[ad_1]
The California Democrats ended their delegation in Orange County on Saturday, where Gil Cisneros defeated Republican Young Kim to win a fourth seat in what was once one of the country's most conservative Republican strongholds.
The victory of Mr. Cisneros, a philanthropist, was declared by the Associated Press. It complements what has been called a Democratic rout in California this year. The Democrats have decided to win seven seats occupied by Republicans when Hillary Clinton beat President Trump in 2016, including four in Orange County. They won six of them.
Representative David Valadao, of the Central Valley, is the only Republican to have survived the democratic attack in these seven districts, according to the Associated Press. Its margin decreased as postal votes continued to be counted. The deadline to count these votes in California is December 7th.
With the victory of Mr. Cisneros, the Democrats now control the four seats of the House in Orange County – the birthplace of Richard M. Nixon and modern conservatism. The party also won supermajorities in the California Assembly and Senate, while its governor candidate, Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor, easily rejected a Republican challenge. Democrats control all elected positions in California.
Prior to this election, the 53-member California congressional delegation included 39 Democrats and 14 Republicans. Assuming that Mr. Valadao keeps the lead, after mid-term this year, there will be 45 Democrats and 8 Republicans.
Mr. Cisneros and Ms. Kim were arguing over the siege left after Representative Ed Royce, representing the region since 1993, decided not to run again. Mr Cisneros won with around 3,500 votes and won 50.8% of the votes cast.
Mr. Cisneros is a former naval officer who became a millionaire after winning the State Lottery of California in 2010. After that, he and his wife turned to philanthropy. He is a former Republican who left the party in 2008 to become a Democrat.
Another Republican, Rep. Darrell Issa, representing the counties of San Diego and Orange, also decided not to run in a difficult political environment, given Trump's unpopularity and the demographic changes in Southern California.
The Democrats easily seized Mr. Issa's headquarters, as Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer, defeated Republican and former Assembly member Diane Harkey.
The political changes in Orange County have been reflected in the ethnic dynamics of Royce's race for succession. Kim wanted to become the first Korean-American woman in Congress, but faced the challenge of Mr. Cisneros, a Latino in a state where Latino voters have become an increasingly powerful force.
Assists Mr Cisneros said that they were aggressively seeking support from American voters of Asian descent. They sent field workers speaking Korean and Mandarin.
The results were a setback for House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Bakersfield Republican who had invested energy and money to try to save his delegation. Mr. McCarthy, who will be the minority leader at the next convention, after the Democrats took control of the House, helped promote a voting initiative that would have the effect of overturning a tax on the essence passed by the Legislature last year to finance the repair of roads. The initiative was aimed at getting Republicans to vote in these threatened Republican districts.
The initiative was rejected and political analysts said the results suggested that any increase in Republicans' participation rate caused by the tax on gasoline was outpaced by that of Democratic voters. The Democratic Congress Campaign Committee had California grabbed California as the leader of its battle for the resumption of Congress, opening an office there in 2017 and flooding the district with money and workers.
The idea of making such an effort in Orange County – and in districts with Republican registration status – would have seemed unthinkable a short time ago. But the region has become a democrat in recent years because it has become younger and more ethnically diverse.
Mrs. Clinton beat Mr. Trump by more than four million votes in California and won in Orange County. Republicans have said the president's persistent attacks on California since the elections – as well as his plea for tough immigration measures in the last weeks of the campaign – have created obstacles for Republican candidates already in the polls. a difficult political environment.
California Republicans have seen their numbers decline steadily over the last 20 years. Some party members – led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor – have sought to push the party to moderate its positions on issues such as immigration in order to appeal to more voters.
But these efforts have been largely rejected; Many Republican congressional candidates in California this year, including representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Mimi Walters, joined Trump throughout the election process. Both lost their seats to the benefit of the Democratic challengers.
Source link
