Dems retake House; Newsom wins easily
Prop. C passes — raises taxes for homeless programs U.S. House: Democrats take control with state races still in play; Pelosi poised to become speaker again
Democrats seized control of the House Tuesday night, putting themselves in position to challenge President Trump and his policies for the next two years.
“How are you feeling?” a grinning House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi asked cheering supporters at party headquarters in Washington, D.C.
“Tomorrow will be a new day in America,” said the San Francisco congresswoman, who is in line to regain the House speakership after eight years as minority leader. The Democrats’ victory, she said, “is about restoring checks and balances to the Trump administration.”
But Pelosi also held out an olive branch to Trump and the Republicans, saying Americans want to see things get done in Washington.
Democrats “have a responsi-
bility to find common ground when we can, and stand our ground when we can’t,” Pelosi said. There’s also a need “to bring us together because we’ve all had enough of division,” she said.
Trump mentioned that call for cooperation when he called Pelosi late Tuesday, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said in a tweet.
“President Trump called Leader Pelosi at 11:45 p.m. this evening to extend his congratulations on winning a Democratic House Majority,” Hammill tweeted. “He acknowledged the Leader’s call for bipartisanship in her victory remarks.”
Democrats needed to flip a net of 23 seats nationwide, and they got there just about the time the polls closed in California. Even without California’s results, they had won in 25 GOP-held districts and led in a number of others.
When all the votes are counted, Democrats probably will flip more than 30 Republican seats, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.
“That’s a solid wave, not a huge wave,” he said. “But now Democrats have to deal with reality. It’s not going to be enough to be just anti-Trump — they have to accomplish things, and that won’t be easy,” especially with Republicans adding to their strength in the Senate.
With California holding several of the most highly contested seats — seven of them in districts that were won by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 — it could be days before Democrats know how big their House margin will be. That’s because thousands of mail ballots will be counted as long as they arrive by Friday, along with an unknown number of provisional ballots.
In the Central Valley district held by Republican Rep. Jeff Denham of Turlock (Stanislaus County), for example, the incumbent was clinging to a tiny lead over Democrat Josh Harder with about half of precincts reporting.
In another hard-fought contest, this one in Southern California, GOP Rep. Steve Knight and Democratic challenger Katie Hill were virtually tied with about a third of the vote in.
In Orange County, 30-year GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher was tied with Democrat Harley Rouda with only mailed ballots counted. With 10 percent of precincts reporting, Republican Young Kim led Democrat Gil Cisneros in the Fullerton area’s 39th District in Orange County, a seat vacated by retiring GOP Rep. Ed Royce.
Democrat Mike Levin had a solid lead over Republican Diane Harkey for a seat straddling the Orange and San Diego county border, left vacant by the retirement of Republican Rep. Darrell Issa.
Even Issa had despaired of keeping his seat Republican. In an interview with Fox News before the polls closed Tuesday, he said his district was never really in play, and that “it will be a Democrat representing La Jolla to Solana Beach for the first time in a number of years.”
Republicans, though, looked likely to hold Rep. David Valadao’s Central Valley seat. The Hanford (Kings County) resident had a strong lead over Democrat T.J. Cox with nearly 60 percent of precincts reporting.
And Republicans were also holding on in a couple of GOPfriendly districts where Democrats had long-shot hopes. Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare, one of the president’s fiercest defenders in Congress, beat back a well-funded challenge by Fresno County prosecutor Andrew Janz. And Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), defeated Democrat Jessica Morse in a district that runs along the east side of the Central Valley and into the Sierra foothills.
Democrats came into election day brimming with confidence. With plenty of campaign cash, upbeat polls and a president who is historically unpopular in much of the country, party leaders were poised for an election that could sweep Pelosi back into the House speakership she surrendered to Republicans after the Tea Party blitz of 2010.
Pelosi has been telling party leaders and supporters privately that she expected Democrats to take back the House, and last week she went public with her prediction.
“Let me say this: Up until today, I would have said if the election were held today, we will win,” Pelosi told Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” on CBS. “What now I’m saying is, we will win, we will win, we will win.”
In California, Republicans’ vulnerability extended even into the core of their longtime stronghold of Orange County, showing the depth of state voters’ distaste for Trump. His weakness there was exposed in 2016, when Clinton became the
first Democratic presidential candidate since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to carry the county.
Thirteen-term GOP Rep. Royce of Fullerton joined Issa in retiring rather than run for re-election. Kim, a one-term Republican assemblywoman who spent 20 years as a district aide to Royce, finished on top of the June primary for Royce’s seat and faced Cisneros, a businessman and former Navy officer.
Issa’s seat became a contest between Harkey, a member of the state Board of Equalization and a former assemblywoman, and Levin, an environmental attorney.
Other Republican incumbents chose to fight it out, including Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa (Orange County), who was first elected in 1988.
Democratic voters took a chance in the June primary by choosing progressive and leftleaning candidates with no political experience to run in generally conservative districts. Katie Porter, for example, the Democrat challenging GOP Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine, is a longtime friend and associate of Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whom the Trump administration has denounced as a socialist. Walters was running ahead of her Tuesday.
Hill, the Democrat running against Knight, is only 31, making her one of the youngest congressional candidates in the nation.
Democrats pumped millions into the California campaigns, with their rookie candidates outraising many of the GOP veterans. Rouda, for example, had taken in $6.7 million as of Oct. 17, compared with $2.3 million for Rohrabacher. In Denham’s San Joaquin Valley district, Harder had raised $7 million to the incumbent’s $4.4 million.
Then there’s the 50th district in San Diego, where Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar collected $3.1 million to the $1 million raised by GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter, who is under federal indictment for alleged misuse of campaign funds. Despite that, Hunter was winning Tuesday.
Along with the money, the Democrats got plenty of support from party leaders. Former President Barack Obama was in Orange County in September, appearing with a number of California candidates and bringing an antiTrump message.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, confident that he would be California’s next governor, spent more time talking about the need to elect Democrats to Congress than about his own campaign against Republican John Cox.
Newsom joined Sen. Kamala Harris last weekend in Orange County for a get-out-the-vote effort with the congressional candidates.
Republicans, in contrast, saw few party leaders in the state. A visit to Las Vegas was been as close as Trump came to California.
Ronna McDaniel, head of the Republican National Committee, was in California last month for an Orange County campaign appearance with Rohrabacher, telling volunteers how important the state and the county were to the GOP’s future.
“Nancy Pelosi’s path to take back the speakership runs through California,” McDaniel told the campaign workers. “You can sleep on Nov. 7. But we need you to work as hard as you can until Nov. 6.”
Trump’s absence wasn’t an accident. Democrats in California ran against the president and pushed to tie Republicans to his stands on such issues as immigration, the environment, offshore drilling and tax reform, all unpopular in much of California.
Just last Thursday, for example, the Cisneros campaign fired out a press release charging that the office manager for his Republican opponent, Kim, was executive director of a pro-Trump political action committee.
That group backs conservative Republicans and “often retweets pro-Trump propaganda,” the campaign charged.