Democrat Christy Smith conceded defeat to Republican Mike Garcia on Wednesday, May 13, bringing to a close the dramatic, pandemic-framed race for a key seat in Congress.
That post, which represents an area from the northern San Fernando Valley to the Antelope Valley and a sliver of Ventura County, flips from blue to red, pending certification of the election. That’s the first time that’s happened in California in 22 years.
“While it’s critical that we ensure every vote is counted and recorded, we believe that the current tally shows Mike Garcia is the likely victor in the May 12 special election. As such, I’d like to congratulate him,” said Smith, the assemblywoman for the overlapping 38th Assembly District, on her Facebook page.
While the race has with many votes yet to be counted, Garcia had declared himself the winner earlier in the day after early results showed him with a formidable lead.
President Donald Trump declared the race over Wednesday morning, “Big Congressional win in California for Mike Garcia, taking back a seat from the Democrats. This is the first time in many years that a California Dem seat has flipped back to a Republican.”
Preliminary results from the Secretary of State’s office showed Garcia with a 56% to 44% lead over Smith. Garcia recorded 80,337 votes to 62,998 for Smith, according to semi-official results.
In L.A. County, 21,790 outstanding ballots remained to be counted. The majority included vote-by-mail ballots with a mix of conditional and provisional ballots, according to the registrar’s office. Those numbers could increase as more mail-in ballots come in that were postmarked by Election Day. The registrar has until June 1 to certify the election, though that could come earlier, depending on the influx of last-minute ballots.
“After seeing more results last night, it is clear that our message of lower taxes and ensuring we don’t take liberal Sacramento dysfunction to Washington prevailed,” Garcia wrote in a statement Wednesday declaring the win. “I’m ready to go to work right away for the citizens of the 25th Congressional District.”
The registrars have until June 1 to certify the election.
The first of two Sheriff transports from our Santa Clarita check-in center is headed to the tally center in Downey with ballots cast today at in-person Vote Centers in #CA25. Semi-official election night updates and totals will follow once processed.
— Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (@LACountyRRCC) May 13, 2020
Garcia, whose rise was bolstered by his background as a Navy fighter pilot and as a business executive at Raytheon, reflected Wednesday on what worked for his campaign, and on the future, during an interview with the Daily News.
“I think people are thirsty for political outsiders right now,” he said. “I think we’re seeing partisan bickering and politicians driving us into the ground,” he said of his year-and-a-half-old campaign.
He said his 500 volunteers where pivotal in getting the word out. Now, he said he will immediately turn his attention to constituent services.
“The actions are going to matter more than anything,” he said of a district that’s been without a congressional representative for eight months.
That will mean hiring a staff, opening district offices and shepherding constituent concerns over receiving federal emergency stimulus funding and Social Security benefits in the midst of a pandemic.
“We have tremendous amount of constituent services and casework we need to address and resolve for our folks,” he said. “It’s not a Republican-vs.-Democrat thing. It’s about survival right now.”
You’d have to go back to 1998 for the last time a Republican flipped a seat blue in heavily Democratic California.
A Garcia win likely gives Trump and Republicans more traction in the climb back to power in the House of Representatives.
“It will mean something to Trump, who will just wrap his arms around Garcia and will declare Trump the winner,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior fellow at the Sol Price School of Public Policy. “And it will energize Trump’s base. Even though Democrats will say it’s just a blip on the screen, they wouldn’t be happy about it.”
The race to fill out the term of former Rep. Katie Hill — who resigned amid scandal, accused of inappropriate relationships with members of her staff — was a lively one.
Smith — whose elected offices included Newhall school board member and state assemblywoman — appeared favored to take the seat in the race’s initial months. But over time, pundits deemed the contest a toss-up.
The pandemic complicated things. All of the district’s more than 415,000 registered voters received a vote-by-mail ballot per an order by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But that didn’t stop small clusters of face-masked voters from casting their votes in person at Coronavirus-prepped polling stations on Tuesday. Prospective voters followed social-distancing guidelines (though sometimes loosely) at several voting centers stretching from Porter Ranch into Lancaster.
Since the coronavirus outbreak emerged in mid-March, the hotly contested race transitioned to a virtual campaign with debates on Zoom, heavy phone banking and robust social media.
The race drew national attention as both a referendum on Trump and a preview of what the November 2020 presidential election could look like amid a pandemic.
Trump weighed in frequently on the race, including this week when he leveled accusations of election fraud by opening up new voting centers in Lancaster, where local Democrats worried about voter disenfranchisement. Early on in the race, Trump weighed in to support Garcia with full fervor.
Former Sen. Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama backed Smith.
Smith and Garcia will campaign again in November, squaring off to run for a full two-year term in Congress.
That in itself will bring its own drama, given that whoever wins the seat in this special election could be unseated after only half a year in office.
The campaign is likely to be fought on similar platforms as the last several weeks: healthcare, leadership in the time of pandemic, the economy. While Garcia didn’t mention Trump Tuesday night, it was clear Democrats did and will make Trump the issue moving forward.
And with Trump and Biden likely on the ballot in November, experts say voters will be motivated to come out in droves not just to vote for president, but to determine the fortunes of such down-ballot candidates as Smith and Garcia.
Garcia won’t have much time to leverage the advantages of incumbency, said Cal State Northridge Political Science Professor Lawrence Becker.
Those advantages — like passing laws that help constituents — won’t be easy at the same time whoever wins is trying to set up an office, hire a staff, raise money and campaign, especially during a pandemic, he said.
“The real prize out of tonight is really a symbolic prize of being able to say, ‘I already ran. I already beat this particular opponent of mine,’” Becker said. “Whoever wins this will try to take advantage of the symbolic victory they’ve gotten.”
City News Service contributed to this report
