the same bin of it.
OJB — and OBJ, which I also apparently write for — does apologize to the Council for suggesting that they rigged the date rather than capitalizing on the advocates’ poor strategy. It was still “rigged” in that it was about the lowest expected electoral turnout imaginable (outside of August).
Was it a waste, though? Well, it got the Firefighters to — allegedly (as I’m still not in “look things up for definitive assertion mode)”– violating the relevant local rules for signage in Anaheim. (I took pictures while driving back and forth there; they are startling even by Little Saigon standards.) Now what we need is a lawyer at a reputable and resource-laden firm to take the matter forward to various authorities and seek appropriate consequences — because all of those signs might have been worth enough votes to tip the margin. Up for the task? If this atrocious overreach leads to interest groups not mimicking it in the future — rather than doubling down on it, given a lack of consequences — that will have justified a large part of the cost. Up for the task?
I believe that you’re wrong about the Blue Shift as well, and especially about what is found in the “Zero Precinct” filings that come out first. But I’ll need more time to write than that I have here and now; I’ll let you know when a comment or story is up.
I read it. The comments were of the ilk “the Council probably committed some sort of hijinks to rig the election,” and “I’m not going to look up the Election Code and find out.” In fact, you still won’t look up the Election Code and find out–it’s just easier to make accusations. And you still stated that they “capitaliz[ed] on the advocate’s poor strategy.” They simply did what they were legally required to do. (Contra Santa Ana, which should have immediately cancelled that Recall Election once it became clear that it had not qualified.)
FWIW, I don’t think it was “poor strategy.” I don’t think there is a good case to be made that a higher turnout would have benefitted the yes campaign. People vote in special elections if they have a reason to–people usually are motivated to recall someone. They usually are not motivated to turn out to save someone’s job. But we will never know. It was a waste.
I’ve tracked the Blue shift issue closely in 2022 General and the 2024 Primary (to the extent that is possible). It holds. I wrote it in real time on twitter and FB. It’s a total upending of 30+ years of the pattern, so we have to adjust expectations accordingly.
Agree, Lee.
I walked the District with Natalie and a lot of folks – on both sides of the aisle – weren’t motivated to vote her out.
The best comment came from a life-long Dem in his early 70s: I voted for her in 2022 and if I have issues, I’ll take it up in 2026. But for now, I’m sticking with her.
Sounds like Mitch Caldwell!
Kidding, thousands of people voted yes and thousands voted no, and probably a lot of them on both sides were life-long Dems in their 70’s.
Still, it does sound like Mitch Caldwell, the King of the Colony!
Woe is me, three replies required to this one comment.
I’ll address Eugene’s take of canvassing here and now. (Separately, I’ll reply to Lee on what (1) I actually said and didn’t say about the recall, and (2) the “Blue Shift” kerfuffle.
Eugene: I totally believe that Natalie had you walking with her. But I think that your comment means less than you think it does.
Click this link: https://ocvote.gov/results/current-election-results. You’ll find that prior to Wednesday June 12’s 5:00 report, at this point exactly 6,007 votes have been counted and Natalie’s “No on Recall” position received 3,235 of them while the Yes received 2,772. So Natalie got 463 more votes: or 53.85% to retain against 46.15% to remove. 7.70%.
This was a close election. While it’s not clear what “aisle” you’re referencing, for most “aisles” both sides had a lot of votes going in both directions. (I suspect that Rubalcava had a higher share of the Republican vote than Democratic, but I’ve done no precinct analysis.) A lot of folks also weren’t motivated to keep her in, get it? When we see the campaign finance figures, we’ll have a better idea of how much Natalies supporters and opponents spent; based on my drives through District 3 it looked like way more was spent for her. And still — such a narrow margin!
What issues do you think would require being “taken up” with Natalie in 2026? Anything related to favoring Disney — or corruption? (And I think that it’s silly to delay dealing with corruption only after waiting two years. Don’t you?)
Dan doesn’t have thoughts. He just mimics what others send him as “press releases” or passes off the ideas of others as his own.
[I’m reposting Lee’s most recent comment to me here as a first-level comment to help avoid confusion as we race towards maximum indentation. So: here’s Lee.]
You mean “PEAK indentation,” like peak oil.
Nah — indentation, unlike oil, doesn’t have a maximum supply after which it will become less and less available. As a resource, it’s with every new top-level comment. Of course there may be a limit on the number of comments we can have to a story, or characters, but I don’t think we’ve ever hit it.
Did you follow the old “Countdown to $100/barrel Oil” in Daily Kos a couple decades(?) ago? I was deeply involved in those Peak Oil discussions. Too bad they lost much of their archive.
I’m not sure that I can do this without a diagram, but here’s why I could say that I thought that the Council was probably behind the problem rather than Ada & squad. I believed that Ada+ was smart enough that they would not start collecting signatures at a time when they would have to deliver them to the Registrar so early that they would not at least put the Council in a bad spot if they chose to spend a whole lot on a standalone recall rather than consolidating it with the higher turnout election. This is pretty elementary — and only requires knowledge of the relevant laws and the ability to use a calendar. Because I discounted Ada+ as being that incompetent (for reasons I no longer recall), I noted that as a possibility while considered the Council being to blame more likely. Shorter version: probability of each potential cause has to be assessed.
But the problem is that you could have done the homework on this in about 10 minutes and figured out who was to blame. Instead, you assumed that one side was smart and the other side was evil, and used those assumptions as proof, instead of looking at the facts and the law to come to a conclusion.
I don’t have the quick-check resources that I presume you do at your firm, so your 10-minute estimate is probably low — and at any rate I only had time for a quick comment. My blogging time has been pretty restricted this year, though that will hopefully change as we limp towards the general election. But you’re right that I gave Ada the benefit of the doubt here and that seemed more reasonable at the time than it does in retrospect. (You’re the second mainstream Democrat I’ve recently seen going after Ada, though not in so many words — is there trouble in paradise these days?)
Frankly, Rubalcava has given me lots of prior reason to think of her as “evil” (in this context, though that’s not the word I’d choose), so I did start with a presumption that if they could make it harder for her to be removed, they would.
The mistake you make here is claiming that I took my presumptions (not assumptions) as “proof.” Obviously, I did not claim “proof” — and I’ve explained myself sufficiently (acknowledging the existence of other possibilities, which is inimical to asserting the presence of “proof”) that a person of your high intellectual caliber should be expected to get it. (And yet that assessment of your intellect itself remains only a presumption.)
I bought a book of the Elections Code for $85 because I use it a lot. But it’s literally on-line–not just Westlaw, but numerous free sources.
I’m not “going after” Ada. YOU presume that it was a failure of strategy of hers to get the recall set when it was. I don’t agree. I think the recall stood a better chance in a special election.
If there’s a disagreement I have with Ada here, it’s one that I expressed to her when she first ran for Chair (and that I still tell her)–it’s hard to do two jobs. Because if Unite HERE is for the Recall, the Democratic Party might not be. And then what does she do. (And my view is that, absent actual malfeasance, misfeasance–with proof, not innuendo–or other very good cause, the Democratic Party should oppose recalls of Democratic officials.)
Second response to Lee on the Blue Shift:
I’m pretty sure that the Blue Shift was still working on a national level, and even on a statewide level, in part because I haven’t heard a lot of chatter along the lines of “Ding Dong, the Blue Shift is dead.” And I’d be more than willing to look at his numbers, if he happened to be willing to provide them, and allow myself to be convinced by his results. But studying only OC seems to be a questionable way to test this hypothesis that my Blue Shift expectations are so very retro and “pre-Covid.”
My truck is with the notion that voter behavior per se, rather than responses to structural circumstances, suddenly shifted in 2020 or 2022 in a way that is not likely to shift back post-Covid (which we sort of are.)
It seems more likely to me that things may have changed specifically in OC after 2020. I can think of three changes: (1) mailing ballots out to each voter (which I believe happened statewide rather than only in OC, and perhaps earlier than 2020 or 2022); (2) the move to vote centers and elimination of polling places in every precinct (which I think happened in OC and a few other counties, or maybe many but not all, and this is another thing that I am not using my limited blogging time to look up); and (3), which I’ll address below, that we no longer live in the Neal Kelley regime, but in the Bob Page regime, and that may have been accompanied by some changes in procedures.
In deference to Lee doing all this good work in HB, I don’t want to put him on the spot by asking him what ballots he believes to be included in “Precinct Zero.” I especially don’t want to do so because I’m not sure that I myself know anymore, because I just remember that happened under Kelley.
It used to be that Precinct Zero was composed of early absentee voters. That is, there was a cut-off some days before the campaign, and ballots received at that point were tabulated and saved. Then, they were released at 8:05 p.m. on Election Night. They tended to skew red, but then we would see them slowly creep blue-ward. Sometimes they started out blue; sometimes the shift would be evidenced by the last report of the first day (sometimes with a report after midnight); sometimes it took many days to turn blue if it ever did at all.
The important thing to recognize is that to some extent this is arbitrary — and different Registrars could make different choices. Early votes at ballot centers, for example, might be tabulated first and may become part or all of the Precinct Zero dump. I think that I have never spoken to Bob Page (though I could be forgetting something), so I don’t know if he continues the same procedures — which themselves may have been upended in whole or part by the introduction of vote centers. I’ll try to find out that sort of thing this summer.
But I absolutely invite Lee to show me his analysis — and if we now have a red shift or no shift or blue vs. red vs. none in circumstances that don’t seem to be random, I’ll cheerfully admit it.
The analysis has been on both Twitter and Facebook, and I was on a Slice of Orange Podcast to talk about it. The numbers are all over. Feel free to look at my posts after EDay in 2022 and the 2024 primary.
The problem is that prior to 2020, California voters had a voting dynamic that was out of synch with the rest of the country. In most places, Democrats tended to vote early. The Blue-Shift/Red-Shift was mostly a mirage based on when the votes were counted. For instance, the Blue Shift in PA in 2020 was a function of DEMOCRATS voting EARLY, but those votes not being COUNTED for days later (because it is harder/longer to verify Vote By Mail ballots).
California was an anomaly because we had progressive vote by mail laws that REPUBLICANS took advantage of. Republicans in California were big early adopters of Permanent Vote By Mail status. The Blue Shift in California was the result of Democrats voting more often in person and late in the process. But that changed in 2020. Perhaps less because of COVID and more because of Trump. He absolutely ruined 35+ years of Republicans in California promoting vote by mail by telling them it was all a fraud. Now they all want to vote in person at the vote centers. Meanwhile, with ballots mailed to everyone, there is no longer the need to go to the polls after work (like Democrats famously did), or take the extra step of applying for a vote by mail ballot. You just vote the ballot that is sent. The result is that those Precinct 0 votes (which you’re basically right about–I don’t know if there is a cut-off; it’s just processing time) are now mostly Democrats who have voted early, up through the weekend. You then get the big Republican numbers in the Vote Centers that come in on Election Night. And after that it does not change much. Democrats still trended very slightly better after EDay in Central OC (traditional late-voting Democrats in working class areas, I surmise), whereas Republicans did very slightly better in South County (I hypothesize that the Democrats there are highly-educated progressives who vote early). The result is that, at least in OC, voting behavior in terms of Early Vote now tracks what most of the rest of the country is like, and given the Republican promotion of Voter ID and Big Lie claims (and Democrats now having easier access since the ballots are sitting at home), I don’t see that trend changing.
(Note–Early Votes at Vote Centers cannot be tabulated early. They are still in the machines/ballot boxes. Registrars are not authorized under the Code to count them until the polls closed. They are authorized to verify and, in large enough counties, run the ballots through the tabulator, before EDay [as long as the votes are not actually tabulated].)
Lee, could you explain what Kimberly Carr’s legal victory against HB’s Air Show means, in regards to the larger HB Air Show issue?
It’s complicated, and I can’t say everything because there is more to come. But surely it is strong evidence that the lawsuit by the Air Show against the City was without any merit–just as we argued on behalf of Connie Boardman and Mark Bixby when we sought to intervene, and may argue again in a standalone case. And if the lawsuit was without merit, the City gave away $5-$7M, likely improperly. That is likely to have repurcussions
Feel free to send those posts to me to republish here. I didn’t do much Twitter before it was X and I do even less of it now.
Facebook offer something more like an archive, but not a particularly good one. Post URLs (if you have ’em) or email me full texts and I’ll give you a link that will serve as a trustworthy host for near-and-far future scholarship.
If we’re now acting all Post-Covid, then there’s not the same degree of need for Democrats to avoid vote-centers (which can also be done pretty early, especially if you’re willing to drive a bit.). That reverses the situation a bit. And now that Trump is telling his people to go ahead and vote by mail, that changes it a bit more. Personally, the reason I choose not to mail my ballot (which I’ve recently started just dropping off at the nearest vote center) is … Louis DeJoy. There was a time fairly late in the acute Covid years when mail sent within the county was taking a week to get to me.
It’s out there; it’s documented. You can follow or not. I’m not going back through it to disprove a point you have no proof for.
The issue is not why Democrats would avoid Vote Centers–it’s (1) why people voted in person in the first place; and (2) why Republicans voted by mail rather than in person. Democrats did not avoid vote centers. But prior to 2020, there weren’t vote centers–there was your one single local precinct. And to vote by mail, you had to do something extra (sign up as a PAV or make one-time requests.) Now, voting in person is different (harder in that the vote center is not always as close; easier in that you can go anywhere) and voting by mail is easier (everyone gets a ballot in the mail). To the extent that Democrats made a greater point of voting early by mail in 2020 in particular, that maybe has faded a little. But the real point is that voting by mail is easier. Meanwhile, Republicans stopped voting by mail. Will Trump tell them that they should now trust voting by mail???? I know he said it–will he keep saying it? The entire party organized its Big Lie around a few key points, including Vote by Mail is a fraud. He wants to change that now? I doubt that will really happen.
FWIW, I think the methods that you choose to use for voting (and the methods I choose) are sui generis, so I don’t think we can take much from that. That being said, one of the things that appears to be the case–even the vote center drop offs are considerably more Democratic than the actual vote center votes. In other words, Republicans even consider it a fraud to drop off the ballot. They want to go in person and have their name checked off the list.