California remains the country’s great exception. With nearly all votes counted, only two House Democrats here appear even at risk of losing their seats, suggesting that the national Republican wave ebbed before reaching the West Coast.
The wave did, of course, topple Democrat Nancy Pelosi from her post as the Speaker of the House, the first woman and first Californian to hold that job. It will also mean the loss of important committee chairmanships for veteran California Democrats like George Miller of Martinez, who heads the education and labor committee; Henry Waxman, who heads the House energy and commerce committee; and Howard Berman, who heads the foregin affairs committee. Republicans Darrell Issa, Bud McKeon, David Dreier, Jerry Lewis and Kevin McCarthy are in line to assume leadership positions under Republican control.
By late Tuesday, Republican David Harmer was the only California congressional challenger with a clear lead in the polls. Harmer, running in California’s 11th district, centered in San Joaquin County, was leading Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney 49 percent to 46, with 61 percent of precincts reporting. At midnight, the Associated Press declared the race too close to call.
Most polling and prognosticators estimated that the GOP was likely to pick up between 55 and 60 congressional seats, more than enough to claim the House majority. By late Tuesday night, Republicans had picked up 59 formerly Democratic seats. Each of the major networks had called a GOP House majority by 7 p.m. on the West Coast.
Key races in Florida, Indiana, Tennessee, New Jersey and large swaths of the mid-Atlantic and Rustbelt states went to the Republicans, with a number of important contests in New York and Pennsylvania going to the GOP, too.
Michael Steele, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, appearing before a crowd at the party’s victory headquarters in Washington D.C., expressed enthusiasm about the early results. “We are about to do the one thing Americans want done, and that is to fire Pelosi,” Steele said.
But most of the action took place outside the Golden State. Of California’s 53 congressional representatives — the largest delegation in the House — only three Democratic incumbents entered Tuesday with their jobs in real danger: McNerney, a former wind-turbine company CEO and two-term incumbent; Jim Costa in the 20th district, which stretches from Fresno to Bakersfield; and Loretta Sanchez, a four-term representative from the state’s 47th district, in Orange County. One incumbent Republican, Dan Lungren in the 3rd district northeast of Sacramento, held a slim lead in polls over Democratic challenger Ami Bera entering Tuesday.
Despite Harmer’s lead, his press coordinator, Melissa Subbotin, wouldn’t yet claim victory. “We’re going to wait,” Subbotin said. “That’s not everybody’s favorite thing, especially on the West Coast, but that’s what we’re doing.”
Sanchez held a 50-43 lead over Republican Van Tran in the 47th district race at 11:30 p.m., with 51 percent of the vote tallied, and Lungren was leading Bera 50-43 with 75 percent of precincts reporting. By midnight, Vidak was trailing Republican challenger Andy Vidak of Hanford by less than 1 percent. Vidak had been considered a longshot until the final weeks of the campaign, when he received an influx of cash from the national Republican party and benefited from televised ads attacking Costa that were paid for by independent nonprofit groups, including Carl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Political Strategies. Sixty-nine percent of CD-20 precincts have reported their results.
“On a national scale, Republicans have a good tailwind,” said Richard Temple, a Sacramento political consultant. “Every seat they can take away from the Democrats gets them closer to majority control, so every seat in play is important. But in California, it’s unique in that there aren’t a lot of competitive seats. So (this election) won’t dramatically change the dynamics of the California delegation, but people in California should still care about it.”
For Republicans, regaining control of the House was largely contingent on winning back seats the party lost during the 2006 and 2008 elections, when Democrats made significant gains in traditionally conservative districts, like California’s 11th, where in 2006, McNerney was able to knock off seven-term Republican incumbent Richard Pombo. McNerney retained the seat in 2008 as his district came out in support of Barack Obama, but entered Tuesday trailing Harmer, the Tea Party-favored Republican nominee, in some private polls.
“The problem for Democrats (nationally) is that Obama now has fewer backers than he once did, chiefly because the economy is awful and he has been President for two years,” said David Karol, a government professor at American University. “They are losing races not only in historically Republican districts, but in more competitive ones and even in some Democratic areas.”
But not so in the Golden State, where McNerney and Sanchez represent the exception, even though close to three-quarters of the state’s voters disapprove of the job their congressmen are doing in Washington, the Field Poll reported in October.
“Californians aren’t as pissed off as the rest of the country,” said Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at UC San Diego. “Obama’s approval ratings are higher here than nationwide. It’s a pretty blue state, and it’s likely to stay a pretty blue state this election.”
That’s because California’s demographic makeup tends to shield it from many national trends, said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo. California’s large population of non-white residents, DiCamillo said, tends to view government-sponsored programs and health care insurance overhaul more favorably than the nation as whole.
Further, California’s independent voters – who make up a quarter of the state’s registered voters — tend to be more left-leaning than decline-to-state voters elsewhere.
So while 72 percent of Californians view Congress unfavorably, early polls indicate that independent voters here support most of the state’s Democratic slate, incumbents included — a departure from other generally blue states like New York, where several Democratic members of congress faced stiff challenges from the GOP.
Among the early Republican victories was Florida’s 8th district, where Republican Daniel Webster, who previously served in the House, defeated freshman Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson, a major GOP target, 56 percent to 38. Republicans also won in Florida’s 24th district, where Sandy Adams defeated first-term Democrat Suzanne Kosmas.
“The incumbents with underlying strength are hanging on,” said John McNulty, a political science professor at SUNY Binghamton, citing aggressive fund raising and high-profile endorsements as examples of “strength.” “It looks like the Republicans sent the herd at the Democrats who won their seats the last two cycles.”
But Katie Merrill, a political consultant in Berkeley, said even Republican pick-ups in the 11th and possibly the 3rd districts won’t necessarily signal a revival for the party in solidly blue California.
“Republicans in California need to win the governor’s race if they’re going to do anything of any impact,” Merrill said. Democrat Jerry Brown defeated Republican Meg Whitman to win the governorship earlier Tuesday. “It looks like this is really just a matter of voter turnout, and perhaps not really this Republican ‘wave.’ The Republican party in California needs to do a lot more than win back CD-11 to show they’ve gained ground in the state.”
Allen Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, a political almanac of sorts, agreed that California’s Republican Party still has a long ways to go before it can make a significant dent in the state’s congressional delegation.
“The Republican Party in California has almost become a regional party,” Hoffenblum said. “It’s not a statewide party. But (CD-11) is a region where they’re still competitive. You look at the figures, and the district leans Republican. And this year is a good year to be a Republican.”
Mid-term elections almost always benefit the party out of power. Since 1950, the president’s political party has lost seats in Congress during mid-terms in every election but two, in 1998 and 2002, when Republicans were able to stretch out their majority. During the last mid-term election, in 2006, Democrats gained 30 Republican seats nationally – the biggest mid-term swing since Democrats coughed up 54 of their seats in the House in 1994, during the Clinton administration.
Much of Republicans’ fervor has been directed toward Speaker Pelosi, who became one of Republicans’ favorite symbols of excessive Congressional spending. Harmer was on hand earlier in October at a Stockton rally organized by Steele aboard a “Fire Pelosi” tour bus.
Republican spirit this year has also been bolstered by the vocal rise of the Tea Party, both in California and nationally. And while few Tea Party-backed candidates have been able to gain much serious traction in California, the endorsement has appeared to benefit Harmer, whose father served as the state’s lieutenant governor under Ronald Reagan, a Tea Party icon.