WASHINGTON — Republicans have clinched four of the seven competitive House races in California, proving wrong the dismal projections of their chances in 2020 and setting up the party for possible further success in 2022.
It's a reflection of the rest of the country, where Democrats expected to expand their majority and instead lost a significant amount of seats to Republicans, delivering the narrowest House majority in about a century to Democrats.
Democrats weren't seriously looking to expand their extensive majority in California — national groups did not make financial investments in any districts held by Republicans — where only seven House seats were held by Republicans after the 2018 election. But they did feel optimistic about holding on to the seven battlegrounds they won in 2018.
While detailed data isn't yet available for California, political strategists on both sides expect California will show an under-representation of the Latino vote on the Democratic side — a disaster for the party in races that were decided by a few thousand, or even a few hundred, votes. Democrats also think the lack of a congressional deal on a COVID-19 pandemic stimulus money for more than seven months before the election hurt them in the battleground districts.
"We said very early on that these Democrats wouldn't be able to run on their rhetoric this time, they had to run on their records," said Torunn Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans. "And we held to that."
Republican strategists are emphasizing their recruitment successes across the country and in California. The four Republican candidates who won in California are Young Kim and Michelle Steel, the first two Korean women elected to Congress; David Valadao, a former representative of Portuguese descent who speaks fluent Spanish; and Rep. Mike Garcia, a Hispanic American and the son of Mexican immigrants who first won his district in a special election last year. NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer of Minnesota, said from the beginning of the election cycle that they wanted to emphasize recruiting women, veterans and minorities.
"Recruitment is the No. 1 reason they won back these districts in my mind, especially getting Valadao to run again," said Rob Stutzman, a longtime GOP strategist based in Sacramento. "I don't think they win that one back without him." The district Valadao just won, against Democrat Rep. TJ Cox, went to Hillary Clinton by 16 points in 2016.
Valadao and Kim both also ran in 2018 and lost to Democrats Cox and Rep. Gil Cisneros. But this year, unlike in 2018, suburbanites and others who didn't like President Donald Trump could vote against him and for a Republican in Congress, Stutzman said.
"Voters punished the president and more or less favored a center-right direction for the country," Stutzman said. "And in parts of California that are closely divided, this is what they did."
"The theory that Democrats could just tie Trump to these candidates did not work," he added. "Steel won her district and (President-elect Joe) Biden won her district."
There was a sense among Democrats that California Latinos would turn out in higher numbers in 2020 than polling showed, since Latinos turned out in high numbers in the 2018 midterms. But this year, Latino voting under-performed up and down the Democratic ballot around the country (California data on Latino turnout for 2020 is not available yet). Moderate Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., said he thought final vote counts might show that California Latinos did turn out, they just voted more for Republicans than expected.
"We understood there would be high Democratic turnout, but I think we underestimated the number of Republican voters that came out," Bera said. "Trump's margin with the Latino community was probably better, which would've hurt."
In California's 21st and 25th congressional districts, won by Valadao and Garcia, those lack of Latino votes for Democrats could've particularly hurt. Valadao's winning margin is currently only about 1,500 votes and Garcia's is only about 300 votes.
"We don't have the data from the general election, but in the special election we saw that Garcia got the Latino support," Sinclair said. "The (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) even had on their website that (Democrat) Christy Smith wasn't doing well with Latinos."
The coronavirus pandemic also didn't help Democrats as they had anticipated. While Democrats hoped that Trump's politicization of masks and the increasing number of cases and deaths would make a case for down-ballot Democrats, the actual reception by California voters was more mixed.
Lockdowns, for example, which were mostly pushed by Democrats, have been controversial. Bera said Democrats needed to take a look at their messaging on coronavirus, emphasizing not just the health care aspect but more economic aspects.
"(Health care) helped in 2018 in picking up these seats, but if you look at the overall electorate in California, you saw tax measures fail," Bera said. "So maybe we needed to talk more about the economic security side, and about how to get people back to work."
Then there was the coronavirus stimulus negotiations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was the face of the Democrats negotiating the deal, and she and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin delivered a deal in late March that Trump signed. But that was it.
While the House passed two huge bills with aid, known as the Heroes Act, neither was considered by the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Mnuchin kept pushing for a smaller aid package, while Pelosi held firm that she wouldn't go as low as they wanted. Trump delivered mixed messages about what he wanted passed.
But the practical effect meant those California Democrat incumbents had no additional stimulus package to tout to their constituents.
"I think it probably hurt incumbents more than challengers," Bera said. "I don't think it was about Republican or Democrat, I think it was blaming Congress or blaming the president."
Typically, a Democratic presidency doesn't bode well for Democrats in the House. So Democrats are now down four seats while looking at a likely more challenging election in 2022.
However, California and the rest of the country will be going through redistricting before the 2022 election, which means congressional districts will look different. So it's hard to make predictions about how vulnerable Democrats or Republicans will be in certain districts when the boundaries of those districts are question marks.
Right now, California has seven congressional battlegrounds, and in the next session Republicans will control four of those, while Democrats — Reps. Josh Harder, Katie Porter and Mike Levin — control three. Each of those Democrats won their races by at least six points and 20,000 votes.
Andy Orellana, a spokesman for the DCCC, said they were optimistic that the thin margins in Republican victories boded well for Democrats in 2022.
"These ancestrally Republican districts were determined by razor-thin margins in 2018 and the same was true in 2020," Orellana said. "The targeted investments and aggressive organizing by Democrats in California's grassroots and communities of color will continue to provide electoral dividends into the future. As a result, these districts remain incredibly vulnerable for Republicans in 2022."
Sinclair declined to comment on future goals of the NRCC, and Stutzman said it's hard to say what will happen due to redistricting. But he said it seems likely that California will lose a seat in the Los Angeles area, which could have repercussions in the Orange County races. Some battleground district Democrats, such as Porter and Levin, would have to run in the same district, he said.
"It would seem to me that you could have safer Republican seats in Orange County," he added.
Bera also projected optimism for Democrats in 2022, saying the humility from Republican wins was going to challenge Democrats to take a hard look at shortcomings, such as data and polling errors when it came to Trump voters.
"I think Republicans have to be really cautious here, they seem to think they have a winning message that won these races. And I hope they keep running on that pro-Trump platform, because I don't think that's why they won," Bera said. "He won't be on the ballot in 2022, so if you ask me today, I do think we'll hold on to our majority and expand."
