In addition to capturing the House of Representatives on Election Day, Democrats also managed to turn what used to be one of the most Republican areas of California, and what had been one of the last Republican holdout strongholds in the Golden State completely blue. I’m speaking of Orange County, which had been the center of the movement that gave birth to both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, but which now is completely controlled by Democrats at the Congressional level:
California Democrats completed their sweep of the congressional delegation in Orange County on Saturday as Gil Cisneros defeated Young Kim, a Republican, to capture a fourth seat in what had once been one of the most conservative Republican bastions in the nation.
The victory by Mr. Cisneros, a philanthropist, was declared by The Associated Press. It completes what has amounted to a Democratic rout in California this year. Democrats set out to capture seven Republican-held seats where Hillary Clinton defeated President Trump in 2016, including four in Orange County. They won six of them.
Representative David Valadao, from the Central Valley, is the only Republican who survived the Democratic onslaught in those seven districts, according to The Associated Press. His margin has shrunk as mail-in votes have continued to be counted. The deadline for counting those votes in California is Dec. 7.
With Mr. Cisneros’s victory, Democrats now control all four House seats in Orange County — the birthplace of Richard M. Nixon and modern-day conservatism. The party also won supermajorities in the California Assembly and Senate, while the party’s candidate for governor — Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor — easily turned back a Republican challenge. Democrats control every statewide elected position in California.
Before this election, the 53-member California congressional delegation included 39 Democrats and 14 Republicans. Assuming Mr. Valadao keeps his lead, after this year’s midterms it will be 45 Democrats and eight Republicans.
Mr. Cisneros and Ms. Kim were competing for the seat left open after Representative Ed Royce, who has represented the area since 1993, decided not to seek re-election. Mr. Cisneros won by about 3,500 votes, receiving 50.8 percent of the votes cast.
Mr. Cisneros is a former Navy officer who became a millionaire after winning the California state lottery in 2010. He and his wife turned to philanthropy after that. He is a former Republican who left the party in 2008 to become a Democrat.
Another Republican, Representative Darrell Issa, who represented San Diego and Orange Counties, also decided not to seek re-election in what clearly was a challenging political environment for Republicans, given Mr. Trump’s unpopularity and demographic shifts in Southern California.
Democrats easily captured Mr. Issa’s seat as Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer, defeated Diane Harkey, a Republican and former member of the Assembly.
Before this election, the 53-member California congressional delegation included 39 Democrats and 14 Republicans. Assuming Mr. Valadao keeps his lead, after this year’s midterms it will be 45 Democrats and eight Republicans.
Mr. Cisneros and Ms. Kim were competing for the seat left open after Representative Ed Royce, who has represented the area since 1993, decided not to seek re-election. Mr. Cisneros won by about 3,500 votes, receiving 50.8 percent of the votes cast.
Mr. Cisneros is a former Navy officer who became a millionaire after winning the California state lottery in 2010. He and his wife turned to philanthropy after that. He is a former Republican who left the party in 2008 to become a Democrat.
Another Republican, Representative Darrell Issa, who represented San Diego and Orange Counties, also decided not to seek re-election in what clearly was a challenging political environment for Republicans, given Mr. Trump’s unpopularity and demographic shifts in Southern California.
Democrats easily captured Mr. Issa’s seat as Mike Levin, an environmental lawyer, defeated Diane Harkey, a Republican and former member of the Assembly.
On some level, the Democratic victory in what had once been the center of Republican power in California should not come as a surprise. In addition to defeating President Trump by some four million votes overall in California, Hillary Clinton also beat Trump by roughly 100,000 votes in Orange County. To put that into context, that was the first time that a Democrat had won Orange County, California since Franklin Roosevelt was elected to a second term in 1936. From 1940 going forward to every Presidential election up to and including President Obama’s bid for a second term in 2012, Democrats had failed to capture the Republican stronghold in a Presidential election and the area, including neighboring counties around San Diego, had been the source of Republican strength in California for seventy years. The map at the top of this post from MSNBC makes clear just how complete the transformation of what had been a Republican stronghold has completely evaporated.
The reasons for the Republican setbacks in Orange County aren’t entirely different from those that have cause the party to lose support in the Golden State as a whole over the past twenty years. For many years, Orange County resisted the demographic trends that were helping to turn California blue starting twenty years ago. In that respect, it was only a matter of time before reality started setting in for Orange County Republicans and that reality came on Election Night 2018.
