Orange County, This Coming November

Katie Porter-- a leader

There are some good politicians trying to do a good job through this. And then there are the nightmares like Trump and the Trumpists. Like Trump, governor Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), Kristi Noem (R-SD), Kevin Stitt (R-OK) and, especially, Ron DeSantis (R-FL) make everybody else look relatively good. There's a general consensus that DeSantis is the worst governor in the country, at least in terms of doing the most harm to the most people. Like Trump, who consistently-- even arrogantly-- ignored all warnings, DeSantis, reported the NY Times, helped infect the whole country due entirely to his political cowardice.

Weeks before Florida ordered people to stay at home, the coronavirus was well into its insidious spread in the state, infecting residents and visitors who days earlier had danced at beach parties and reveled in theme parks. Only now, as people have gotten sick and recovered from-- or succumbed to-- Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, has the costly toll of keeping Florida open during the spring break season started to become apparent.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has blamed travelers from New York, Europe and other places for seeding the virus in the state. But the reverse was also true: People got sick in Florida and took the infection back home.

The exact number of people who returned from leisure trips to Florida with the coronavirus may never be known. Cases as far away as California and Massachusetts have been linked to the Winter Party Festival, a beachside dance party and fund-raiser for the L.G.B.T.Q. community held March 4-10. Another California man died after going to Orlando for a conference and then to a packed Disney World. Two people went to Disney and later got relatives sick in Florida and Georgia.

Slow action by Florida’s governor left local leaders scrambling to make their own closure decisions during one of the busiest and most profitable times of the year for a state with an $86 billion tourism economy. The result was that rules were often in conflict, with one city canceling a major event while a neighboring city allowed another event to continue.

DeSantis finally took action on April 1-- a full month too late. Florida has over 18,500 confirmed cases and nearly 500 deaths, with the epidemic still expanding in the state. Tectonix, a data analytics and visualization firm showed how cellphones that were on one Fort Lauderdale beach at the beginning of March spread across the country-- up the Eastern Seaboard and further West-- over the next two weeks. DeSantis is literally, along with Trump, the Typhoid Mary of this pandemic.

The Orange County in the headline, though, is not Orange County the Orlando, Florida Orange County-- which luckily for the people who live there, started moving in the right direction before DeSantis did. I have the other big Orange County in mind-- southern California's.

Orange County was once the heartland of the Republican Party-- long before Texas or the rest of the Deep South could be counted on. America can thank Orange County for the Nixon and Reagan presidencies. And then Trump happened. In 2016, primary day looked like this:

• Trump- 146,888
• Hillary- 123,723
• Bernie- 100,836
• Kasich- 21,285
• Cruz- 16,844

In November, Hillary beat Trump county-wide-- 556,544 (51.0%) to 472,669 (43.3%). That was the first time Orange County went for a Democrat since 1936-- FDR's first reelection. In 2012 Romney beat Obama 541,592 (53.0%) to 457,077 (44.8%). That was quite a turn-around! And 2 years later, in the 2018 midterms, all 4 Orange County red districts-- each of which Romney had won-- flipped blue.

• CA-39 (even PVI):

Gil Cisneros (New Dem/"ex"-GOP)- 126,002 (51.6%)
Young Kim (R)- 118,391 (48.4%)
[Cisneros narrowly lost the Orange County part of the district but made up for it by winning way ahead in the Los Angeles part of the district.]

• CA-45 (R+3):

Katie Porter (D)- 158,906 (52.1%)
Mimi Waters (R)- 146,383 (47.9%)

• CA-48 (R+4):

Harley Rouda (New Dem/"ex"-GOP)-157,837 (53.6%)
Dana Rohrabacher (R)- 136,899 (46.4%)

• CA-49 (R+1):

Mike Levin (D)- 166,453 (56.4%)
Diane Harkey (R)- 128,577 (43.6%)
[Levin lost the Orange Co. part of the district but cleaned up in the San Diego part.]

Last week Kyle Konik from Sabato's Crystal Ball took a look at the California general election races and changed the rating towards the GOP in 3 of them, declaring incumbents Devin Nunes and Tom McClinton (neither with a strong opponent) as "safe" from likely Republican, and putting the open Katie Hill seat (CA-25) from "leans" Dem to "toss-up."

I'm not going to get into those races here, although I do want to mention that the voters registration plus Trump on the top of the ticket should make the district relatively safe for a Democrat, despite the fact that the Democratic establishment picked an unimaginably bad candidate who will inspire absolutely no one but her friends and whoever happens to like corporate Democrats from the Republican wing of the party and who stand for nothing at all and have nothing to offer other than a "D" next to their name-- a "D" than will turn into an "F" score once she starts voting.

This is how they rate the reelection chances of the 4 Orange County Democratic incumbents we mentioned above:

• Cisneros- CA-39 leans D
• Porter- CA-45- likely D
• Rouda- CA-48- leans D
• Levin- CA-49- safe D

In explaining why the ratings fall this way Kondik uses irrelevant pundit-speak bullshit like this: "Republicans have never won a district where they won less than 50% of the two-party primary voting." What he doesn't do is take into account the jobs the incumbents have been doing. Cisneros and Rouda, the two conservative "ex"-Republicans, are just sitting and doing nothing at all but calling campaign contributors and asking for money. Each is a complete waste of a seat, back-benchers with nothing at all to offer anyone. Contrast that with Levin, who has a relatively decent voting record and an interest in several important policies. Or, better yet, contrast Rouda's and Cisneros' inertness with Katie Porter's activism and brilliance. She is widely considered one of the most worthwhile and accomplished freshmen from the 2018 class. Her constituents-- not the hardcore Trumpists of course, but everyone else-- have come to love her and respect her. Voters in Irvine, Tustin, Villa Park, Mission Viejo, Laguna Woods, Rancho Santa Margarita, Anaheim Hills and Lake Forest have something the others don't-- a member of Congress to actually be proud of.

As of the February 12 FEC filing deadline, Katie had raised $3,825,561, 29.79% from small grassroots donors. The three other OC freshmen:

Rouda- $2,339,456 (8.91%)
Levin $2,046,561 (12.68%)
Cisneros- $1,415,849 (9.04%)

Cisneros and Rouda may sit on the phone all day asking rich people and PAC executives for money, but by primarily doing an outstanding job, Porter has raised more (combined) and has raised gigantically more from small donors who appear to appreciate what she is doing for them, their families and the country. This isn't the kind of information that pundits use in their always-wrong ratings.

Mike Levin has two twitter accounts, one with 111,600 followers and one with 15,100 followers. Harley Rouda has two twitter accounts as well, one with 77,300 followers and one with 14,000 followers. Gil Cisneros also has two twitter accounts, one with 15,800 followers and one with 9,248 followers. So all together 243,048 followers between the 3 of them. And Katie? One account with 204,200 and one with 442,000-- a total of 642,200. Maybe an indication someone gives a damn about what she's doing in Congress?

Below is the third most-viewed Katie Porter YouTube clip-- with 843,000 views. There are 2 clips with over a million views each and 8 with over half a million. None are ads or about election campaigns. Harley Rouda has 3 videos with over 100,000 views-- all paid campaign ads. Almost all of his YouTubes are campaign clips and not many people have watched any of them. Cisneros-- the self-funding lottery winner-- is even worse, with no YouTubes more than just a handful of people have watched and, like Rouda, almost all just about campaigning.