In a major victory for Democrats, first-time candidate Derek Tran defeated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in a hotly contested Orange County congressional race that became one of the most expensive in the country.

Tran will be the first Vietnamese American to represent a district that is home to Little Saigon and the largest population of people of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam.

The race was the third-to-last to be called in the country. As Orange County and Los Angeles County counted mail ballots, Steel’s margin of victory shrank to 58 votes before Tran took the lead 11 days after the election. Tran was leading by 613 votes when Steel conceded Wednesday.

Tran was born in the U.S. to Vietnamese refugee parents. He said his father fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, but his boat capsized, killing his wife and children. Tran’s father returned to Vietnam, where he met and married Tran’s mother, and the couple later immigrated to the United States.

“Only in America can you go from refugees fleeing with nothing but the clothes on your back to becoming a member of Congress in just one generation,” Tran said in a post on X.

“This victory is a testament to the spirit and resilience of our community,” he said. “My parents came to this country to escape oppression and pursue the American Dream, and their story reflects the journey of so many here in Southern California.”

In a statement Wednesday, Steel thanked her volunteers, staff and family for their work on her campaign, saying: “Everything is God’s will and, like all journeys, this one is ending for a new one to begin.” Steel filed paperwork Monday to seek re-election in 2026.

The 45th District was among the country’s most competitive races, critical to both parties as they battled to control the House of Representatives.

With Steel’s loss, Republicans hold 219 seats in the House, barely above the 218-seat threshold needed to control the chamber.

Two races have yet to be called. A recount is underway in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where a Republican incumbent is leading her Democrat challenger by fewer than 800 votes. And in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, Democrat Adam Gray holds a slender lead over GOP Rep. John Duarte, but the race remains too close to call.

Steel and Tran both focused heavily on outreach to Asian American voters, who make up a plurality of the district. The district cuts a C-shaped swath through 17 cities in Orange County and Los Angeles County, including Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Buena Park and Cerritos.

Born to South Korean parents and raised in Japan, Steel broke barriers in 2020 when she became one of three Korean American women elected to the House. She leaned on anti-communist messaging to reach out to older voters who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Tran also focused on Vietnamese American voters and Vietnamese-language media, hoping that voters would leave their loyalty to the Republican Party in order to support a representative who shared their background.

Steel became a prime target for Democrats because, although she is a Republican, voters in the 45th District supported President Biden in 2020. The two-term congresswoman is a formidable fundraiser with deep ties to the Orange County GOP, including through her husband, Shawn Steel, the former chairman of the California Republican Party.

The Republican establishment and outside groups, including the cryptocurrency lobby and Elon Musk’s super PAC, spent heavily to defend Steel.

In a sign of the seat’s importance to Democrats, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former President Clinton and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) all joined Tran on the campaign trail in the weeks before the election.

The race was marked by allegations of “red baiting” after the Steel campaign sent Vietnamese-language mailers to households in Little Saigon that showed Tran next to the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Zedong.

Steel’s campaign said that the Tran campaign had been running Vietnamese-language ads on Facebook that accused Steel’s husband of “selling access” to the Chinese Communist Party and that said Steel could not be trusted to stand up to China.

Tran’s win is a key victory for Democrats, who fought to flip five highly competitive seats held by Republicans in California — more than any other state. Republicans were pushing to flip a district in coastal Orange County represented by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine).

Democrat Dave Min beat Republican Scott Baugh in the costly contest for Porter’s seat and Democrat George Whitesides flipped the district represented by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia in L.A. County’s Antelope Valley.

In the agricultural Central Valley, Republican Rep. David Valadao easily won reelection over Democrat Rudy Salas. The race in the San Joaquin Valley between Gray, the Democrat, and Rep. Duarte, who won two years ago by 564 votes, remained too close to be called.

A runoff election for the state Supreme Court in Mississippi is too close to call between state Sen. Jenifer Branning and incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens as of Wednesday morning. 

Although Mississippi judicial candidates run without party labels, Branning had the endorsement of the Republican Party, while Kitchens had several Democratic Party donors but did not receive an endorsement from the party. 

Branning, who has been a state senator since 2016, led Kitchens by 2,678 votes out of 120,610 votes counted as of Wednesday morning. Kitchens is seeking a third term and is the more senior of the court’s two presiding justices, putting him next in line to serve as chief justice. Her lead had been 518 just after midnight Wednesday.

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Around midnight Wednesday, The Associated Press estimated there were more than 11,000 votes still to be counted. In the Nov. 5 election, 7% of votes were counted after election night.

Branning had a substantial lead in the first round of voting with 42% compared to Kitchens’ 36%. Three other candidates split the rest.

The victor will likely be decided by absentee ballots that are allowed to be counted for five days following an election in Mississippi, as well as the affidavit ballots, according to the Clarion Ledger.

Voter turnout typically decreases between general elections and runoffs, and campaigns said turnout was especially challenging two days before Thanksgiving. The Magnolia State voted emphatically for President-elect Donald Trump, who garnered 61.6% of the vote compared to Vice President Harris’ 37.3%.

Branning and Kitchens faced off in District 1, also known as the Central District, which stretches from the Delta region through the Jackson metro area and over to the Alabama border.

Mississippi Supreme Court justices including Justice Jim Kitchens, seated at right, fourth from top, listen to arguments on July 6, 2023 in Jackson, Mississippi. (Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Branning calls herself a “constitutional conservative” and says she opposes “liberal, activists judges” and “the radical left.” The Mississippi GOP said she was the “proven conservative,” and that was why they endorsed her. 

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She has not previously held a judicial office but served as a special prosecutor in Neshoba County and as a staff attorney in the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Division of Business Services and Regulations, per the Clarion Ledger.

Branning voted against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem and supported mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime, according to Mississippi Today.

Kitchens has been practicing law for 41 years and has been on the Mississippi Supreme Court since 2008, and prior to that, he also served as a district attorney, according to the outlet.

The Magnolia State voted emphatically for President-elect Donald Trump, who garnered 61.6% of the vote compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 37.3%. (Getty Images)

He is endorsed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund, which calls itself “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., also backed Kitchens.

In September, Kitchens sided with a man on death row for a murder conviction in which a key witness recanted her testimony. In 2018, Kitchens dissented in a pair of death row cases dealing with the use of the drug midazolam in state executions.

Elsewhere, in the state’s other runoff election, Amy St. Pe’ won an open seat on the Mississippi Court of Appeals. She will succeed Judge Joel Smith, who did not seek re-election to the 10-member Court of Appeals. The district is in the southeastern corner of the state, including the Gulf Coast.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

SACRAMENTO —  When he was running for governor in 2017, Gavin Newsom tapped into the simmering rage of California liberals, at one point boasting on the campaign trail: “You want resistance to Donald Trump? Boy, bring it on, Donald.”

That swagger helped Newsom cruise to election in 2018 and crystallized his reputation as a national leader of the anti-Trump resistance.

Whether California’s next governor will follow Newsom’s lead is less clear.

The crowded field of Democrats running to succeed Newsom in 2026, and others weighing campaigns, are still triangulating how best to position themselves against President-elect Trump — and whether that’s a posture that California voters even want.

Some candidates have echoed Newsom with a strident tone. The week Trump was reelected, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who is considering a run for governor, stood in front of the Golden Gate Bridge and vowed use “the full force of the law” to defend Californians against the new administration.

“If Trump attacks your rights: I’ll be there,” Bonta said. “If Trump comes after your freedoms: I’ll be there. If Trump jeopardizes your safety and well-being: I’ll be there.”

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who entered the governor’s race last year, said the state would fight any efforts by the Trump administration to undo LGBTQ+ student protections or dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. And Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis promised in a social media post that California will “never waver in our protection of the freedom to control our bodies, to marry who we love and to create opportunities for immigrants and ALL our families.”

The slight rightward shift of California’s voters this year has given other candidates pause. Preliminary election results suggest that several counties won by President Biden in 2020 tilted toward Trump this year, including San Bernardino County in Southern California, Butte County in Northern California, and a broad swath of the San Joaquin Valley through Merced, Fresno and Stanislaus counties, a Times analysis shows.

Voters also handed resounding losses to the criminal justice reform movement, voting Dist. Attys. George Gascón and Pamela Price out of office and approving a tough-on-crime ballot initiative with overwhelming support.

“Is firing up the Trump resistance really the right move given what has just happened?” said Sarah Anzia, a political scientist and public policy professor at UC Berkeley. “I would think this would call for some introspection and consideration of why Trump has grown in popularity in a state like this.”

Former state controller Betty Yee, who entered the gubernatorial race in March, has pointed in fundraising emails to the state’s “shift toward Trump.” As the statewide vote continues to be tallied, the shift appears to be just shy of 5 points; Biden won 63.5% of California voters in 2020. Harris currently has 58.6%.

“That’s a fairly significant slide right, and while it’s easy to chalk up the votes of millions of Californians to hate or falling for Trump’s deception, the fact is that more young people and more Black and Latino families voted for Trump than ever before,” Yee wrote.

In another message, she wrote that “Latinos of all ages, and young people — the literal future of California, two groups that politicians have leaned on for decades — turned away from the Democratic Party in a historically poor showing this election.”

Navigating those subtle shifts in the electorate may be tricky, however, and overcorrecting too far to the right may prove just as treacherous.

Although he performed better in California in 2024 than 2020, Trump remains very unpopular with most Golden State voters. Historically, the party not in the White House also makes big gains in the next general election — which will be 2026, when Californian’s will elect a new governor. So attacking Trump may be fruitful.

Toni Atkins, the former state senate leader who is among a half-dozen candidates who have launched their 2026 gubernatorial campaigns, described the focus on Trump as a sort of necessary evil.

Everyone is jumping on “the anti-Trump bandwagon,” she said, which is a distraction from major California issues such as the rising cost of living — but critical to the state’s ethos.

Atkins was the leader of the state Senate during the first Trump administration, and led the campaign for Proposition 1, which enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

She said Trump’s reelection changes “the whole nature of this run for governor.”

“We need to be worried about what it means for California,” she said, “because he came at us the first time.”

California sued the federal government more than 100 times during the first Trump administration, challenging the president’s authority on immigration, healthcare, education, gun control, consumer protection, the census, the U.S. Postal Service, civil rights issues and other topics.

On the campaign trail, Trump has recently derided Newsom as “Newscum” and called California and its Democratic leaders “radical left lunatics.” He’s also zeroed in on some of the state’s highest-profile leaders, including Senator-elect Adam Schiff and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, calling them “enemies from within.”

But California still needs the White House’s support in many areas, including health insurance for low-income residents that requires federal healthcare waivers, and emergency disaster funding during natural disasters like wildfires.

In a poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times in late October, more than half of registered voters said they had no preference among the candidates who have already entered the race. Among those who do, their favorites haven’t yet announced their campaigns.

U.S. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), who has not said whether she will run, would be the first or second choice of 13% of voters, the poll found. Two Republicans said to be weighing campaigns, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and state Sen. Brian Dahle, who ran against Newsom in 2022, were the first or second choice of 12% and 11% of registered voters, respectively.

Kounalakis and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa each have 7% support, and so does Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who has not said whether he will run. Republican commentator Steve Hilton, also said to be weighing a bid, would be the first or second choice of 6% of voters.

Thurmond, Atkins and Yee had support from fewer than 5% of registered voters.

While the political environment for the 2026 campaign appears to be in flux, there may be lessons from the last time Californians picked a governor while Trump was in the White House.

In 2018, Villaraigosa ran a campaign that hewed toward the middle, focusing on equal access to education, fiscal restraint and his strong record as mayor on supporting law enforcement and protecting the environment. Newsom campaigned on a bedrock liberal and expensive agenda, including proposals for a state-sponsored healthcare system, universal preschool and increased funding for higher education.

Villaraigosa failed to make it out of the primary. Newsom won back-to-back terms.