Trump leaps into race for House seat GOP hopes to flip
With a flood of tweets, President Trump has jumped into Tuesday’s runoff election for a California congressional seat, accusing Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats of trying to rig the election by allowing more inperson voting.
“Dems are trying to steal the Mike Garcia Congressional Race in California,” Trump tweeted early Monday, the latest in a string of presidential outbursts that began Friday dealing with a special election for a seat representing parts of Los
Angeles and Ventura counties.
Trump’s involvement shows the level of GOP interest in a contest where the party has hopes of doing something it hasn’t pulled off since 1998 — flipping a blue congressional seat in California to red. It would be a morale booster for a party that has been on a long losing streak in California and
may be on the defensive nationally in the November elections.
Democrats say Trump’s focus on voting access is consistent with Republican efforts elsewhere to suppress turnout in ways that favor GOP candidates.
Garcia, a GOP businessman, and Assemblywoman Christy Smith, DSanta Clarita (Los Angeles County), will meet in the runoff to decide who will fill the few remaining months in the term of former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned late last year.
Trump and other GOP officials responded with cries of outrage after the nonpartisan Los Angeles County registrar, Dean Logan, announced late Friday that the county would open a vote center in Lancaster, the secondlargest city in the 25th Congressional District. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the election is being conducted almost entirely by mail.
County officials denied that politics were involved in the decision to open the center, which they say came at the request of Lancaster’s Republican mayor, R. Rex Parris — something Parris confirmed in an interview.
“We are focused on ensuring all voters have the opportunity to cast their vote in this and all elections,” Michael Sanchez, a spokesman for the registrar, said in an email Monday. The center is one of a handful of inperson voting spots in the sprawling congressional district, which extends from the Los Angeles County desert communities of Lancaster and Palmdale west to Simi Valley in Ventura County.
The decision came after Democrats complained that voters in Lancaster, which has a large minority population, were being disenfranchised by being forced to travel nine miles to the nearest vote center.
Lancaster’s mayor is a Trump supporter who was on the Los Angeles International Airport tarmac in February to welcome the president to California and who also has endorsed Garcia.
Putting a vote center in Lancaster was needed because “it’s necessary to have the impression of a fair election,” Parris said Monday. Although he wants Garcia to win, the mayor said that “how we place vote centers is important . ... No one should be able to manipulate an election by where a vote center is or isn’t placed.”
Only 39 votes were cast at the Lancaster site over the weekend, election officials said.
Lancaster, a city the size of Hayward, is one of the bluest communities in the district, with Democrats holding a 44% to 27% registration edge.
That didn’t go unnoticed by Trump and other Republicans.
Newsom “won’t let restaurants, beaches and stores open, but he installs a voting booth system in a highly Democratic area ... because our great candidate is winning by a lot. CA25 Rigged Election!” Trump tweeted Saturday.
In other Saturday tweets, Trump said that the votes from the Lancaster center “must not count. SCAM!” and said that Republicans should “Mail in ballots, & check that they are counted.”
Democrats were quick to accuse Trump of trying to suppress the vote to boost Garcia’s chances.
“OK, (National Republican Congressional Committee), let’s go there!” Smith said in a Friday tweet. “Explain exactly why you think that a community that is majority AfAm and Latino voters shouldn’t have an easily accessible vote center?”
The attack on the vote center is a typical GOP tactic, said Andy Orellana, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Every American and Californian has the constitutional right as a citizen to cast their ballot and have it counted,” he said in a statement. “Expanded voting access is NOT stealing an election, contrary to what Republicans in Washington may believe.”
National interest in the runoff already is high, since it represents a chance for Republicans to regain one of seven California seats they lost in 2018 and take an opening step toward recovering control of the House, which they lost in the midterm elections. But the fight over inperson voting has kicked up attention.
The battle has put Trump and Republicans, who have generally opposed allmail elections, in the unusual position of defending votebymail and pushing against allowing more inperson voting.
Under the district’s votebymail election plan, every registered voter received a ballot and has an equal chance to vote, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, head of the Republican campaign committee, said in a Fox News interview Monday.
This is “clearly an effort by Democrats to steal the election,” he said. “If they can do it in Los Angeles County they will try to do it across the country” in November.
Republicans appear to have an edge in the early mailballot returns. As of Friday, the GOP had a 10,000ballot lead in ballots sent in, with 40% of GOP voters returning their ballots, compared with 27% for Democrats and 20% for independents.
By Friday, the turnout already was at 28%, a huge number for a onecontest ballot not held on a regular election day.
Politicians and pundits eager to know who’s won aren’t likely to find out on election night. Ventura County is planning to release results from the early mail ballots shortly after 8 p.m. Tuesday, but won’t provide more results until Thursday afternoon. It’s a similar situation for the Los Angeles County part of the district. Ballots postmarked by election day and received in the mail by Friday will be counted.
Regardless of the results of the runoff, Garcia and Smith will meet again in November for a full, twoyear term.