CA-30: The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has weighed in and they like... Republican Susan Shelley. Shelley is the potential Republican spoiler. If she gets enough votes, both Howard Berman and Brad Sherman may finish top two. This would be a disappointment and embarrassment for the GOP, even though no Republican will win the race. This would also be beneficial for Howard Berman. Since he hasn't replied to Brad Sherman's polls, he likely is running behind. A top two without a Republican could be his only way to beat Sherman.
Republican D.A. Steve Cooley has endorsed Berman. Berman has lined up an impressive list of Republican endorsements. The question is whether that turns into Republican votes. You could get all the Republicans in the world to endorse a Democrat, but you won't get many Republicans to vote for a Democrat.
CA-39: Democrat Jay Chen is up against Republican congressman Ed Royce. The district is far too Republican for a Democrat to win and Royce is one of the hardest working campaigners in the Republican caucus. It's nice to see a fight.
CA-2: Unsurprisingly Assemblyman Jared Huffman is out in front in his internal poll. Huffman is the favorite, so this isn't a surprise. It's interesting how once again a Democrat comes out with an internal poll that has Republicans getting a low percentage of the vote. This time it's only 10% of the vote. Republican congressional candidates got 31.2% of the vote in this district in 2010. It's hard to imagine all the Republicans here voting Democratic. It's never happened in Washington and it won't happen here.
CA-26: State Sen. Tony Strickland raised over $700,000 in the first quarter. This is an enormous amount of money for any candidate and Strickland isn't an incumbent. Anyone who thinks the Democrats will win this easily is in for a rude awakening.
CA-15: As I predicted, this race promises to be interesting. Swalwell could beat Stark, although that too would have to wait for November.
CA-28: Democratic congressman Adam Schiff is up against weak competition and will get re-elected easily.
CA-7: Congressman Dan Lungren outraised challenger Ami Bera for the first time in Q1. Both candidates have enough money to mount good campaigns and neither will spend money for the June election.
Many Republican's have voted for a Democrat in special elections when they didn't think a Republican could win. Why not here?
ReplyDeleteI've never seen much evidence of that. Washington's top two doesn't show it happening. People continually vote for 3rd parties that have no hope of winning. They know this. On the other hand, most people don't know that a Democrat is certain to win this district. They want to vote Republican and think that if they don't vote for him, he'll never win.
ReplyDeleteLook at Berman's 2010 district. He won it 69%-22%, with a Libertarian getting 8%. Boxer won it 70%-25%. Whitman won it 69%-26%. The district had 56% registered Democrats and 17% registered Republicans. If anything there's an indication that either Democrats voted Republican or independents disproportionally did so.