Red Straws In The Wind In California Politics?. . . Has Dem-Media Hammering Of Conservatives Caused Blowback?

By DEXTER DUGGAN

After the leftist Democrat-media corruption corporation did all it could to destroy Donald Trump and conservatives even before he was elected president in 2016, what are the portents for the national election this fall?
Events are sifted for bold and mild significance. Three recent elections in California give Democrats little to celebrate. These are no guarantee of November outcomes, but they did occur in the blue paradise of California, which takes its color even more from pro-Dem voting results than from the Pacific Ocean.
Following year after year of media hammering against them, Trump and his Republicans still scooped up some victories in no less than the Golden State. Is this a sign that some voters have become thoroughly sickened by the frenzies of the fake-news media’s unfairness?
Even these days the Golden State had retained corners of Republican conservatism, although some of that was erased in the 2018 midterms. So the liberal American Prospect site was more than worried at the result of the May 12 special election in California’s 25th Congressional District, comfortably won by Republican Mike Garcia over Democrat Christy Smith.
Headlining the “shocking loss” for Democrats, the American Prospect article snarled: “In the first special election of the pandemic era, where Trump’s brazen mishandling has led to the deaths of tens of thousands while being openly combative with California officials over the state’s response, Democrats were thumped by one of Trump’s gold-star flunkies.
“It marks the first time the GOP has flipped a Democratic-held California congressional district since 1998, over two decades ago,” the article said.
The pro-life Garcia and pro-abortion Smith are expected to face each other again to fill the regular two-year term decided in November.
The special election was held because incumbent Democrat Katie Hill resigned over a sex scandal after she had rolled into office with the 2018 “blue wave.”
The UK Guardian posted on May 13: “After a bitter political battle complicated and constrained by the pandemic, Garcia’s win was a blow for Democrats who in 2018 had secured the suburban Los Angeles district for the first time . . . since 1990. . . .
“Although California is checkered with some red districts, it had been nearly 20 years since a Republican picked up a congressional seat in the state,” the Guardian added.
Northern California conservative commentator Barbara Simpson told The Wanderer on May 18: “The Democratic loss in District 25 has the phones ringing off their hooks, the Internet buzzing, and the powers that be in Democrat headquarters trying to figure out just went wrong. Unfortunately, they’re missing the point. Never mind mail-in-votes, voter age, sexism, and all the usual culprits.
“It seems to me voters are just sick of the ‘usual’ Democrat politics,” Simpson said. “Their ‘woman’ candidate resigned because of a sex affair. ’Nuff said. Maybe people just wanted to throw the baby out with the bathwater and put in a new person — a candidate with a solid background of honor and conservative principles. What a novel idea. It worked!!”
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on May 18: “It is always tough to find clues about national general elections in special elections that occur months prior. That said, this is clearly a Democrat district that saw the Republican win by double digits, so the GOP is entitled to feel good about it, at least for a little while.
“Better still, it was a win for a Hispanic Republican in a state like California,” Querard said. “If Republicans are to compete in California again in the future, that change will have to be led by candidates just like Garcia.”
The American Prospect site added about the race: “And the 25th District is not a rural backwoods that has been part of the Trump core, either; it’s the suburban corridor just north of Los Angeles, next door to a deep-blue urban hub and very much the suburban composition that Democrats have identified as their new wheelhouse. It backed Hillary Clinton by seven points, and Trump has long had a deeply underwater favorability rating there.”
Wynette Sills, director of Californians for Life (californiansfor
life.org), told The Wanderer there was more good recent election news for pro-lifers, too.
The California State Assembly seat that Dem Christy Smith left in order to run against the GOP’s Mike Garcia for Congress will end up in the pro-life Republican column with this November’s election, Sills said.
Under California’s unusual “top two” election system, whoever the top two finishers are in a race advance to the general election, even if they’re from the same political party.
Smith’s Assembly District 38 seat “will be handed over to a pro-life Republican woman after the November 3 general election,” Sills said. In the March 3 primary for this district, “two pro-life Republican women, Suzette Martinez Valladares and Lucie Lapointe Volotzky, won the top two spots, with a run-off between them in November.”
Either way, Sills said, this pro-abortion Democrat seat will go to a pro-life Republican woman.
Garcia won his special election “by 12 percentage points, with a 15,000-vote advantage, according to the latest election results, which is a great encouragement for all pro-life voters, working together now through November 3,” Sills said.
In addition, she said, pro-life Republican Melissa Melendez won a special election in southern California’s State Senate District 28, which includes Palm Springs, Blythe, and Indio.
This seat opened up because its pro-life Republican incumbent, Jeff Stone, resigned to take a position with the federal Department of Labor, she said.
Melendez’s losing Democrat opponent, the Californians for Life newsletter reported, “was a very pro-abortion candidate, a Planned Parenthood employee, and even served as the government-relations director for the abortion industry.”
Sills told The Wanderer: “Senate District 28 is, like much of California, increasingly ‘purple’ and includes liberal communities such as Palm Springs. We could not take this district for granted.”
Although Stone won the district by three percentage points in 2018, she said, Melendez took the special election by nearly 11 points “over her very pro-abortion opponent. . . . This margin of victory is definitely an encouragement for the pro-life effort.”
Melendez previously served in the state’s lower chamber, the Assembly. Sills said it appears that her former Assembly District 67 “will remain a pro-life Republican seat, with Kelly Seyarto, mayor of Murrieta, highly favored to win in November.”

Ballot Harvesting

Veteran California pro-life activist Albin Rhomberg told The Wanderer on May 18 that the pandemic shutdown made it difficult to conduct California ballot-harvesting this time around.
Ballot harvesting is a tactic favored by Democrats to have people turn their ballots over to the Dems for conveyance to ballot-collection sites — with all the dangers that implies for ballot security.
“It was the coronavirus shutdown that made it difficult to attempt to do ballot harvesting, which is how the Democratic Party flipped several Republican congressional districts in November 2018,” Rhomberg said. “Whether or not ballot harvesting will be practical for the November 2020 election depends a great deal on what happens with the COVID-19 plague.”
Ballot harvesting typically is not compatible with Republicans and conservatives, he said, because they prefer to go to polling places, or at least individually mail their ballots.