I don’t think democracy works best when candidates are expected to “stand down” because someone wealthy entered the race. This obsession with clearing the field for wealthy self-funders is part of what’s hollowing out Democratic politics.
Money matters in politics largely because it helps candidates reach voters. Nobody’s naïve about that. But money isn’t the sole mechanism for reaching voters. Voter outreach doesn’t only happen through TV ads and glossy mailers.
Over 130,000 labor households in CA-40 is not insignificant political infrastructure.
Kerr’s ability to reach voters looks different because he has decades of relationships with labor groups and community networks that are embedded in the district and actively communicating with their own members on his behalf.
I’ve spent enough time at No Kings rallies to know people aren’t exactly in the mood for coronation politics. Why would we march against kings and oligarchs one weekend, then turn around and argue Democrats should just anoint the wealthy self-funder because she can spend the most money?
Bottom line, voters do have a choice, and candidates should earn support, not demand it through wealth and false inevitability narratives.
I made my choice between Becerra and Steyer because I did not want to feed the narrative of “he who has the most money wins”. Joe Kerr is the obvious choice for the candidate with the best chance of winning, slim as it is in this safe red district. It doesn’t take money for someone to see “retired firefighter, immigration attorney, and art dealer” on the ballot. The art dealer does not represent this district.
I think you have a good point that a lot of voters will scan the ballot and use the ballot designation as their guide without any additional investigation of the candidates. The ballot designations differ from what you state, though: Joe: retired firefighter captain, Lisa: immigration attorney, Esther: businesswoman/educator/mom.
Hi just to clarify - I’ve had 65,000 donations come in. Average donation $27. All public info. Do your research Kenneth. Please don’t underestimate what I’ve built.
WRT Esther's comment, the number of donations is her point, not outspending. WRT to the 2022 LA Mayor race, Caruso self-funded a majority of his campaign, $100M+. Comparing number of donations, which is an indication of grassroots support, especially at low dollar levels, Caruso had approximately 3,201 donations compared to Bass 14,227 (source PBS Socal). Bass had more grassroots support, one indication being the number of donations.
OK. I thought based on your comment "Rick Caruso outspent his opponent 10-1" that you were comparing spending not number of donations. Now that you mention 5K donations in district as the metric for grassroots support, Esther also has the most support using that metric as well. The number of donations outside the district are an indicator that the policy issues promoted by Esther have a wide appeal outside the district as well as within.
The labor support for Joe was visible via endorsements documented on his web site. The campaign stated their plan for this election was the same as the last one, but just to get out more Democrat voters. However, this did not translate into a large number of voters or large number of small dollar monetary donations (to be verified). The campaign stated that the unions were donating canvassing time and other resources, and they never updated their position on financing with interim discussion on socials. We'll have to wait until the next quarterly report which is required by law. There's still a significant number of ballots outstanding, but no indication that the results would change significantly for Joe who is currently in 5th place with 8.2% of the vote, and 12.9% percentage points behind the 2nd place candidate Young Kim. Voting results to be certified.
Joe Kerr currently sits at 8.2% of the vote, with 13,327 votes and in 5th place. He is 12.9 percentage points behind the second place candidate Young Kim at 21.1% with 34,189 votes. Ken Calvert is in first place, confirming a Republican lockout for the General with a split Democrat vote in the Primary (results to be certified).
As I read Joe Kerr’s piece here, I found myself steadily nodding in agreement with virtually all the points he raised. One of the things that resonated most with me, personally, is that they were all powerfully – but not loudly – stated. The message came from a man who is accustomed to speaking, negotiating and arguing calmly and intelligently when necessary to accomplish his goals, especially when done in the service of others who may not be able to speak for themselves.
It should be patently obvious to anyone in CA-40 that there is only one candidate in this vital race who has the history, experience and all-important, long-held relationships with the people who can get things done for the folks in our district. Joe already has important contacts in Washington and Sacramento established through his long history of public service. That means that Joe has built a very powerful tool that none of the others have - and that’s a very large Rolodex. He knows who to call and how to get his calls returned and doors opened by the people who matter. How could we even think of wasting these resources?
You have only to look at the utter – and in these times dangerous - lack of qualifications in the other two candidates who have responded to know that we simply cannot repeat the blunders of the past by stubbornly continuing to embrace identity politics. Whatever the gender or color, we desperately need to support the candidate with the greatest qualifications and the most experience. Failure to do so in the past has put us where we are today.
We need the guy who has already shown us that he cares about us and will fight long and hard for us because he is one of us. Lets send Joe out there to take care of our business. We know he can do it.
It is interesting to me that Esther's reply to my comment about Kerr was "Yawn." So I take it that she believes that a Member of Congress should be exciting, dramatic and anything but boring. But here's the thing, sincerely working for the public in Congress is, most often, boring, nose-to-the-grindstone stuff. Learning the ropes of legislating for the people might not fit with her self-promoting temperament.
Great record, great platform, no chance of winning. The only possible Dem candidate is Esther, odious and insubstantial as she may be, and now is the time for all good men or women candidates to stand down and play the long game. Not an insult, but would Joseph Kerr have been a stretch?
I am not seeing that in my community. Very few people have heard of her and only a couple I’ve talked to out of the hundreds of doors I’ve knocked are voting for her. The donation ads on social media might be lucrative, but they’re not effective unless CA40 voters are swayed. I’m not seeing it.
Joe is a good man, and in a perfect world, he would have won last time against YK. I voted for Lisa, but Joe is a good person who has done good things for his community.
I am extremely tired of Esther and her antics. She is my age (44), and she acts like a spoiled teenager. She is a shining example of how money shields people from accountability. People keep mentioning how awful she is both as a person and a candidate, but in the same breath, say, "Well, she did a self-funded poll and has money, so she's our destiny." So it's our duty to reward her for being an awful person and awful candidate with a primary win because she has money? I am not doing that. I have evaluated that candidate and found her lacking in character and substance. Call me Jill Stein until the cows come home.
In a perfect world, Joe Kerr would be a great candidate. Unfortunately, we live in a political environment corrupted by late stage capitalism where money is a determinate factor in elections--where the oligarchs choose winners they promote on media they control. Good people, who do decide to fun for office, are at a huge disadvantage. Our hope is local elections where good people can win and use to get known using it as a stepping stone. Another fine mess.
In CA 38, Hector de La Torre is challenging Linda Sanchez in the primary. He walked precincts in my Whittier Michigan Park neighborhood and answered my battery of questions. Got my vote. His mailers show SOMEBODy is funding him and he is swiping at Linda Sanchez' record including her husband's corruption conviction. Interesting to see outcome.
Joe stated early on that his campaign strategy this time was the same as last time, just needing to get more Democrat voters to vote for him. With the district leaning now more Republican, and Joe having experience losing last time (by 10%, approximately 40k votes), it's unclear how this is a winning strategy.
The 20,181 number is a valid win for a net swing argument, not the number of new votes Kerr would have needed to win. Each swing vote from Kim to Kerr counts as a plus 2 in the margin (-1 for Kim and +1 for Kerr). So, without any new votes whatsoever, Kerr wins if 20,181 votes swing to him from Kim. However, if he just receives 20,181 new votes and the Kim total does not change, Kerr still loses Kim 211,998 to Kerr 191,818.
Now, without a swing, Kerr needs 40,361 new votes. WRT those who did not vote, if 100% of an additional pool from that group voted, that pool size needs to be 40,361 to win. That's 38% of the non-voting pool that would vote for Kerr, with zero from that pool voting for Kim.
As I read Joe Kerr’s piece here, I found myself steadily nodding in agreement with virtually all the points he raised. One of the things that resonated most with me, personally, is that they were all powerfully – but not loudly – stated. The message came from a man who is accustomed to speaking, negotiating and arguing calmly and intelligently when necessary to accomplish his goals, especially when done in the service of others who may not be able to speak for themselves.
It should be patently obvious to anyone in CA-40 that there is only one candidate in this vital race who has the history, experience and all-important, long-held relationships with the people who can get things done for the folks in our district. Joe already has important contacts in Washington and Sacramento established through his long history of public service. That means that Joe has built a very powerful tool that none of the others have - and that’s a very large Rolodex. He knows who to call and how to get his calls returned and doors opened by the people who matter. How could we even think of wasting these resources?
You have only to look at the utter – and in these times dangerous - lack of qualifications in the other two candidates who have responded to know that we simply cannot repeat the blunders of the past by stubbornly continuing to embrace identity politics. Whatever the gender or color, we desperately need to support the candidate with the greatest qualifications and the most experience. Failure to do so in the past has put us where we are today.
We need the guy who has already shown us that he cares about us and will fight long and hard for us because he is one of us. Lets send Joe out there to take care of our business. We know he can do it.
Joe Kerr currently sits at 8.2% of the vote, with 13,327 votes and in 5th place. He is 12.9 percentage points behind the second-place candidate Young Kim at 21.1% with 34,189 votes. Ken Calvert is in first place, confirming a Republican lockout for the General with a split Democrat vote in the Primary (results to be certified).
Joe Kerr is the kind of public service-oriented individual who would be an asset in the U.S. Congress.
What a bleak argument for democracy.
I don’t think democracy works best when candidates are expected to “stand down” because someone wealthy entered the race. This obsession with clearing the field for wealthy self-funders is part of what’s hollowing out Democratic politics.
Money matters in politics largely because it helps candidates reach voters. Nobody’s naïve about that. But money isn’t the sole mechanism for reaching voters. Voter outreach doesn’t only happen through TV ads and glossy mailers.
Over 130,000 labor households in CA-40 is not insignificant political infrastructure.
Kerr’s ability to reach voters looks different because he has decades of relationships with labor groups and community networks that are embedded in the district and actively communicating with their own members on his behalf.
I’ve spent enough time at No Kings rallies to know people aren’t exactly in the mood for coronation politics. Why would we march against kings and oligarchs one weekend, then turn around and argue Democrats should just anoint the wealthy self-funder because she can spend the most money?
Bottom line, voters do have a choice, and candidates should earn support, not demand it through wealth and false inevitability narratives.
I made my choice between Becerra and Steyer because I did not want to feed the narrative of “he who has the most money wins”. Joe Kerr is the obvious choice for the candidate with the best chance of winning, slim as it is in this safe red district. It doesn’t take money for someone to see “retired firefighter, immigration attorney, and art dealer” on the ballot. The art dealer does not represent this district.
Joe is currently in 5th place. He will not win (results to be certified by July 2, 2026).
Districts choose a candidate that is most representative of the district. In this case it is an older GOP white male.
The Dems could have coalesced behind a similar white male. IMO, it would have made a race of it.
Instead other Dem candidates got involved as a vanity project.
The Dems are being shut out.
The total vote percentages would have made this seat viable for a white male Dem.
Instead, Dems are on the outside looking in thanks to EKV and Ramirez.
I think you have a good point that a lot of voters will scan the ballot and use the ballot designation as their guide without any additional investigation of the candidates. The ballot designations differ from what you state, though: Joe: retired firefighter captain, Lisa: immigration attorney, Esther: businesswoman/educator/mom.
Hi just to clarify - I’ve had 65,000 donations come in. Average donation $27. All public info. Do your research Kenneth. Please don’t underestimate what I’ve built.
You should have heard the same thing in the LA Mayor's race when you lived there. Just two years ago.
Rick Caruso outspent his opponent 10-1.
Yet I have never heard anyone being referred to as Mayor Caruso.
WRT Esther's comment, the number of donations is her point, not outspending. WRT to the 2022 LA Mayor race, Caruso self-funded a majority of his campaign, $100M+. Comparing number of donations, which is an indication of grassroots support, especially at low dollar levels, Caruso had approximately 3,201 donations compared to Bass 14,227 (source PBS Socal). Bass had more grassroots support, one indication being the number of donations.
I understand all that. Only 5K of EVK's 65K donations are from the district.
I would put forth that Kerr enjoys more grass roots support.
OK. I thought based on your comment "Rick Caruso outspent his opponent 10-1" that you were comparing spending not number of donations. Now that you mention 5K donations in district as the metric for grassroots support, Esther also has the most support using that metric as well. The number of donations outside the district are an indicator that the policy issues promoted by Esther have a wide appeal outside the district as well as within.
Guess that meant bupkiss on election day! Hilarious.
You built squat and it showed. LOL
The labor support for Joe was visible via endorsements documented on his web site. The campaign stated their plan for this election was the same as the last one, but just to get out more Democrat voters. However, this did not translate into a large number of voters or large number of small dollar monetary donations (to be verified). The campaign stated that the unions were donating canvassing time and other resources, and they never updated their position on financing with interim discussion on socials. We'll have to wait until the next quarterly report which is required by law. There's still a significant number of ballots outstanding, but no indication that the results would change significantly for Joe who is currently in 5th place with 8.2% of the vote, and 12.9% percentage points behind the 2nd place candidate Young Kim. Voting results to be certified.
Joe Kerr currently sits at 8.2% of the vote, with 13,327 votes and in 5th place. He is 12.9 percentage points behind the second place candidate Young Kim at 21.1% with 34,189 votes. Ken Calvert is in first place, confirming a Republican lockout for the General with a split Democrat vote in the Primary (results to be certified).
As I read Joe Kerr’s piece here, I found myself steadily nodding in agreement with virtually all the points he raised. One of the things that resonated most with me, personally, is that they were all powerfully – but not loudly – stated. The message came from a man who is accustomed to speaking, negotiating and arguing calmly and intelligently when necessary to accomplish his goals, especially when done in the service of others who may not be able to speak for themselves.
It should be patently obvious to anyone in CA-40 that there is only one candidate in this vital race who has the history, experience and all-important, long-held relationships with the people who can get things done for the folks in our district. Joe already has important contacts in Washington and Sacramento established through his long history of public service. That means that Joe has built a very powerful tool that none of the others have - and that’s a very large Rolodex. He knows who to call and how to get his calls returned and doors opened by the people who matter. How could we even think of wasting these resources?
You have only to look at the utter – and in these times dangerous - lack of qualifications in the other two candidates who have responded to know that we simply cannot repeat the blunders of the past by stubbornly continuing to embrace identity politics. Whatever the gender or color, we desperately need to support the candidate with the greatest qualifications and the most experience. Failure to do so in the past has put us where we are today.
We need the guy who has already shown us that he cares about us and will fight long and hard for us because he is one of us. Lets send Joe out there to take care of our business. We know he can do it.
It is interesting to me that Esther's reply to my comment about Kerr was "Yawn." So I take it that she believes that a Member of Congress should be exciting, dramatic and anything but boring. But here's the thing, sincerely working for the public in Congress is, most often, boring, nose-to-the-grindstone stuff. Learning the ropes of legislating for the people might not fit with her self-promoting temperament.
Well, she is an awful person, so there is that. I have blocked her since she and her husband have harassed me, but I am not surprised.
Great record, great platform, no chance of winning. The only possible Dem candidate is Esther, odious and insubstantial as she may be, and now is the time for all good men or women candidates to stand down and play the long game. Not an insult, but would Joseph Kerr have been a stretch?
I am not seeing that in my community. Very few people have heard of her and only a couple I’ve talked to out of the hundreds of doors I’ve knocked are voting for her. The donation ads on social media might be lucrative, but they’re not effective unless CA40 voters are swayed. I’m not seeing it.
Joe is a good man, and in a perfect world, he would have won last time against YK. I voted for Lisa, but Joe is a good person who has done good things for his community.
I am extremely tired of Esther and her antics. She is my age (44), and she acts like a spoiled teenager. She is a shining example of how money shields people from accountability. People keep mentioning how awful she is both as a person and a candidate, but in the same breath, say, "Well, she did a self-funded poll and has money, so she's our destiny." So it's our duty to reward her for being an awful person and awful candidate with a primary win because she has money? I am not doing that. I have evaluated that candidate and found her lacking in character and substance. Call me Jill Stein until the cows come home.
In a perfect world, Joe Kerr would be a great candidate. Unfortunately, we live in a political environment corrupted by late stage capitalism where money is a determinate factor in elections--where the oligarchs choose winners they promote on media they control. Good people, who do decide to fun for office, are at a huge disadvantage. Our hope is local elections where good people can win and use to get known using it as a stepping stone. Another fine mess.
In CA 38, Hector de La Torre is challenging Linda Sanchez in the primary. He walked precincts in my Whittier Michigan Park neighborhood and answered my battery of questions. Got my vote. His mailers show SOMEBODy is funding him and he is swiping at Linda Sanchez' record including her husband's corruption conviction. Interesting to see outcome.
Joe stated early on that his campaign strategy this time was the same as last time, just needing to get more Democrat voters to vote for him. With the district leaning now more Republican, and Joe having experience losing last time (by 10%, approximately 40k votes), it's unclear how this is a winning strategy.
It would have been more accurate for me to state that he lost to Young Kim with the following results, which was a 10% margin favoring Young Kim:
Kerr: 171,637
Kim: 211,998
percent: Kerr 44.7%, Kim 55.3%
source https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2024-general/sov/complete-sov.pdf
No comment on your various assumptions. Thanks for your reply.
That’s the standard way election analysts usually describe it, the "margin of victory".
Joe Kerr received about 44.7% of the vote and Kim received about 55.3%, so Kerr lost by:
55.3%−44.7%=10.5 percentage points
In election coverage, people normally say:
“He lost by 10.5 percentage points,” or
“He lost by about 10 points.”
source: https://uslawexplained.com/margin_of_victory
Kerr: 171,637
Kim: 211,998
The vote gap is 211,998 - 171,637 = 40,361
source: https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2024-general/sov/complete-sov.pdf
The 20,181 number is a valid win for a net swing argument, not the number of new votes Kerr would have needed to win. Each swing vote from Kim to Kerr counts as a plus 2 in the margin (-1 for Kim and +1 for Kerr). So, without any new votes whatsoever, Kerr wins if 20,181 votes swing to him from Kim. However, if he just receives 20,181 new votes and the Kim total does not change, Kerr still loses Kim 211,998 to Kerr 191,818.
Now, without a swing, Kerr needs 40,361 new votes. WRT those who did not vote, if 100% of an additional pool from that group voted, that pool size needs to be 40,361 to win. That's 38% of the non-voting pool that would vote for Kerr, with zero from that pool voting for Kim.
As I read Joe Kerr’s piece here, I found myself steadily nodding in agreement with virtually all the points he raised. One of the things that resonated most with me, personally, is that they were all powerfully – but not loudly – stated. The message came from a man who is accustomed to speaking, negotiating and arguing calmly and intelligently when necessary to accomplish his goals, especially when done in the service of others who may not be able to speak for themselves.
It should be patently obvious to anyone in CA-40 that there is only one candidate in this vital race who has the history, experience and all-important, long-held relationships with the people who can get things done for the folks in our district. Joe already has important contacts in Washington and Sacramento established through his long history of public service. That means that Joe has built a very powerful tool that none of the others have - and that’s a very large Rolodex. He knows who to call and how to get his calls returned and doors opened by the people who matter. How could we even think of wasting these resources?
You have only to look at the utter – and in these times dangerous - lack of qualifications in the other two candidates who have responded to know that we simply cannot repeat the blunders of the past by stubbornly continuing to embrace identity politics. Whatever the gender or color, we desperately need to support the candidate with the greatest qualifications and the most experience. Failure to do so in the past has put us where we are today.
We need the guy who has already shown us that he cares about us and will fight long and hard for us because he is one of us. Lets send Joe out there to take care of our business. We know he can do it.
Joe Kerr currently sits at 8.2% of the vote, with 13,327 votes and in 5th place. He is 12.9 percentage points behind the second-place candidate Young Kim at 21.1% with 34,189 votes. Ken Calvert is in first place, confirming a Republican lockout for the General with a split Democrat vote in the Primary (results to be certified).