CA-36 Election Results

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Looks like that half million dollars Republican Craig Huey spent out of his own pocket may have earned him a spot in the July run-off against front-runner Janice Hahn who was supported by the L.A. political machine. He appears to have edged progressive champion Debra Bowen by around 200 votes. In 4th place is the other progressive in the race, Marcy Winograd. Many people will say that Marcy played the spoiler and ruined Bowen's chances to make the runoff and beat Hahn. But Marcy has a unique message and had every right to run and she probably wouldn't have run had Bowen not played into Joe Trippi's hands-- Hahn's consultant-- with a bogus Israel pledge meant to lure Marcy into the race and do... exactly what was done. Bowen should never have signed the pledge, just said she supports a two-state solution and the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in Israel. The pledge was created to enrage Marcy and lure her into the race to split the progressive vote and hamper Bowen. It worked.

However... there are still 9,800 absentee votes to be counted, more than enough to make up for the 200 vote lead Huey has over Debra. We may not know what the result is for another week or even two.






UPDATE FROM DOUG KAHN:

It’ll Be Debra Bowen vs. Janice Hahn in CA-36

I’m saying Debra Bowen will make the run-off in CA-36, that a final count will erase the 206 votes margin that separate her from a 2nd place finish. It depends on how good she was at the nuts and bolts of getting people to supporter her, and then getting them to vote. We really don’t know that yet. I think she was very good, but we’ll see.

I supported her, but made what I considered to be a token campaign contribution, because I didn’t think she’d make the run-off. Having two very good progressive candidates (and Marcy Winograd is a very, very good progressive) in a race is a double-whammy; they’ll not only split the vote, but you can expect many progressives to have a bad feeling about the contest, and just not vote.

It’s a Democratic district, for sure; and Blue Dog Jane Harman regularly rolled up 2 to 1 margins over her Republican opponents. But these were, by all accounts, weak candidates, and Harman appeals to older, conservative, and Republican voters; these are all high-propensity voting groups. Democrats outnumber Republicans 5 to 3, but 25% of voters are neither. This is a perfect situation for a tea-bagger; no mainstream Republican politician who has a shot at a seat in Congress thinks about running in the 36th. So an out-of-district wingnut like Huey can pretty much roll.

Harman resigned when she did because she wanted a low turnout election, setting up the contest for another conservative/hack Democrat, Janice Hahn. I don’t know if it was part of that strategy, but it also makes it easier for a teabagger to get a lot of attention and a lot of votes. That can’t be bad in a runoff with any Democrat.

I Thought Bowen was a Long Shot

So you had 3 well-funded, well-known Democrats fighting over 45% of the electorate, and one well-funded idiot drooling over the 27% of voters who are Republicans added to the usual slack-jawed ranters who vote because they think the Republican party has sold out to Socialism. Welcome to the new California election system.

Under these circumstances, my analysis (which is probably a too-generous self-appraisal of what goes on in my head) was that it was going to be Janice Hahn and an actual Republican, with real Democrats bringing up the rear.

Now I think I was wrong. I hope it’s because progressives are enthusiastic about elections these days. I know I am. Recent polling and results in special elections show a sharp reversal from last November’s results.

On Tuesday, the New Hampshire House of Representatives got a new member. In the 4th District, Republican Robert Mead had resigned to become chief of staff to House Speaker Bill O’Brien, another wingnut teabagger. He’s being replaced by Democrat Jennifer Daler, who beat a Republican in a heavily Republican district, and it was a landslide, 58%-42%. More important was how it happened. In a special election that was expected to have a dismal turnout and a highly conservative lean, 20% of voters came to the polls, and the extra voters were Democrats. Howie has a longer explanation going up tomorrow afternoon.

This District is Different

So yes, Debra is 206 votes behind, in third place. She didn’t beat Republican/Wingnut Craig ‘Baby’ Huey at the polls. But she did have a 798 vote edge over him in the vote-by-mail.

None of the media seems to understand that the 36th District has a unique history when it comes to absentee (vote-by-mail) voting. Jane Harman always had a massive vote-by-mail campaign running in general elections, so Democrats in the 36th District are accustomed to voting that way. The usual Republican edge in stay-at-home voters never held true there.

My memory is a bit hazy about the '90s, but I think at least once Harman was behind on election day before pulling it out when mail-in votes were tallied. I remember her spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on sophisticated vote-by-mail operations. We used to collect her mail pieces and crib off them to design our own in Pasadena-area local elections.

My first thought when I saw the LA Times coverage, the 206 votes Debra needed, was that she'd make it through once all the vote-by-mail ballots were counted. I’ve done some math, and I still think so. Here are the numbers on Bowen’s victory over Huey in the vote-by-mail count and defeat at the 261 polling places.

The Numbers

L.A. County reported 53,659 ‘ballots cast/turnout’ (vote-by-mail received plus day of election). 25,949 of those, slightly less than half, were vote-by-mail.

Bowen’s voters:

11,442 total

-5,448 vote-by-mail

=5,994 precinct vote

Huey’s voters:

11,648 total

-4,650 vote-by-mail

=6,998 precinct vote

There are 9,811 untallied votes, and 8,416 of those are vote-by-mail that hadn’t been received by election day. If those 8,416 go the way the mail-in count went, then Bowen would get 1,784 more votes, Huey would get 1,522 more, and Bowen picks up 262 more votes, enough to get her into the runoff.

In California, anyone can apply to vote by mail, and your ballot counts if it arrives by election day or if you drop it off in person. Debra’s chances depend upon how good her campaign was at identifying supporters, getting them to request mail-in ballots, and checking to make sure they mailed it on time.

Crucially, throughout the day on election day they had to examine the precinct lists at the polls to see how many of ‘her’ voters still hadn’t voted or turned in their mail-in ballots. Then, they had to somehow get these people to the polling place either with our without a mail-in ballot. If you’ve requested and received a ballot and haven’t mailed it in, you can still drop it off at any polling place; or you can turn it in unused at your own precinct and use the voting booth.

And then there are the 1,269 ‘provisional’ ballots; an unknown number of those were people who got mail-in ballots, didn’t send them in, and went to their polling place without the ballot. In those cases, the voter casts a ballot, and the vote will count if the Registrar of Voters confirms there was no mail-in.

This is a real test of campaign competency. Bowen is Secretary of State, responsible for California elections. You’d have to really wonder about her viability in a runoff if she didn’t have an efficient vote-by-mail/GOTV operation.

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Late this afternoon Marcy sent an e-mail to her supporters thanking them for their help. She included this paragraph:

"Huey would like to buy his way into Congress, so that the super rich can privatize America and abolish all regulations, including environmental protections. Though few media pundits took him seriously, we must now mobilize to defeat him-- should he make it to the run-off. Given Bowen's strong base of support in the heavily-populated South Bay and Torrance, however, I expect she will make it to the run-off."

This is the time to renew our efforts for Debra Bowen. It's a chance for CA-36 to make a clean sweep of the bad old Jane Harman days and elect a real progressive leader, an independent thinker with a fresh outlook. She's on the Blue America page