Say Hello to a New Man for the 29th State Senate District: He’ll Be Easy to Bear [UPDATED, Final Results!]

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If politics leaves you glum. Josh Newman has just the cure: a blimp, a badge, and a beaming bear.

Vote-by-mail ballots mailed by 5:00 yesterday have until Friday to arrive.  The provisional ballot situation within the county (and probably beyond) seems to have been a colossal snafu.  Orange County has five precincts within State Senate District 29 that may not have yet been counted — and Los Angeles County has nineteen.  If you’re someone who swears by Murphy’s Law, you might not yet be quite comfortable with this next statement, but it has to be said:

John Newman — the only member of his Yale graduating class to volunteer to become an Army officer; a former high-tech executive; and now a gentle do-gooder who puts his talents to serving fellow veterans — has beaten institutional Democratic party favorite Sukhee Kang to advance to the November runoff against Assemblywoman Ling-Ling Chang.  If there has been a bigger upset in recent Orange County Democratic politics, it escapes memory.

[1] Humble, Brilliant, Humane — and Armed With a Zany Sense of Humor

People who generally don’t like politicians nevertheless like Josh Newman.  (People who do like politicians seem to be a little afraid of him, but that doesn’t matter — they’re a small minority of the population.)  For a really smart guy who has done quite well in life, he is about as down to earth as they come.  He’s a decent, somewhat garrolous speaker:  at times folksy, but dead serious when he talks about his passion to serve, especially to serve his fellow veterans,  His humor is often wry and generally (but gently) self-deprecating.  He is fully comfortable in his own skin, enough so that he doesn’t need to puff himself up and doesn’t need to judge.

And in the midst of all that, he’s zany.  (In a good way.)  His humor is not biting, it’s not aggressive, it’s never more than gently facetious — it’s just absurd.  He invites those around him to join him in embracing the absurdity of life, which has the potential to bring us together.  Do you know that pen-and-ink drawing of a golden/grizzly bear cradling the state of California?  He superimposed his own beaming head onto it … because that’s funny.  It’s ridiculous that a politician would show himself as cradling the state of California — but … hold on!   Isn’t that EXACTLY what he should want to DO as a state legislator?  His bear image presents a vision of a public service as strong but gentle, ferocious but caring — and thank God he’s on your side!  Oh, and sometimes he has campaigned in a bear suit, to underscore the “bear” theme — and yes, also to call attention to himself in a “not taking himself too seriously” way.  It helps for an effective politician to be a bit of a showman too.

Graphic designers who have seen his “Newman Nametag” signs — I’ve spoken to several of them — have fallen immediately in love with them.  From the play on Seinfeld‘s bilious “Hello, Newman” catchphrase (the use of which brilliantly stamps his last name indelibly into one’s mind), to how he turns it from what was  originally a sneering phrase into a friendly “getting to know you” opening to create dialogue with strangers, it’s a startlingly great piece of self-advertising.

Oh, and he has a big old hokey truck with “Newman for State Senate” written on its every side — and he has his own personal remote controlled blimp to advertise his campaign.  Who thinks of these things?  Someone who doesn’t take himself too seriously — but takes seriously his desire to make you smile, and then to enlist you in the effort to serve the greater good.

In a year when the public doesn’t seem to want “politics as usual” — for which he himself has little patience — he could hardly have hoped for a better moment to enter politics.  And his good luck has continued — thanks to a bold move by the Republican party that his success in the primary turns into a disaster.

[2] Brulte’s Brilliance Backfires

California Republican Party Chair Jim Brulte last year made one of the shrewdest command decisions you’ll ever see in state politics.  When Sukhee Kang, former Mayor of Irvine, parachuted into increasingly Korean Fullerton with an eye towards the State Senate — a seat that was expected to be sought by, among others, La Habra City Council veteran Tim Shaw, District Director for the term-limited incumbent Bob Huff — Brulte saw the sign that Republicans might end up running afoul of the what had been the ironclad rule of Orange County politics: “Asians always win.”

It would be nice if that had been true in 2012, when Jay Chen would have then dispatched Ed Royce from Congress. But actually individual factors determined these 2014 races.  Two of those victorious Asians women were Republican proteges of the two biggest GOP Bosses in North Orange County politics, Chang’s patron Huff and Young Kim’s patron Royce.  They were running in a terrible Democratic year overall.  One of them, Michele Steel, had the good fortune of being married to powerful state GOP leader Shawn Steel; another, then-Supervisor Janet Nguyen, had the good fortune of running against the widely despised Jose Solorio — whom she stomped.  And then Nguyen’s one-time protege, Andrew Do, had the good fortune to be running against the hapless-without-a-half-million-in-independent expenditures-behind-him Lou Correa in a low-turnout special election.  So yeah, it turned out to be the rule in 2014 — but it was hardly ironclad!  And it couldn’t be relied on in 2016 — especially when Donald Trump  apparently drove Latinos to vote in unusually high numbers.

Brulte told Chang to leave the Assembly seat, which she could likely have held for a dozen years, and head for her political boss’s State Senate seat, where she would match up well against Kang.  Between her and Young Kim — the Korean Assemblywoman to her south who represents most of the other half of the Senate district — they would be able to neutralize the galvanizing force that Kang, as an Asian, could have used effectively against someone like Tim Shaw.  (Of course, Newman — who served in an elite group in South Korea — may be able to appeal to Koreans on his own.)  It was a great move — but one that depended on Kang being the Democratic nominee, double-teamed by Chang and Kim during the entire fall campaign.  Now that won’t happen — and, as we’ll see below, Chang matches up really poorly against Newman.

[3] Does Chang Support Donald Trump?  Ask That Question and Repeat a Million Times

As if Newman wasn’t fortunate enough in other ways, Chang is about to become Exhibit A in how Donald Trump is going to wreck parts of the Republican Party.  If he’s smart — as he’s already shown that he is — she is going to have to answer for Trump’s sins over and over and over again.

SD-29 — which readers may remember I’m familiar from having run for this seat in 2012 against Huff — is roughly 1/3 White, 1/3 Latino, and 1/3 Asian (with some African Americans and others in small numbers.)  So we can start out with a rough estimate that 2/3 of Senate District 29 will hate Donald Trump.  Ling-Ling may try to distance herself from Trump — but with what degree of credibility?  Even if she herself tries to back away from him, people around her (including Huff, who is running for LA County Supervisor) won’t be able to afford to — so the question becomes whether she needs to distance herself from them as well.

Newman can certainly distance himself from Trump — passionately and personably — not only by hitting him on his contempt for Latinos and Asians, but also for his being a chicken-hawk and trying to rip off Veterans’ groups with his “Protect Me from Megyn Kelley” benefit in Iowa.

If some obtuse people in Sacramento hadn’t been seduced by Kang’s story of how he could win the district, Newman might have been exactly the sort of candidate they’d have liked to recruit.  The chances of his not being very well-funded for this fall’s campaign are negligible.  The bigger problem — and he can talk to Sharon Quirk-Silva about this — is that they tend to want to take things over and do things their way, and their way is often clumsy and tone-deaf.

Democrats have a candidate who can win the State Senate seat in November — and can also help boost both Quirk-Silva and Gregg Fritchle in their legislative districts and Brett Murdock in his challenge against Ed Royce.  Now it’s mostly a question of whether they’ll let him campaign as himself.  My money is on Newman — they may poke and him a bit, but they’ll find that, if provoked, he can be a bit of a bear.

[4] The Final Results

Here they are.  Josh cleaned up in OC, Kang did well elsewhere, and Chang was held down to below where one might have expected.  This district is changing!  Directly from the Secretary of State’s page:

100.0% ( 487 of 487 ) precincts partially reporting as of June 8, 2016, 8:41 a.m. 

100.0% ( 85 of 85 ) precincts partially reporting as of June 8, 2016, 5:22 a.m. 

100.0% ( 371 of 371 ) precincts partially reporting as of June 8, 2016, 2:56 a.m. 

100.0% ( 31 of 31 ) precincts partially reporting as of June 8, 2016, 1:57 a.m.