No, You Can’t Yet Count on the Count
Updated: Jul 25
California is notoriously slow in counting votes. “Slow” is the polite term. It sometimes takes the state a month before they certify voting. I fully understand that, as the most populous state, they have a lot more people to count that most other states. Though they don’t have significantly more than New York, or even Florida and Texas. And they all manage to count their votes in a reasonable time. The biggest issue seems to be that most Californians vote by mail, which is a slower process – besides which, many ballots might not even come in for 3-4 days after the election. That still doesn’t explain why it sometimes takes a month, nor why the vote count didn’t change for most of the day until around 5 PM, and even at that didn't go up past 55.8%, but who am I to argue with the grand realities of life.
This is a long way of saying the California results are still in flux, and I haven’t nothing specific in that regard. But I do have something to note, contrary to appearances.
The news media made a big deal of MAGOP Steve Hilton leading in the “Jungle Primary” that the state holds, where all candidates run together, and the top two move on to the General Election. This suggested, on the surface, an amazing “win” in such a heavily Democratic state. And today, Hilton was taking a victory lap on social media all day, saying he was headed for Sacramento (the state capitol) and thanking Trump for his congratulations on his win.
To be clear, Hilton may be headed for Sacramento, though only as a tourist or lobbyist.
Hilton was a wee bit premature, for a couple of reasons. The first is that only about 52% of the vote had been recorded at the time, and most of the remaining votes were likely mail-in, which tend to be from Democrats. The second reason, though, is more pronounced and detailed with facts.
Consider: at the moment, as I check the totals at 10 PM on Wednesday night. the cumulative vote total for MAGOPs in the primary (which is comprised basically of Hilton and Chad Bianco, who is likely to end up in fourth place) is about 2.1 million. On the other hand, the vote total for all Democrats running is 3 million.
If you break that down into percentages, Democrats lead 59-41%, which is a massive landslide. And which overlaps with what the normal breakdown is in the state. And this is before the remaining 45% of ballots are counted, which (as noted above) are mostly mail-in ballots, and most of those in California are from Democrats.
In other words, when it comes to the General Election, it’s likely (at best for MAGOPs) that Democrat Xavier Becerra will face off against MAGOP Steve Hilton, and unfortunately for Mr. Hilton he doesn’t stand a chance and is going to be swamped. At worst for MAGOPs, with 45% of the vote still to be counted, Democrat Tom Steyer could possibly overtake Hilton, and it will be two Democrats in the General Election.
So, that whole victory lap thing…nah, not so much. I’m sure Hilton is doing his dance because he wants to make it seem like he’s a winner and build up enthusiasm (or because he knows he doesn’t stand a chance, and wants to enjoy a “victory,” no matter for incredibly premature). But giving false hope when you’re dancing around tends to make you look really foolish.
(What it also does is let your party, if delusional enough, claim – when all the actual votes come in -- the voting was rigged, no matter how much you got crushed by. Which is so on-brand for the MAGOP.)
The point being, to reiterate, despite what the news might be reporting, Democrats will get at least one candidate in the governor’s race in the final two, which means they will win the General Election. The only meaningful question is which two? Will it be two Democrats, or which Democrat will run against Hilton and beat him badly. But at this point, and from the polls showed during the final weeks, it appears it will be Xavier Becerra, the state’s former Attorney General and Health & Human Services Secretary under President Biden – who will win -- against Hilton. Who will be pummeled.
There are a lot of other races in California (including many local here in Los Angeles) that I’m following closely, but with the results trickling in, I’m not wasting too much time trying to figure them out yet. Nor will I try to figure out and explain what’s going on in the Los Angeles Mayor’s race. I’ll only say that Mayor Karen Bass (who was my representative in Congress) is to very popular, but will be running against either the totally unqualified, wildly out of his league Spencer Pratt -- endorsed very late in the campaign by Trump, which should undermine him in the General Election -- or City Council member Nithya Raman who is a Democrat.
I will close by noting the one race I can’t not mention and that’s happiest for me – even though the results are still early. But the good new is he’s that much ahead. It's that Nick Melvoin, a terrific guy and son of my good friends Jeff and Martha Melvoin, will win his third race for the Los Angeles School Board. Huzzah! You can count on it.
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