2024 California Primary Election

[Brian]

Everybody still calls this a primary, but since 2012 the first election of the year in California is more accurately the general election. It's the only ballot open to every political party. The voters choose the two candidates who will face off in November -- a run-off, not a traditional general election -- except for some local offices where someone can win outright with a majority of the votes.

Yet the presidential race remains a true primary for Democrats and Republicans.  The legislature hoped to entice a bigger turnout by scheduling California's on Super Tuesday, three months earlier than usual for a statewide primary.  Little did they expect that the winners would be predetermined long before voters got their ballots in the mail.

That leaves the U.S. Senate contests as the biggest draw, plural because there's an election for the remainder of Dianne Feinstein's term -- one month on Capitol Hill by the time it will be certified! -- and another for the full six years starting next January.

There are plenty of interesting and consequential races down ballot, depending on where you live. We've been talking about the race to replace Adam Schiff after his 24 years as our congressman in this thread since July:

montrosepeacevigil.proboards.com/thread/1448/race-replace-rep-adam-schiff

Feel free to add your thoughts and endorsements. Guests are welcome to post, as always. This thread will be ongoing until the results are clear long after election day, March 5.

[voter]

Interesting, I didn't know about Democrat's "sore loser" provision:
timrusso.substack.com/p/reality-begins-to-dawn-on-rfk-jr

[Brian]

Here are two recent posts in the "Race to Replace Rep. Adam Schiff" thread -- they belong here too:

Feb 23, 2024 7:31:29 GMT -8 anni said:

So far the only votes I'm sure of are Adam Schiff and Laura Friedman...

Feb 23, 2024 9:27:59 GMT -8 Sharon W said:

Our most critical race is for GUSD school board Area A - we need to elect Telly Tse, an educator and not the violent right wing extremist www.therealjordanhenry.com/

Sharing the info on him in case the school board race comes up at the vigil.

The race that fascinates me most is the one (or two, really) for U.S. Senate.  Montrose Peace Vigil message board members and one of our favorite guest posters started discussing who to choose among Schiff, Lee and Porter last February in a great thread while fretting about Dianne Feinstein's health. My only worry then was that those three candidates would attack each other to make it into the runoff. Instead, Steve Garvey put his cap and his name (and little else) into the race.

I chose Adam Schiff but I hope he faces Katie Porter in November despite all the campaign money that would require for both of them. Katie has put her massive e-mail list up for sale before March 5 to raise cash, a first in the brief history of online fundraising. She's shoving all of her chips onto the table.

[Brian]

The last mailer arrived Friday so it's time for my traditional election day mailbox tally. I know it's wacky, but counting the mailers helps me figure out where campaign money is spent, who's paying and what they think their best arguments are. Follow the money!  Anni and I are both registered Democrats who always vote, so our poor letter carrier delivered 92 pieces of mail for this election. In comparison, we got 67 mailers for the November 2022 general election for 13 contests. In the past month, essentially just three races were represented in our mailbox. Here is this election's breakdown -- incredibly, we received nothing about the U.S. Senate candidates:

• U.S. House District 30 - 8 from Friedman, 4 from a pro-Friedman PAC, 7 from Portantino, 1 from a pro-Portantino PAC, 1 anti-Friedman from the same PAC, 1 anti-Portantino from Friedman's campaign, 9 from Feuer, 5 from Melvoin, 3 from Savage and 1 from Ratevosian
• State Assembly District 44 - 5 from Schultz, 6 from Pierson, 2 from Asatryan, 6 from a pro-Han oil PAC and 3 pro-Han from Uber's PAC
• L.A. County Supervisor District 5 - 12 from a pro-Barger public unions PAC, 5 from a pro-Barger construction trades PAC, 1 pro-Barger from a third PAC, 3 anti-Barger from Holden, 3 anti-Barger from the L.A. Co. Dems (with pro-Holden pages) and 4 anti-Holden from a McDonalds franchisee PAC
• State Measure 1 - 1 Yes from Holden's campaign
• Slates - only 1 from election mainstay COPS

Are slates finally on their way out?  We got six of them in November 2022, four of which came from outfits that sell space to candidates.  This time we got none from Democratic party organizations or Equality California, a fine consortium of civil rights groups.

The harshest yet most perplexing mailers were the four sent by a PAC funded by McDonalds franchisees.  They spent more than $297,000 on mailers raking outgoing Assembly member Chris Holden, apparently in revenge for his role leading legislation that raised wages of fast food workers -- despite the fact that county supervisors have little say over their industry under the new state law.  They're really sending a message to the remaining legislators in Sacramento.

[Brian]

This must be the first election since mail-in voting took over in 2020 -- except for the gubernatorial recall -- when I knew the top two candidates for every race on my ballot within the first 24 hours of counting.  State Measure 1, however, is too close to call.

The Associated Press and the New York times called the short term and the full term California U.S. Senate races at 9:15 p.m. after the L.A. County registrar issued his first round of polling place results.  The count at the close of business on Wednesday with an estimated one third of the ballots uncounted puts Adam Schiff first at 33.4 percent and Steve Garvey second at 32.2.  In the short term position, Garvey has 34.4 and Schiff has 30.9 percent.  The short term spot has only seven candidates, all Democrats and Republicans, while the full term slate has 27 to choose from so the differences might be because voters for the other 20 candidates consolidated their votes.  Or maybe some old Dodger fans thought it might be fun to split their votes between a Dem and Garvey to send him to Capitol Hill for a month.  At least he could enshrine his name in U.S. Senate history since the Baseball Hall of Fame won't have him.  Steve was no Gil Hodges at first base.

I am surprised and disappointed by Katie Porter's showing so far because I'd hoped she'd do better than the 19 percent she got in a late poll.  She's in third place with 13.9 percent for the full term and 16.1 percent for the short term.

If Katie were to face Adam in the runoff, she would presumably draw a number of Republicans who hate Schiff for his many roles trying to bring Trump to account.  Would there have been enough of them to beat Adam in November?  Instead of running to Adam's left, would she have tried to appeal to the right leaning voters like Loretta Sanchez did in her campaign against Kamala Harris in 2016?  Sadly, we will never know.

I'll have more to say about other races as the counting continues.  Hope you do too!  For now, I want to close by lamenting the election coverage by the Los Angeles Times, which ceased functioning as a daily newspaper.  The lead story in the paper thrown in my driveway, a boilerplate election preview, was written long before the polls closed.  The PDF e-edition that came out around 2:30 a.m. reworked the headline and the first few paragraphs to note that the Senate race was called.  The other paper in my driveway was the Daily News, which I've been reading since July when the Times quit reporting on baseball games in print -- the Times was forced to print hours before the Daily News in Riverside when the Times sold its last remaining printing plant south of downtown.  Wednesday morning's Daily News had six pages full of initial election results.

[Brian]

Updating my previous post:  I learned since then that the last edition of the Los Angeles Times printed on Olympic was set to be on March 10.  Yet March 11's paper had the results of the Academy Awards, which means that it went to press no earlier than 9 or 10 p.m.  Did the Times eke out one more run at the old plant?  Or did they get press time in Riverside late Monday night?

Back to the election, starting with California's 30th Congressional District.  After the first seven days of counting, Laura Friedman's in first place with 29.3 percent and Republican Alex Balekian is runner up with 18.4 percent.  Laura has roughly the same share of the votes as she's had in all of the registrar's weekday tallies while Balekian slipped after topping out around 20 percent on election day.  Anthony Portantino has 13.4 and Mike Feuer has 12.7 percent, a difference of only 899 votes at the close of business March 11.  Grassroots champion G "Maebe" Pudlo is in fifth place at 9.1 percent.  Despite their big spending, Ben Savage could only garner 4.0 percent and Nick Melvoin a woeful 2.7.  Yikes.  So much for money buying elections.  Rounding out the top Democratic finishers -- and the rest of the known names -- in the 15-candidate field:  Peace Action endorsee Jirair Ratevosian stands at 1.9 percent with 2,447 votes so far while Sepi Shyne has 1.4 percent.  And the other Republican on the ballot, Emilio Martinez, has 4.6.  If you add his share to Balekian's, that's 23.0 percent -- more than six points behind Laura.

I don't think I'll need to donate any more money to Laura's campaign this year.  I would be shocked if she only wound up with a mere 60 percent of the votes in next November's election, which will have double the turnout of this primary that was dominated by civic minded old Democrats and enthusiastic MAGA heads.  Looking back in my district, the wonderful Maebe A. Girl, as she was billed then, faced Adam Schiff in the 2022 runoff and got 28.9 percent of the vote.  The last time Schiff ran against a Republican, it was Eric Early in 2020 -- who's collected 3.3 percent so far as a U.S. Senate candidate -- and Early did worse than Maebe did two years later with his 27.3 percent of the general election vote.  Just think, Maebe had come in third in the primary.  If she'd gotten another 1,115 votes, she would have beaten Early and been in the 2020 runoff too.

[Brian]

I promise this will be my last mention of the Los Angeles Times print edition in this thread.  Monday's paper with a lone movie studio ad touting the Best Picture Oscar for "Oppenheimer" amid full pages for luxury goods and fashions -- I remember when studios reserved space for every nominated film, win or lose -- was obviously printed at the Olympic plant.  Tuesday's edition shrank half an inch in the width.  The Times now stacks neatly on my recycle pile with the Daily News, also printed in Riverside.

The biggest suspense in the ongoing ballot count is the fate of State Measure 1, bonds for mental health facilities and housing.  The No votes have been gaining since Yes started the count up by 2 percent.  In the Secretary of State's report Tuesday evening, Yes was ahead by only 4,218 votes.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the estimated total unprocessed ballots were more than 1.2 million statewide.  Nearly 6.4 million ballots had been processed.

[Brian]

The morning before the margin between Yes and No votes sank to their lowest ebb on Tuesday, the opposition campaign of State Measure 1 conceded that it was "almost certain" to pass.  Two days later, more than 700,000 additional ballots have been processed:  the Yes votes lead by 21,431, increasing their share to 50.2 percent.

I've been tracking the daily updates to see if the counts after election day trended progressive like they did in 2020 and 2022.  The pattern seems to be holding -- my favorite candidates' totals keep ticking up by tenths of a percentage point as the shares of their Republican rivals dwindle.  For instance, my next Congress member Laura Friedman has gained 0.8 percent in the last three days.  Now she has 30.1 percent of the votes.  Meanwhile, Alex Balekian lost a full point to hit his current 17.4 percent.

As of Thursday afternoon, the estimated total unprocessed ballots statewide are slightly less than 500,000.  All eligible mail in votes have been received.  Los Angeles County has counted all of its in person and mail in ballots except for an estimated 12,000 provisional and conditional ballots along with those that could not be machine read.  Our registrar has succeeded in streamlining all of the complex counting operations the state has mandated in the last few years.

[Sharon W]

We're thankful Telly Tse is way ahead of Jordan Henry for Area A GUSD board member and Desiree Rabinov appears to be getting reelected for our Glendale Community College area 1 board member. We're also happy Ardy Kassakhian is leading for the 2 city council seats open this year but sad developer and anti bicycle path former council member Vartan Gharpetian is in second place.

[Brian]

Let's wrap up this page with the biggest lesson I learned.  The Secretary of State won't certify the results until Friday but the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has already signed off on the registrar's tallies.  This election confirms a trend that's held in the City of Los Angeles for the past few primary and general elections:  grassroots organizing beats big money.

With 20 full and part time campaign workers reaching out to voters, tenants' rights attorney and affordable housing advocate Ysabel Jurado came in first against incumbent Councilmember Kevin De Leon and two sitting members of the California Assembly.  She will face De Leon in November.  The three runners up raised huge sums in campaign contributions and one of them was aided by independent expenditures of $700,000 funded mostly by labor groups.  Jurado had the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Los Angeles chapter.

Councilmember Nithya Raman ran for her second term in a district that was 40 percent new after the 2020 reapportionment that has been memorialized in the racist taped conversation that included De Leon gloating with two fellow council members about how the city council's redistricting commission sold her out while mostly preserving the districts of the other sitting council members.  To defeat her, $1.35 million was spent by an independent committee of police and fire unions and large landlords and the campaign of her challenger, a moderate deputy city attorney.  She won re-election outright with more than 50 percent of the votes.

Each Los Angeles city council district has about 250,000 people, but the progressives' grassroots strategy should apply to state assembly and congressional districts that are two or three times that population.  I plan to give my campaign contributions from now on to candidates with a ground game.