Garcia appears poised to retain his House seat
Republican Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, appeared poised to retain his seat in the House, as Republicans appeared on track to take control of the lower chamber.
Even President Joe Biden was skeptical the Democrats would retain control of the House.
“I think it’s going to be very close, but I don’t think we’re going to make it,” the president said at a press conference at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
As of Monday afternoon, 20 House seats remained uncalled, with 212 seats projected for Republicans and 203 seats for Democrats, according to Politico.com
Politico’s website shows California’s 27th Congressional District leaning Republican.
Garcia’s lead over Democrat Christy Smith for the 27th Congressional District seat dropped by nearly 2,400 votes, according to the secretary of state website.
As of Sunday afternoon, he had 76,203 votes ,or 55.4%, and Smith had 61,342 voters, or 44.6%. That puts Garcia up by 14,861 votes. He was up by 17,260 votes, the day after
Election Day.
Smith, on Sunday, tweeted that she was thrilled the Democrats held the Senate and that “a House hold is still likely.”
“Sadly though, the path for flipping #CA27 has narrowed significantly and when all the votes are in it’s likely Garcia holds the seat,” she tweeted as part of a long thread. “Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned from this race that I’m determined to put on the record.”
Smith said the GOP modeled its approach on what the Democrats did, in 2018, to flip the seat from former Rep. Steve Knight.
“They made huge investments that unfortunately weren’t matched by our side in terms of spending, nor strategy,” she tweeted.
She added the Democrats needed to do two key things: “define Garcia in media as the election denying anti-abortion extremist he is” and “reach our less persistent voters …”
Smith praised her volunteers but said they needed a well-paid field program with diverse language skills and cultural proficiency.
“But from the outset of the primary it was an uphill battle to muster the necessary resources to run the race we needed to run here,” Smith tweeted. “As detailed by a few media outlets already, our campaign got next to zero outside resources to fight this battle.”
Garcia’s Twitter feed included a Veterans Day event at the Lancaster Cemetery and a reference to Speaker Nancy Pelosi refusing “to bring the bipartisan and widely supported Social Security Fairness Act to the House floor for a vote.”
“This act will protect and strengthen your Social Security,” he tweeted. “I proudly signed the discharge petition to force this critical legislation to the floor.”