Thursday, September 13, 2012

SD-31: Interesting turns

The Democrats' goal is to take 2/3 of the California state senate and the Republicans have drawn that as a line in the stand. You may hear that SD-5 and SD-39 are in play. They aren't. SD-5 will go Republican and SD-39 will go Democratic. That'll give Democrats 26 seats to the Republicans' 12. There are two districts that'll be competitive and Republicans need to take both to prevent Democrats from getting 2/3. One of those districts is SD-27 in Ventura County.

The other is SD-31 in Riverside County. Republicans now have a registration advantage of 162 seats in the district. Why is this a big deal? In May, Democrats had a 4% registration advantage and led by almost 15,000 voters. This is a toss-up district and such a change could be a deciding factor.

The Democratic response is puzzling. They have affidavits that dozens of voters were re-registered as Republicans. Dozens? If 150 people were re-registered incorrectly, that's 1% of the 15,000. It doesn't change the dramatic shift in the district. And really, why does it matter that they may have registered people in the wrong party? People don't have to vote for the party they're registered with and they can always re-register as Democrats.

Last week Democrat Steve Clute, who lost to Democratic candidate Richard Roth in the primary has been endorsed Assemblyman Jeff Miller, the Republican in the race. Will this mean anything? Clute got 20% of the vote in the primary. If Miller can pick up a good share of these voters, he'll win. Will Clute share his mailing list? Will he campaign for Miller? Stay tuned.

No comments:

Post a Comment