All eyes in California will be on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Orange County, and two particular congressional districts as voters head to the polls March 3 for the state’s presidential primary elections, political analysts say.
While California-based political analysts Tony Quinn and Sherry Bebitch Jeffe differ in their perspectives on many issues, they can agree on one thing: barring any major upsets, Sanders is likely to win the state’s Democratic primary.
A Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) survey released Feb. 20 shows Sanders with support at 32 percent among likely Democratic voters in the state, followed by Joe Biden with 14 percent, Elizabeth Warren with 13 percent, Michael Bloomberg with 12 percent, and Pete Buttigieg with 12 percent. Eight percent of voters are undecided, and no other candidate has more than 5 percent.
Sanders is gaining traction among Latino and black voters in the state, said Jeffe, a retired professor of the practice of public policy communication at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California.
“I think he’s taken a lot of that [support] from Biden, and that’s important. But the younger voters have always basically been Bernie’s. It’s ideological. It’s change. His ideology is far more revolutionary, shall we say. And again, he’s got an operation here. He’s got a presence here that other candidates don’t,” she said.
“The Democratic Party itself has changed, and the activists are more and more political,” Jeffe said. Sanders “has an incredible organization. He could hit the ground running because he still had that organization from 2016. It was not surprising that he is ahead. ... Bernie has been here, and his ‘movement’ has sustained over the last four years.”
While Quinn agrees Sanders has the best chance of winning in California, he said Sanders still has a long way to go nationally. He has to win enough delegates in more than a dozen other states to win the nomination. And, even then, he has to defeat Trump to become president.
“He got 46 percent against [Hillary] Clinton [in 2016]. He has a strong following, and it’s not unlike Trump, who had a strong following when he first started out. So, it may very well be that Bernie is impossible to stop, and it could very well be that he gets the lion’s share of delegates on Super Tuesday,” said Quinn, senior editor at California Target Book. “But having Bernie as a nominee is going to be really hard for the Democrats. He is very far left, you know.”
The top concern on the minds of most Democratic primary voters is choosing a candidate who can beat Trump in the Nov. 3 general election, Jeffe said. And, their second priority is making sure they defeat any Republican candidates who support Trump.
In the Feb. 25 Democratic debate, Sanders came under fire from other candidates for his self-declared socialist agenda.
Though Sanders proudly bills himself as a ‘democratic socialist,’ Jeffe said the term socialism no longer has the same negative connotation it did during the Cold War.
For younger voters, socialism is seen more as government involvement, “and they are OK with that,” Jeffe said. “If they are socialists, they are different from what socialists used to be. ... Socialism doesn’t mean what it meant for old geezers like me, which is a synonym for communism. Socialism doesn’t mean that anymore.”
But Quinn disagrees.
“It certainly does mean that,” he said. “That’s the problem. A lot of the liberals now are trying to pretend it means something else. There are three major socialist countries in our hemisphere: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Bernie Sanders says his brand of socialism is more like Denmark and Sweden. But Denmark and Sweden are not socialist countries.”
He says socialism means the same thing it always has, and that the 2020 presidential race is all about socialism.
On the other hand, even though California is a decidedly blue, one-party state, the rest of America has no intention of electing a socialist to the White House, Quinn said.
Hotbed on the Hustings
The most highly contested races this election season are mostly in Orange County, a typically red county that flipped to blue in 2018. Republicans lost six seats to Democratic contenders:Rob Pyers, research director at California Target Book, said via email that Republicans are fighting hard to claw back these seats from Democrats in 2020.
In District 39, Young Kim is running against Gil Cisneros again. “She’s benefited this time around from virtually no competition, which has enabled her to outraise Cisneros in a few reporting quarters,” Pyers said.
In District 45, “There are a number of Republican candidates trying to unseat Katie Porter, but the fractured field has left things scrambled,” Pyers said. “There is no clear Republican front runner, and the candidates are burning through whatever cash they’re raising to try to make it out of the primary. Meanwhile, Porter has been a consistently strong fundraiser and has over $3 million on hand.”
District 48, Pyers said, “is becoming bluer, but it still has a strong conservative lean, and Democrats were able to capitalize on running against Dana Rohrabacher in 2018. This time around, the GOP has lined up behind Orange County Supervisor Michelle Park Steel. She’s well-funded and looks poised to give [Harley] Rouda a serious challenge.”
In District 49, “Mike Levin has been raising money at a brisk clip. The Republican in the race has been able to self-fund to a certain extent, but I’m not expecting him to be able to mount a competitive effort,” Pyers said.
In District 74, “There are two Republicans running against Cottie Petrie Norris. The most formidable appears to be Newport Beach Mayor Diane Dixon,” Pyers said.
Vacant Seats
Two other races to watch are the 25th and 50th congressional districts.The District 25 seat was left vacant by Democrat Katie Hill, who resigned last November after reports of alleged sexual misconduct.
She was accused of sexual indiscretions with a congressional staffer and also admitted to a relationship with a campaign aide in what has been described in the news media as a “throuple” relationship. Later, nude photos of Hill were published by a political blog, RedState, and the Daily Mail, a British tabloid. Hill served in Congress for less than a year, from Jan. 3–Nov. 3, 2019.
Primary candidates include Democrats Robert Cooper, Getro Elize, Christopher Smith, Christy Smith, Cenk Uygur, Anibal Valdez-Ortega; Republicans Mike Garcia, Kenneth Jenks, Stephen Knight, David Lozano, Daniel Mercuri, George Papadopoulos; and independent Otis Lee Cooper.
Democratic contender Christy Smith is dominating the race so far, Jeffe and Quinn said.
California’s 25th congressional district is located in Southern California. It includes part of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
In District 50, former U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter resigned his congressional seat after he and his wife, Margaret, pleaded guilty to corruption for using campaign funds for personal expenses.
Federal prosecutors alleged that from 2009 to 2016, he spent campaign funds on extramarital affairs with five women, including lobbyists and congressional staff. Hunter resigned Jan. 13 after serving in Congress from 2009–2020.
Competing for the seat are Republicans Darrell Issa, Brian Jones, Carl DeMaio, Nathan Wilkins; Democrats Ammar Campa-Najjar, Marisa Calderon; independents Helen Horvath, Lucinda Jahn, Henry Ota; and Peace and Freedom Party of California candidate Jose Cortes.
Democrats have next to no chance of winning in the 50th District, Quinn said. It is the reddest district in the state, which Trump carried with a 58 percent majority in 2016.
“It’s between two guys trying to be the most Trumpy,” he said, referring to Issa and Jones.
The Issues
“The main issue is there are no issues,” mainly because the primaries are being held three months earlier than usual, Quinn said.Only about 20 percent of the early ballots have been returned by mail, he said. Neither of California’s two U.S. senators—Diane Feinstein and Kamala Harris, both Democrats—are up for election, and no statewide offices are up for grabs.
Homelessness and Housing Affordability
In California, the homelessness crisis will most likely be on the minds of voters, especially after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s State of the State Address on Feb. 19, in which he focused heavily on homelessness, lack of affordable housing, substance abuse, and mental illness.More than half of the electorate in Orange County believes homelessness is a significant problem, said Jeffe.
“It’s a very serious problem in the big cities, driven by outrageously high housing costs,” Quinn said.
Sixty-three percent of Californians say housing affordability is a big problem in their part of the state, and another 25 percent say it’s somewhat of a problem, the PPIC survey found. About four in ten Californians (44 percent of adults and 38 percent of likely voters) say the cost of living is making them seriously consider moving elsewhere in California or out of state.
The Economy
Both political analysts say California needs more blue-collar jobs, which, along with more affordable housing, could help reduce the homeless population.“The lack of jobs at the lower end of the economy is part of the problem,” Jeffe said. “You’re seeing more families, more people from the middle class who have been fired or laid off living in vans, living in cars. ... I don’t remember it ever being so visible.”
Health Care
With the electorate so focused on Trump and the presidential race, health care almost seems to have slipped off the radar, Jeffe said.“It’s surprising it’s not health care,” she said. “Covered California appears to be working well.” Covered California allows people to purchase private health care at subsidized rates.
Although Quinn agrees that health care is not a major election issue in California, he said it should be.
“Obamacare has worked relatively well for California, which is why it’s just crazy to see all these Democrats trashing it,” Quinn said. “I mean, it took 10 years to get Covered California going. It’s an insurance plan. That’s all Obamacare ever was: an insurance plan subsidized by the state. But, it does seem to work, and it does seem to provide health care choice. The fact that Sanders and Warren want to throw the whole thing out, I think, is crazy.”
School Facilities Bond
Proposition 13, known as the School Facilities Bond, is the only ballot measure on the primary election ballot. A Yes vote, supported by Governor Gavin Newsom, would approve a $15 billion state bond program to finance construction and modernization updates for educational facilities.There’s some confusion around it because it has the same designation as another Proposition 13, which capped increases on residential and commercial property taxes in 1978. “The original Prop. 13, I call the ‘real’ Prop. 13,” Jeffe said. Partially repealing the “real” one will be on the Nov. 3 ballot.
Meanwhile, last-minute legislation that Newsom signed into law on Feb. 13 could boost independent votes in the Democratic primary.
