California Dreamin': Best And Worst Case Scenarios for Republicans

Tomorrow night marks the most important primary night in all of the 2018 election season.  Voters in California, the largest state in the Union, will head to the polls to determine which candidates they would like to send to the general election in a variety of state and Federal races.

For decades, popular culture portrayed California as heaven on Earth; with songs such as “California Girls” by the Beach Boys and “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas romanticizing the Golden State, which first surpassed New York as the most populous state after the 1970 census.

Liberal policies have effectively turned California into a third-world hellhole.  As Tucker Carlson often points out on his show, California effectively has the economy of Mexico, with a small group of very wealthy people, namely the tech oligarchs and Hollywood, and a very large underclass, consisting of an increasingly large number of low-skilled migrants.  Most of the middle class has fled California because of its high taxes and low quality of life.  The homeless population in California has exploded; leading to an epidemic of trash, human waste, and hypodermic needles infecting the streets of California’s major cities. Rather than deal with these problems, the elected officials in California prefer to spend their time banning plastic straws, issuing travel bans on red states because of their “discriminatory” religious freedom laws and suing the Trump Administration.   

Of California’s 53 seats in the House of Representatives, Democrats hold 39 while Republicans hold just 14.  Hillary Clinton carried California’s 10^th, 21^st, 25^th, 39^th, 45^th, 48^th, and 49^th Congressional Districts in the 2016 Presidential Election despite the fact that Republicans currently represent all seven of those districts.  On paper, the Democrats should have no trouble picking up California’s 39^th and 49^th Congressional Districts as the incumbent Congressmen in those districts, Ed Royce and Darrell Issa, respectively, have decided not to run for re-election.  However, California has a “top-two” primary system, also known as a “jungle primary,” where the two candidates who receive the highest number of votes advance to the general election regardless of their party affiliation.    

In addition to the two open seats held by retiring Republican Congressmen Ed Royce and Darrell Issa, two Republicans could also advance to the general election in California’s 48^th District, currently held by Dana Rohrbacher.  All three of these districts lie at least partially in Orange County, where a recent poll shows that President Trump has a 50 percent approval rating.  Orange County has historically voted Republican, although it did support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election.

While the top-two primaries may end up helping Republicans in some key House races, it may end up hurting them in the statewide races, as it did in 2016, when two Democrats advanced to the general election in the Senate election to replace retiring Barbara Boxer.  The more liberal of the two, Kamala Harris, ended up winning the general election; and she has worked to establish herself as a top contender for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2020 by asking completely irrelevant questions during confirmation hearings and appearing on the Ellen De Generes Show. 

In the gubernatorial race, every single poll has shown far-left Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom as one of the two candidates advancing to the general election. During his tenure as Mayor of San Francisco, the Catholic Newsom turned the City by the Bay into a sanctuary city for gay marriage.  Newsom has secured the endorsement of Senator Harris and three of the state’s Democratic Representatives in Congress, all of whom hail from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Surprisingly, Newsom has failed to win the endorsement of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose brother-in-law was once married to Newsom’s aunt. 

Two other Democrats have at least some chance to make it to the general election.  Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has secured the endorsement of four of the state’s 39 Democratic Representatives in Congress.  According to one columnist for The Orange County Register, Villaraigosa would become the de facto Republican candidate if he and Newsom advanced to the general election.  Treasurer John Chiang has secured the endorsement of seven of the state’s 39 Democratic Representatives in Congress; mostly in the Los Angeles area.

The Republicans have two major candidates who hope to secure a place in the general election; businessman John Cox and State Rep. Travis Allen, who has made combating sanctuary cities a major part of his tenure in Sacramento.  Cox has won the endorsement of President Trump and eight of the fourteen members of California’s Republican Delegation in United States Congress, while Allen has won the endorsement of three.  Either one of the Republican candidates this year would probably make a better governor than the previous two GOP nominees in California.  In 2010, before the initiation of the top-two primary, the Republicans chose pro-choice Meg Whitman, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.  She ended up losing to Jerry Brown by more than 10 points.  In 2014, after the initiation of the top-two primary, incumbent Governor Brown and “Republican” Neel Kashkari advanced to the general election.  Kashkari, who voted for President Obama, supported Common Core, abortion, and gay marriage, still ended up losing the general election by 20 points. While running as a conservative might not work in California, it looks like running as a moderate hasn’t yielded the Republicans much success either. 

One poll has shown Cox and Newsom tied, perhaps signaling that California voters have had enough in the experiment with using #TheResistance as a governing philosophy.  California voters had previously indicated a fatigue from progressivism in 2003 when they voted to recall the Democratic Governor Gray Davis less than a year after voting to re-elect him.  California voters chose Arnold Schwarzenegger as Davis’s replacement.  Elected as a Republican to “shake things up,” Schwarzenegger quickly ended up becoming “the Democrats’ plaything.”

In the Senate primary, it looks almost certain that two Democrats will advance to the general election.  Incumbent Senator Dianne Feinstein failed to capture the endorsement of the California Democratic Party as she seeks re-election to a fifth full term in the Senate.  The state’s Democratic Party has instead decided to endorse Kevin de Leon, her primary challenger who has worked to position himself to Feinstein’s left. The Republicans have failed to unite behind a single candidate, making it likely the several relatively unknown Republican candidates will splinter the Republican vote. In addition, all of the Republican candidates have weak fundraising numbers compared to the two Democrats.  Even if a Republican did make it to the general election, they would have absolutely no chance of winning. 

The Democratic Congressional Committee have also included three Republican-held districts that President Trump won, California’s 4^th, 22^nd, and 50^th Districts, on its list of targets.  If the Democrats manage to pick up any of these seats in the general election, then that surely means a disastrous election night across the country.  If Republicans have an excellent election night, they may pick up seats in the 7^th, 24^th, 36^th, or 52^nd Districts; which the Republican Congressional Committee has included on its target list.  Currently, at least one Democrat has filed to run in all of the Republican-held House seats while California’s 5^th, 6^th, 27^th, 34^th, and 40^th Districts have no Republicans running.      

I have assembled a table pointing out the best and worst case scenarios for Republicans in Tuesday night’s Golden State primary.  In the best case scenario, Republicans would shut Democrats out of the general election in all three of the competitive House races while sending a candidate to the general election in both the gubernatorial and Senate races.  In the worst case scenario, two Democrats would advance to the general election in both the Senate and Gubernatorial elections while Republicans would fail to shut out the Democrats in all three of the competitive House races.    

 

	Letter Grade	Gubernatorial Race	House Races	Senate Race
Best case scenario	A	Republicans manage to secure a place on the general election ballot	Republicans take the top two spots in all three competitive House races, shutting the Democrats out of the General Election	Republicans manage to secure a place on the general election ballot
	B	Republicans manage to secure a place on the general election ballot	Republicans take the top two spots in two of the three competitive House races, shutting the Democrats out of the General Election	Republicans do not manage to secure a place on the general election ballot
	C	Republicans do not manage to secure a place on the general election ballot	Republicans take the top two spots in one of the three competitive House races, shutting the Democrats out of the general election
	D	Republicans manage to secure a place on the general election ballot	Republicans fail to take the top two spots in all three of the competitive House races, meaning they will have to go up against a Democrat in the general election
Worst case scenario	F	Republicans do not manage to secure a place on the general election ballot

 

In the event that the worst case scenario plays out, the Republicans hope that a ballot initiative asking voters to repeal the gas tax will drive up turnout.  The gas tax first passed last year hiked gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon.  A petition to repeal the gas tax has collected nearly 1 million signatures, far exceeding the minimum number required to secure a place on the November ballot.  Californians pay about 80 cents more per gallon than their counterparts in the rest of the country.  Both of the Republican candidates for governor have tethered themselves to the idea of repealing the gas tax and polling shows that a majority of voters support the initiative. 

In slightly more than 24 hours, the picture for Election Day 2018 will become a little bit clearer as the results of the “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” primary races come in.  Conservatives should hope for the best while preparing for the worst.  To use one of President Trump’s favorite quotes, “We’ll see what happens.”