More diverse Calif morphs from GOP past
Trump won’t accept blame if GOP loses House
FULLERTON, Calif, Oct 17, (AP): Pushy midday shoppers nose their carts through the Korean market, stocking up on bottled kimchi and seaweed spring rolls. A few doors away, customers grab pho to go at a Vietnamese takeout counter. Across the street, lunchtime diners line up for tacos “al pastor” at a Mexican-style taqueria.
It’s a snapshot of how much Orange County, California, has changed.
For decades, the county southeast of Los Angeles represented an archetype of middle-class America, a place whose name evoked a “Brady Bunch” conformity set amid freeways, megachurches and Disneyland’s spires. The mostly white, conservative homeowners voted with time-clock regularity for Republican candidates like Richard Nixon, whose getaway from Washington, the Western White House, sat on the coast.
The Korean barbecue shops and Mexican bakeries along Orangethorpe Avenue in Fullerton are a signpost of the shifting demographics and politics that have emboldened Democrats eager to flip four Republican-held US House seats in Orange County. The districts, partly or completely within the county, went to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and have become closely watched national battlegrounds as part of Democrats’ strategy to retake the House in November.
In an election season shaped by divisions over President Donald Trump and the #MeToo movement against sexual misconduct, perhaps the most telling evidence of the changing county is in the 39th Congressional District.
The seat is held by long-serving Republican Rep Ed Royce, a pillar of the Washington establishment who, like most of his party’s nearly all-male leadership in Congress, is older and white.
The contest to succeed the retiring congressman is between two very different candidates: Young Kim, a South Korean immigrant, woman and Republican, and Gil Cisneros, a Hispanic Democratic man.
The racially mixed ballot has opened questions about the relevance of party labels, race and the inclination to embrace one’s own. It comes as Hispanics and Asians together now make up the majority of Orange County’s 3.2 million people. In 1980, about 80 percent of the population was white.
The once-dominant Republican Party also is clinging to a tissue-thin edge over Democrats in voter registration numbers – a drop-off that reflects not just the arrival of new faces but their more liberal politics.
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WASHINGTON: Facing the prospect of bruising electoral defeat in congressional elections, President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he won’t accept the blame if his party loses control of the House in November, arguing his campaigning and endorsements have helped Republican candidates.
In a wide-ranging interview three weeks before Election Day, Trump told The Associated Press he senses voter enthusiasm rivaling 2016 and he expressed cautious optimism that his most loyal supporters will vote even when he is not on the ballot.
The AP asked Trump “if Republicans were to lose control of the House on November 6th – or a couple of days later depending on how long it takes to count the votes - do you believe you bear some responsibility for that?”
“No, I think I’m helping people,” Trump said.
Elaborating, Trump added: “And I will say that we have a very big impact. I don’t believe anybody’s ever had this kind of an impact. They would say that in the old days that if you got the support of a president or if you’ve got the support of somebody it would be nice to have, but it meant nothing, zero. Like literally zero. Some of the people I’ve endorsed have gone up 40 and 50 points just on the endorsement.”