Democratic Rep. Mike Levin holds on to his coastal Southern California district seat

Democratic Rep. Mike Levin has received reelection in a coastal congressional district that straddles Orange and San Diego counties.

Levin beat Brian Maryott, a Republican businessman and former San Juan Capistrano mayor, in a rematch of the 2020 contest. The Related Press known as the race Wednesday, although official outcomes will take longer.

Levin on Wednesday thanked his household, volunteers and supporters, and he additionally praised Maryott. (The 2 dwell in the identical city and attend the identical church.)

“A thriving democracy requires competitors for residents’ votes, and to those that voted for Mr. Maryott, I wish to reassure you that my door is at all times open,” Levin stated in an announcement. “I welcome alternatives to work collectively as a result of the most effective laws is at all times that with the broadest enter. I firmly imagine that Consultant is not only my job title, it’s additionally my job description.”

Maryott’s marketing campaign didn’t return requests for remark.

The competition had appeared so shut that President Biden campaigned with Levin simply days earlier than the election — an indication of Democrats’ concern about holding on to the seat as they battled for management of the Home, which tipped to Republicans on Wednesday.

The forty ninth Congressional District stretches from Laguna Seaside to Del Mar and contains Camp Pendleton and a mothballed nuclear energy plant. It’s one in every of a number of blue-state districts that overwhelmingly supported Biden in 2020 and had been focused by Republicans within the midterm election. The GOP had hoped Biden’s low approval rankings and the nation’s financial straits would increase their candidates.

Democrats have a scant 3.1-percentage-point edge in voter registration within the district, which is dwelling to many commuters. A lot of Maryott’s marketing campaign focus was on pocketbook issues at a time of surging inflation and excessive gasoline costs.

Levin, who labored as an environmental lawyer earlier than being elected to the Home in 2018, has pushed a daring clean-energy agenda, supporting zero-emission automobiles and banning new drilling off the California coast.

However he has additionally prioritized points which are of specific significance to the district’s voters, together with enhancing companies for veterans and shifting the radioactive waste buried on the closed San Onofre Nuclear Producing Station.

After his race was known as Wednesday, Levin in his assertion talked about his work on healthcare, local weather change, veterans companies, semiconductors and infrastructure.

“I’m notably honored to have been in a position to work throughout the aisle to construct bipartisan, common sense coalitions to deal with many of those points,” he stated. “There may be far more to be achieved, and I stay up for the problem.”