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'Path to 218 runs through California': State races pivotal in fight to control the House

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'Path to 218 runs through California': State races pivotal in fight to control the House


(Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times)

Barring divine intervention or the West Coast falling into the sea, President Biden will handily win California in the November election.

But should he — or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump — secure a second term in the fall, the future of either’s policy agenda rests heavily on which party controls Congress, where Republicans currently hold a wafer-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

With the Golden State home to some of the most hotly contested swing districts in the country, the House’s fate will almost certainly come down to California.

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The battle for the next two years of partisan political control will be waged door-to-door, from California’s beachside suburban cul-de-sacs to the tiny farm towns in the state’s fertile Central Valley.

Those battlefields will look a lot like Bridgecreek Plaza — a sun-bleached shopping center a few hundred yards from a freeway onramp in Orange County’s Huntington Beach. The mall is home to a crystal store, several insurance brokers, a dentist and the local Republican Party headquarters.

It’s also where about two dozen GOP faithful gathered on the morning of election day, bowing their heads for a quick prayer and pledging allegiance to a portable flag before turning their attention to Jessica Millan Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party.

Patterson was in a very good mood.

When she was first elected to lead the party, in 2019, California Republicans were “essentially the third-largest party in the state,” having sunk below the share of voters registering “decline to state” under party preference.

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But Patterson had presided over a massive voter registration drive over the last five years, and the party had moved back into second. People across the country liked to dismiss “blue California,” she said, but they were forgetting that California has more registered Republicans than any other state.

“California Republicans are the reasons why we have a House majority,” she added, to raucous cheering.

That majority was what they hoped to hold on to, and the group would spend the morning of the March 5 primary election canvassing for Scott Baugh, a Republican attorney and former state Assembly member vying to push Democratic Rep. Katie Porter’s soon-to-be-open congressional seat back from blue to red.

Scott Baugh, in a red-and-white plaid shirt and white baseball cap, holding a mic as he speaks in front of campaign postersScott Baugh, in a red-and-white plaid shirt and white baseball cap, holding a mic as he speaks in front of campaign posters

Scott Baugh is trying again to flip Orange County’s 47th District back to the red column. The seat is a chief target of state and national Republican efforts to maintain control of the House. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

The latest round of redistricting put more conservative enclaves such as Huntington Beach and Newport Beach into California’s 47th Congressional District, and Baugh lost to Porter only narrowly in 2022 despite being vastly outspent, making the coastal Orange County district one of the most competitive in the nation.

The charismatic Porter will be out of the House picture after a failed Senate run; her seat is one of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s three offensive targets in California and top priorities. And it’s equally prized by Democrats.

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Read more:How Trump propelled Schiff to the general election — and likely a Senate seat

In a country where enmity and distrust separate the two major political parties on most issues, California’s utmost importance to any November House strategy is one of the few things on which Republicans and Democrats can agree.

California is home to 10 races rated as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report — five of them in districts that are represented by Republicans but that President Biden won in 2020. In the months to come, both parties will beinvesting significant resources in those races, as national attention inevitably turns west.

With an expected Biden-Trump rematch, voter turnout in 2024 is also likely to be supercharged compared with the 2022 midterm election. That could give an edge to Democrats, given the registration advantage that they hold in many of the competitive districts. Republicans gained one California House seat in the 2022 midterms, a nonpresidential election when turnout was substantially lower than when Biden and Trump topped the ballot two years prior.

“At the end of the day, the path to 218 runs through California,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Dan Gottlieb, referring to the number of seats needed to garner a House majority.

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Dave Min, seen from the shoulders up in a blue suit jacket, looking up to his left against a backdrop of dark-wood columnsDave Min, seen from the shoulders up in a blue suit jacket, looking up to his left against a backdrop of dark-wood columns

Dave Min will face Baugh in November’s runoff for the 47th District seat, which Katie Porter is vacating. Min’s bruising primary battle for the crucial seat has already cost Democrats millions. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Gottlieb was bullish on his party’s chances, citing the high turnout expected for the presidential election, along with strong Democratic candidates and “a bunch of dysfunctional and out-of-touch Republicans enabling the worst of their party’s chaos and dysfunction and extremism.”

But Gottlieb’s GOP counterpart was equally roseate in his outlook, with National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Ben Petersen reveling in the ugly and expensive primary fights that consumed Democrats in several of the state’s most crucial swing districts.

In the O.C. district where GOP volunteers fanned out for Baugh on primary morning, Democrats had sunk millions into a bruising primary battle between state Sen. Dave Min and fellow Democrat Joanna Weiss. Min ultimately emerged victorious, but only after surviving a barrage of negative advertising centered on his 2023 arrest for driving while intoxicated — arguably a gift to Republicans ahead of his fall battle with Baugh.

Read more:Two Democrats battle to keep Katie Porter’s Orange County U.S. House seat blue

“Extreme Democrats are stumbling out of their vicious primary fights broke and bested by Republicans, who saw a groundswell of support for a commonsense safety and affordability agenda,” Petersen said, adding that the primary results made clear the GOP was “playing offense in California” in a way that would set the stage for victories in November.

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Baugh, though, is not expected to go unscathed. In 2022, Porter’s ad campaign ripped the Republican for his antiabortion stance, as well as his work as a lobbyist and criminal charges he faced over campaign violations, for which he ultimately paid $47,000 in fines.

In the San Joaquin Valley, there were last-minute fears that a bruising primary battle would lock Democrats out of one of the races where they have the best chance of flipping a seat, but those concerns proved overblown.

Rudy Salas, backed by the Democratic establishment, vanquished fellow Democrat Melissa Hurtado to secure a spot in the fall against incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the 22nd Congressional District, but that race also put a dent in Democratic coffers.

The November race will be a rematch of the pair’s 2022 runoff, when Salas lost to Valadao by several thousand votes. And Salas and Valadao won’t be the only rematch on the November ticket.

In a heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley district that includes all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, incumbent GOP Rep. John Duarte will once again face off against Democratic challenger Adam Gray. Duarte won the 13th Congressional District in the midterm election by fewer than 600 votes, one of the closest races in the nation.

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Several hundred miles southeast, in Southern California, Democratic challenger Will Rollins will again take on GOP incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving member of the California delegation. The recently redrawn 41st Congressional District stretches from the suburban Inland Empire, where Calvert has long lived, to Palm Springs, where Rollins and his partner make their home.

Read more:LGBTQ+ culture wars surface in heated Riverside County congressional race

The district’s new boundaries — which now include one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ+ voters in the nation and liberal pockets of Californians in the desert — are far more friendly to Democrats. They also set up Rollins, who is gay, as a potent challenger to Calvert, who voted against LGBTQ+ rights in the past, but who says his views have since evolved.

One race that will have some new blood this year, after the same pair of candidates dueled in three previous elections, is California’s 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County.

Once solidly Republican, the district has been reconfigured by redistricting, and has undergone a political transition driven by younger, more diverse transplants from L.A. seeking affordable housing in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley. The district briefly switched from red to blue with former Rep. Katie Hill’s victory in 2018, but the young Democrat’s very public scandals and ultimate resignation helped hand the seat back to the GOP.

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Now-incumbent GOP Rep. Mike Garcia beat Democrat Christy Smith in a 2019 special election to fill the seat, then twice more for full terms in 2020 and 2022. He will face off against George Whitesides, a fresh Democratic challenger, in November.

Ludovic Blain, executive director of the California Donor Table, a progressive group that pools donor funds, said his organization hopes to invest about $10million in California House races in the fall, working with local nonprofits in key areas to turn out voters of color.

They’ll be focusing on seven key races: the three aforementioned rematches, Porter’s open seat and two other Orange County races, and the Garcia-Whitesides matchup.

One point of concern Blain raised is that Republican Steve Garvey’s place near the top of the ticket, facing off against Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) in the Senate race, might affect Democrats in House races.

Schiff engaged in a controversial strategy in the primary, boosting Garvey to lock out Porter and his other major Democratic challenger, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), whom Blain’s organization supported.

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It was a gambit that some in the Democratic establishment said would actually help Democrats in other tight races, since a less-competitive Senate race would siphon away far less money from the party’s coffers.

Read more:Steve Garvey touts ‘family values’ in his Senate bid. Some of his kids tell another story

But others, like Blain, argue that Garvey’s presence could hurt down-ballot Democrats. Plus, having him on the ballot may draw in moderate Republican and independent voters who remain sour on Trump.

“Having Garvey, I think, does spike or further encourage Republican voters to turn out, and more importantly, to vote down the ticket,” Blain said.

Patterson agreed. Unlike Trump, Garvey will likely campaign across the state, providing a lift for other Republicans while he’s at it.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.



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California agency boosts reporting requirements for autonomous vehicle incidents

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California agency boosts reporting requirements for autonomous vehicle incidents


(Reuters) – A California state agency said Thursday it is mandating enhanced data reporting requirements for autonomous vehicles including reports for incidents where self-driving cars get stuck.

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is requiring companies to file detailed trip-level incident reports that cover both collision and non-collision incidents, including citations and stoppage events. In June, GM self-driving unit Cruise agreed to pay the maximum $112,500 penalty to the CPUC for failing to promptly provide complete information to the commission about a serious crash involving one of its robotaxis last year.

(Reporting by David Shepardson)

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With progressive ballot measures on track to fail, California's political identity is questioned

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With progressive ballot measures on track to fail, California's political identity is questioned


There was no surprise on election night when a solid majority of California voters selected Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over former President Trump. But the outcomes of a list of ballot measures told a more complicated story of a state known for its liberal bent.

Voters overwhelmingly supported a measure to undo a decade of progressive criminal justice reform, and preliminary poll results showed they were poised to reject measures that would increase the minimum wage and ban forced prison labor.

Proposition 6 — which would ban “involuntary servitude” as punishment for a crime — lacked majority support in deep-blue California on Wednesday even as supporters promoted it as a way to end what they call modern-day slavery. A similar measure was on track to pass in Nevada.

California voters also rejected a measure that would have made it easier for cities to impose rent control and pass local bond measures for affordable housing.

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Some progressive voters in the state, where Democrats control the governor’s office and Legislature, were dumbfounded by the early results, while Republicans seized on the moment as proof that California is becoming more conservative.

“It’s a new day in California,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher of Yuba City said in a social media post about the election results. “The shift is beginning.”

But longtime California election watchers were more tempered about what the outcome of the ballot measures say about the state’s political leanings.

Mark Baldassare, survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank that conducts polling, said confusing initiative descriptions can deter voters from supporting initiatives even if they actually agree with their intent — especially in a state that is accustomed to seeing a slew of wonky questions on their ballot each year on issues from kidney dialysis to condoms.

“Propositions are a part of the ballot where you don’t have Ds and Rs, you have yeses and nos,” Baldassare said. “The electorate looks at this on an issue-by-issue basis. I don’t feel like it’s necessarily an indicator that it’s a shift to the right. I think that the default for the voter is always ‘no.’ ”

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Californians have defied the state’s liberal reputation when voting on ballot measures before. They have twice rejected ballot measures to abolish the death penalty in the past; and in 2008 they passed Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. (On Tuesday, Californians passed a measure that stripped the last vestiges of Proposition 8 from the California Constitution, reaffirming gay marriage, which remains a federal right.)

Campaign messaging goes a long way for ballot measures, Baldassare said, and voters often weigh their decisions partly based on who is listed as supporters and opponents alongside the question on the ballot. Sometimes, it gets complicated.

In the case of Proposition 33, which was endorsed by the California Democratic Party and would have repealed a law that bars local governments from regulating rent on some buildings, even rent control proponents fed up with the cost of living voiced concerns about unintended impacts of the measure.

Millions were spent for and against Proposition 33, with opponents warning it could make California’s housing shortage worse. A proposition coined as a “revenge measure” was added to the ballot, targeting how a healthcare foundation that is a prime proponent of rent control measures could spend their revenue.

Proposition 6 proponents chalked up its likely failure not to voters’ support for “slavery” but to growing concerns about public safety and how those worries could impact any policy measure related to prison reform. In addition to approving Proposition 36, which cracks down on criminal sentencing for theft and fentanyl crimes, voters also ousted progressive-leaning prosecutors in L.A. County and the Bay Area.

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Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor who is running for governor in 2026 and is expected to position himself as a moderate among a crowded field of Democrats, was reluctant to speculate about what ballot measure results mean before all of them are called. But he said he believes voters want a “course correction” on issues like crime and the economy.

As the Democratic Party nationally grapples with a potential Republican trifecta — winning control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives — and what it means for its movement and the future of the nation, California politicians also need to take a pulse check, he said.

“Are we really listening to people or are we spending all of our time telling them what they ought to do?” Villaraigosa said.

But many California Democrats were undeterred by the ballot measure results, again gearing up to lead the resistance against Trump. They pointed to the approval of progressive-backed causes such as a historic climate change bond and a measure to extend a tax to fund Medi-Cal as proof California remains a liberal bastion in a sea of red.

Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José), chair of the California Progressive Legislative Caucus, said that he’s disappointed by some of the ballot measure results but that “all the corporate and conservative special-interest money” spent on the complex initiatives should be considered before making judgments about the state’s electorate.

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“On the whole, California is still more progressive than a country where just over half of the voters voted for a fascist,” Lee said just hours after Trump was elected to return to the White House.



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Ventura County fire: California homes engulfed by flames

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Ventura County fire: California homes engulfed by flames


A wildfire fanned by winds of up to 80mph (130km/h) is burning out of control in California’s Ventura County.

The fire was first reported near Moorpark, 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, early on Wednesday.

Within hours it had reached a suburb of Camarillo, a city of 70,000 people around 10 miles away.

Thousands of residents have been forced to flee and several have been reported injured.

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Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said that the fire was moving “dangerously fast” and destroying everything in its path.

“Bushes are burning, grass is burning, hedgerows are burning, agricultural fields are burning, and structures are burning,” he said.



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