Thursday, April 8, 2010

The Lesson of California-10

One election that didn’t get a lot of press last was the California 10th district special election on November 3, 2009. This was a district that Ellen Tauscher won by 32 or more points in the four elections since redistricting in 2002 moved the more Republican areas into the 11th district. The candidates were well known Democrat John Garamendi, who’d spent 11 years in statewide elected office, and unknown Republican David Harmer. While Harmer did have significant spending he was outspent by Garamendi. Garamendi won the election by 10 points, 53% to 43%.

Next Tuesday there’ll be a special election to replace Robert Wexler in Florida’s 19th congressional district. This is a Cook D+15 district that Wexler and Barack Obama won in landslides in 2008. In the primary 77% of the voters voted in the Democratic primary. This election shouldn’t be close. So it’s received virtually no media coverage. If the margin is close it’ll likely show that the Scott Brown wave is still very strong .

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